Race Post Mortem

I'm in recovery mode now. Everything feels sore and I can't remember the last time that I ran a half and felt so sore afterwards... Maybe like with childbirth, (as they say) I've forgotten the post-run pains and only remember the highs. (*eyeroll)

The race is done, which means its time to dig up the race pics from online and also do a deep-dive into the results.

So theres mine! Its not bad I suppose - 35/79 of all veteran women (sigh! yes now I'm running in the veteran category) and 85/182 of all women. I'm just above average. 

In general though, the top timings across all categories are simply amazing. Below is the top 5 times in the Veteran Women category. Even if I had run at my personal best time of 2:16, I would have been at rank#14. There was a time when I used to make it to the top 10 timings without so much of a gap between the top time and mine. It feels like everyone has gotten faster and I've gotten slower. (Thats probably very true)

What is more dismaying however is that the top 13 times in the senior veteran category also beats my timing! 

Its always when I see the results that I wish I'd done more during the race and training. But this is a bad rabbit hole to go down. So I desist.

Back to me. 2:43:19 is reasonable considering that I was running after a giant gap of 7 years. The biggest setback for me was poor sleep the night before the race and the previous night as well. But the highpoint is that I finished strong with no injuries despite the lack of sleep and not enough of warming up. I am also about 7 kilos heavier than I was 7 years back, which is definitely a contributing factor to speed but also a contributing factor to some problematic chafing which has lead to some significant post-run discomfort.

I plan to build up from here. Consistency is key (as I've been telling myself all these years but not following it) and I'm hoping I will continue training without losing this momentum. More speed work and tempo runs to be incorporated into my weekly routines to improve anaerobic capacity and as always, improved strength training workouts. I do need to drop some weight. But thats not a key focus for me, I'm guessing it will happen organically as a side effect to more consistent strength training.

I haven't signed up for any new races as yet so I'm not sure when this blog will get updated next. But hopefully it will be sooner than later.

DRHM 2025 Half Marathon

2:43:19. Not my best but also not my worst. I'll take it!!

Everything went as planned last evening. Had my dinner early enough, balanced with carbs and protein. Went to bed by 7:30 pm which was meant to give me 7 hours of sleep before the scheduled 2:30 am wake up alarm. I kept waking up though and I don't think I was relaxed enough to get enough deep, restful sleep. Despite that, I was up on time and we left home as planned and got to the start point on time.

I always do a last minute pee before leaving home for the venue and I did so today as well. But I guess my hydration has been extra good these last few days because as I got to the venue, I felt like I had to go again! Now in all these years of doing running events like these, I have never once had to use the porta-potties that are provided at the corrals. So very hesitatingly, I joined the line at one of these "toilets". It was a kind-of long line and so by the time I was 4th in queue, the race had already been flagged off. But Thank God I waited, coz I really had to go. On the flip side, this left me with no time to properly warm up before the run. I had done some work at home before leaving and some movement while waiting in line but thats never enough. Anyways, I crossed the timing mat some 6+ minutes after the race had been flagged off.

I was completely with the plan at the beginning - (Running the course as a 7Kx3 and finishing each 7K in just under 50min and so finishing the HM at 2:30) In fact the first 7K went really well - I was feeling strong and finished it in about 50 minutes. From there on, I slowly started fading. I could feel that my heart rate was really up (And indeed it was. While normally my watch shows it to be in the low 170s during a long run, today it was in the high 180s) and I felt like I had to stop and take quick little walking breaks to bring it down. I knew that the next couple of 7K segments would be much slower. So I gave up on monitoring my pace. I continued with the run-walk plan till about 9K, and I could really, really feel myself fading and the thought of continuing for another 12K seemed impossible.

And then I met Prem (from my Nungambakkam Nitros days) who was running his regular training run and he joined me for the rest of the run. Honestly, if not for his company and the chit chat and his encouragement, I might have thrown in the towel before the end or definitely would have had a slower finish time. I continued with the run/walk plan till the end. When I saw the giant LED timer at the finish line suddenly loom up in front of me, I did a quick time check and saw it was 2:42: something... My plan B goal time of anything less than 2:45 was still within reach! I was glad to see that I had enough energy to dredge up from somewhere to "sprint" to the finish line.

In the finishing area, they had ice cold fruity popsicles (which I remembered being absolutely lovely from a previous edition of DRHM) so though the lines were long and crowded I waited patiently for mine.. :) I ran into many familiar faces and friends from my old running days and the whole running community vibe felt nice. I finished strong without any aches and pains and without having pulled any weird muscles along the way so all in all, today's experience has been a great one.

Should I sign up for another event while the going is good?

13 hours away.

And just like I said, 5 days just flew by and race day is upon me. In less than 13 hrs I'm going to be lined up at the start.

The route for 21.1K looks great. A nice long stretch of 10.5 K along the coast line and back. I am very familiar with this route having run along it many times. Its more or less flat except for the Adyar River bridge at around 8 kms in (and again on the way back). As with every race, I like to look up the route on google maps and break it down km-wise and sort of mentally run the course. While the original plan (at the beginning of my training) was to run the 21K as 3 segments of 7K in 43 min each (43min x3 = 129 min = 2:09) I have since switched my focus to just running strong. 

Since a PB looks extremely unlikely, I will be happy with any time thats less than my very first HM timing (which was 2:45:30). However, I will be very pleased if I can run it in less than 2:30:00. So to that end, I'm gunning for 7K in 50 min each (50min x3 = 150 min = 2:30). This feels doable. :)

This morning I went to the expo. It was quite the distance away but still, worth my while - it was well organised, with quite a few interesting stalls. Collected my bib without having to wait in any long lines, took a couple of pics and all-in-all felt really good about running an event again after all this time. 

Got home, did my race fit flat lay, readied up my shoes, did a bit of mobility, took stock of the butterfly population in my tummy and now going to settle in, relax, have a good dinner and go to bed early.

21183. I hope thats a lucky Bib

Its Race Week!!!

5 more days to Race Day. I am quite happy and excited for it. 

To be honest, once I dropped the goal pace / finishing time expectations and decided to switch my focus to just running strong, a lot of the nervousness and apprehensions just disappeared. I plan to run 1 more run tomorrow (a brisk 7K) & maybe a quick 20 min run on Friday to shake out the legs and any built up nervousness if needs be.  I plan to do some band / light weight workouts till Thursday and also a couple of swim sessions before the race. That much should leave me feeling trained enough but also rested & at a "battery-full" level.

I'll have a very early rise on Sunday and am prepping for it by waking up & going to bed half an hour earlier than usual this week. So far, so good. I have been wilfully drinking more water & fluids these past couple of days. I'm normally so bad at hydrating enough that I'm trying very hard to be hyper conscious of my water intake now.

During this training cycle I had been trialling various fuelling habits on my long runs to see which works the best for me. I've determined that fasted runs are a really, really bad idea. I lose steam very fast during the run and develop bad migraines post run. So about half an hour before the run, eating something is an absolute must. I've tried a couple of bananas, a tablespoon honey, a slice of bread with PB and Jam, a couple of dates, my energy laddoos (which are basically just oats, dates, pb and honey blended together and made into little balls) and they all work pretty well - digested quickly enough and delivers the necessary energy to fuel the first bit of the run. My race day go-to is going to be Bread, PB and Jam and two Bananas. I'll be leaving home about an hour before flag-off time so the plan is to have the sandwich at home and the two bananas en-route. 

When running longer than 60 minutes, its normally recommended that you fuel during the runs as well. In addition to the hydration/electrolytes its good to supply the body with some easy-absorption carbs to prevent the dreaded "bonking" during the run. In the past, my choice of hydration has been glucose water or diluted apple juice with a squeeze of lemon & salt, but this training cycle I thought I'd try a couple of "elite" hydration supplements. I've been using Fast & Up from the beginning of the cycle and Unived's Hydration salts during the last couple of training blocks. While I'm pretty sold on the fast&up reload tablets, the Unived elite hydration mix literally left a bad taste in the mouth. I still have a lot of it left so I'll probably continue using it till its over. It does do it's job just that it doesn't taste great. 

I also trialled the 15g CHO Gel 100 from Unived in the salted caramel flavour for mid-run fuelling. This tasted great and am guessing it did serve the purpose of delivering quick energy but I did feel like I needed the loo every time I ingested the gel. Prior to this I was fuelling my runs with hard candy. :) I'm not even kidding. I was having a combination of Alpenliebe's caramel candies and Kopiko coffee candies. This was just a treat! Instant sugar rush and it made me look forward to the next fuelling point in the run. Probably wasn't great for my teeth but it really served the purpose I think. But the real winner (and the fuel choice for race day) is Haribo's gummy bears. Each gummy bear is about 2g of carbs. Ideally for me, I should be having about 30-40g of carbs per hour of running. My calculations are not exact science, but I worked that out to be 2 gummy bears for every KM after 6K. I like gummy bears so its like a little reward for completing 1 km. Only problem is that 30-32 gummy bears takes up space. I'll be running with 2 small ziplock bags of 16 gummy bears each which will leave two telltale bulges in the pockets of my leggings that looks very funny in photos (problems! huh?). But its a small sacrifice that I'm willing to live with :). On race day I'll be depending on the aid stations for hydration. In the past editions of DRHM, they've been very well stocked and well organised so no worries on that front.

One more update on Saturday after I collect my Bib and then its Race Day! I think the next 5 days are going to fly by.

10 days to go (plus, a shoes update)

I'm halfway through tapering now. In about 10 days, I'll be lining up at the start line.

Its time to really get race ready. Training-wise, I've done all that I can, its now time to wind-down and recover enough so that physically I'm rested enough to take on the race on "fresh legs". So when I say really race-ready, I'm speaking mentally, nutritionally as well as gear-wise race-ready.

Mentally, I'm in a really good space right now. After my 19K run in Trivandrum, I feel confident I can run the full 21.1K, strong and at a reasonably brisk pace. I just need to keep other stress factors at bay from now till the 20th and continue to feel good about running the distance. "I got this"!!!

Nutritionally, I've always been weak on the hydration front. Getting my requisite water intake during regular weeks itself is a challenge since my thirst drive isn't very strong and setting reminders on my phone to drink up hasn't proven effective enough. Hydration during race week is that much more pertinent which means I somehow, simply, MUST drink more water. How though?. On the other hand, carb loading has never been an issue since our regular meals are generally high enough in carbs. Need to get in more protein than usual though, for the strength. 

Planning my race-day outfit is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my race-readiness process. While I haven't yet settled on what I'm going to be wearing, I do know which shoes I'm going to put on.  :)

During the course of my training I had to unexpectedly retire two pairs of running shoes. The outsole on the dark grey ones ("Smoky") had become worn out and had no traction left. I would find myself skidding in it on my runs. The outsole on the red & white ones ("Capsicum"), while otherwise good & dandy,  just came apart one fine day. I did try sticking it back on, but that (as expected) didn't last. Smoky only had a mileage of 348 km on them and Capsicum was fairly new with just 266 km on them and both their uppers were still in great condition so it was quite disappointing to have to give them away. With two pairs out of commission, I was left with just one pair ("Guava") to train in and with more than half the training left to go. 

I never really need much of an excuse to go shoe shopping and here was a perfectly legit excuse! Introducing Salt & Pepper! :) Salt is an ON model I hadn't tried before (Cloud X). It has more cushioning than the Cloud Flow model that I'm used to, but looks way more cooler if you ask me. To be perfectly honest, I bought it solely for its looks but after going on a couple of short runs in it, it feels like a winner all around. Pepper is the current edition of the Cloud Flow. The mesh on the upper is more close knit than the previous version but that doesn't seem to affect anything other than the look of it. It also seems to have a higher "roll" on the outsole from mid foot to fore foot which I think helps but it may be too soon to tell. The last long run I did was in Pepper and that went well, so I'm thinking it will work just as fine on race day. Now I just need to plan the rest of the fit around it.

Ooh! Excited! Before I know it, race day will be upon me!

Time to Taper

And just like that, the hardest bit of the training plan is done. I started tapering this week - gradually decreasing the running volume so I can recover and run the half with relatively "fresh legs". :)

I am in Trivandrum currently so for a change, my long run didn't have to be 20 odd loops on a 900m loop. In fact, on Sunday, I had the best long run in all of the training. Weather was nice - cool, slightly rainy, breezy, the route was a nice long 10K which I repeated twice, and even though the roads had many, many uphills and downhills, I really, really enjoyed the run. My pace was quicker too than last week so it has boosted my confidence somewhat. I will be very lucky to have the same weather conditions on race day (I'm expecting hot and muggy) but the route will be much flatter so I'm hoping it will be a good, strong run on 20th.

Pace-wise, I'm adjusting my expectations. A lot. 2:10 looks highly impossible. If I can run at an average pace of 7'00" and finish under 2:30, I will still be very pleased - even though its not a PB.

Peak Week is here!

3 more weeks to Race Week and next week is Peak Week! The highest running volume week in the whole training period, the last week of the last-big-push, the come-on-you-got-this-week - well, you get the picture!

I'm going into Peak week in a much better mindset than I was in last week. Last week I was ready to throw in the towel. I've recalibrated somewhat after today's long run. Ran 18K and there was no funny knee pain and miracle of miracles, there was no post-run migraine either. It wasn't easy or elegant, but I did manage to complete that long, long run on a maddening 900m loop, on this very hot Sunday morning. 

I ran it at an average pace of 7'23". Come race day, I doubt I'll be able to go any faster than that. Between now and race day, I doubt anything's going to magically happen to bump up my pace from 7'23" to 6'09". Even though I'm able to do a 7K at that pace now, its only possible with the many, many breaks in between. Race Day is going to be as hot and muggy as this morning was, so weather-wise its not going to help either. Plus I'm sure the course will have at-least one flyover en-route. The only plus point I see which might be to my advantage is that the course will be 1 large 21.1K loop and not several 900m loops and the novelty of that, plus the general race ambience and energy may propel me a little faster. 

Anyhow... next week I'll have a better idea of how close or far away I am from my goal pace.