A Pretty Good 10K

Once upon a time (it does feel like a really, really long time ago) I signed up for my very first 10K and I was very very nervous. Fast forward a year and half - and now 10K is my favourite distance. I am so comfortable doing this distance that there is absolutely no nervousness leading up to the race and no growing populations of butterflies in the stomach. It is with a wonderfully relaxed frame of mind with which I lined up at the start of Marina Runnerz 10K yesterday.

It was a nothing-to-report-about run. The event was well organized and I ran the distance comfortably well finishing in 1:08:35. PBed by about 3 minutes. The exciting bit is that when the results came out, I was ranked 22 out of the 225 women that ran. There right there is a Woo Hoo moment! :-) :-). I know that being the first edition of the race, there were relatively few runners but it still feels pretty cool all the same.

Time to sign up for Cool Runners.

The Week That Was

It has been over a week since my last post and thanks to a busy a schedule I hadn't even realized it. Though busy, I did manage to get in my runs for the week. 

On Monday, I turned 33 and to celebrate, I did a quick short run of 3.3k. Last year I had thought to myself that I would run 33k on my 33rd birthday. But having just done a half marathon the week before, I thought it would be quite foolish to attempt this. So I settled for 10%... :-). That was quite a happy, evenly paced run and it took me about 20 odd minutes.

On Tuesday, I had my 3rd speed training - and my 2nd visit to SDAT. This time round the workout was 2 repeats of 3 sets of  400 meter sprints with 2 minutes rest between sets and 4 minutes rest between repeats. It was a really, really brutal workout and felt all the more awesome at the end of it because of the brutality. The goal was 2:00 per set and I managed to average around 2:05.

Thursday was my first tempo run with the group. It was supposed to be a 3x3k my goal was 18-19 minutes per 3k. (Thats a pace of 6'00" to a km) I started out with a bunch of the faster runners and was feeling super proud of myself when I found myself keeping pace with them. At some point I glanced down at my app and saw that the pace was 5'25". You guessed it! I couldn't sustain that for long and by 2.5k or so I was burned out. Capital B. Capital O. Just had to turn around. Walked it off for a kilometer and then did a slow jog back to the park. It probably also didn't help that I hadn't eaten or slept enough pre-run.

Been also getting in a bit of strength training in between runs and so in general its been a good week fitness-wise.

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I have the Marina Runnerz 10k coming up on Sunday. Hopefully the speed training & tempo runs will help me clock a decent time. Hoping for a PB (but of course!)

An Absolutely Awesome run!

I think I should throw out all my notes on how to run a decent run. On Sunday, I had the Auroville Half Marathon and everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong but yet I managed to PB - that too on my first trail run!!! 

To begin with, the race, held in Pondicherry, was an out-of-station one which meant I didn't have access to any of my pre-race rituals. Having to stay in a hotel on the 13th meant all my meals on pre-race day were from a commercial kitchen - and having a rather sensitive stomach this didn't help. Here's the gross part  - come 13th evening, my stomach was severely upset and I was honestly scared that I would have to make a detour to the bushes at least a couple of times during the race. I didn't get to have my customary curd & rice pre-race meal and given my tummy condition, I just nibbled on a couple of snack-y things at dinner time. 

I managed to get to bed by 10:30 but the new bed and ambiance of the hotel room, plus the pre-race nerves meant I got zilch sleep during the entire night. I was wide awake when my alarm went off at 4:30. To worsen matters, the ac and closed circulation in the room had given me a really bad cold (and I had just gotten over a slight cold from two weeks ago) and I got out of bed with a head-heavy feeling and completely blocked nasal passages. The hotel reception & help desk were shut tight that hour of the day so I also didn't get to have my customary pre-race snack of banana and toast with jam. Which was probably a good thing given the state-of-affairs of my stomach. I did manage to get in a cup of black coffee and a chocolate-covered peanut toffee thing-y given to me by my friend and race-day angel, Namrata.

Namrata who had accompanied me to Pondicherry (along with my husband and a bunch of friends) had kindly offered to take me to the race venue. We thought a 5:30 start would allow us to get to the venue well in time for flag-off at 6:15. Turned out that I had grossly underestimated the time it would take us to get there and I managed to reach the starting corral about 4 minutes before flag-off time. By this time, the butterflies in my stomach had multiplied by a gazillion times and I was in near-panic-attack stage. I found my fingers trembling as I strapped on my phone and switched on my Nike App.

I had also not had enough time to do a full warm up routine and was a nervous mess by the time the race was flagged off. There must have been around 800 odd runners for the half marathon category. The trails were narrow and therefore crowded by the teeming population which only added to the butterfly population in my stomach. By kilometer 3 or 4, I had already started to get a fatigued feeling and I remember seeing the 4km milestone and groaning inwardly at the realization that there were 17 odd kilometers more to go. It wasn't until after the eighth kilometer or so that the crowds started thinning and I started to relax and enjoy the beautiful trails.

And truly the trail was lovely. Running through greenery and pretty scenic sights unmarred by concrete buildings and traffic is really a pleasure. Every road run now is going to be boring in comparison. I was so completely taken in with the scenery around that I was hardly paying any heed to the voice-over from my app reminding me of my pace, distance covered and time elapsed. At around the 17km mark I caught up with a fellow runner and managed a quick chat with her at an aid station. I know she runs much faster than me and so was quite surprised when I found myself keeping up with her till the 19th km mark (I lost sight of her pretty soon after that).

It was a wonderful feeling knowing that the end was near. Though there were km markers at every kilometer you passed, none were as wonderful-looking as the 20km mark. I sped up a little after that and managed to go all-out for the last 200 meters to the finish line. As I looked up at the giant clock beaming over the "half-marathon-finish" sign counting down the seconds since the flag off, I couldn't help the big grin spreading on my face when I saw it read 2:34:15!

I don't know how! But I PBed. What an awesome end to an awesome run!

2 down 4 more to go... :-)

Ready for the next one!!

I'm almost all set for my 2nd Half Marathon for the year.. :-) I'm really looking forward to this one because it will be my first trail run. Everybody who has run this trail has only good things to say about it. Totally excited.

A couple of guys from the Nitros group are also running it so for the first time ever I might actually run a race with company (if I can keep up with the other runners that is). I'm determined to just enjoy the race, the trail, run good and strong to the finish - and not worry about the time.

The organizers have published the route map. Being a completely new area to me, it doesn't feel as daunting as the TWCM or the DRHM '15 route map because its tough to fathom the distance. I tried mapping the route on google map as usual to figure out the distances in my head but the trail parts of the route isn't mapped on google maps so I couldn't get very far. The good news is that the first 4 kilometers or so of the route are paved roads.

It is a comparatively late start for the half marathon - 6:15. Hope it doesn't get too hot too soon. 

I still have a lot to do before I head off to Pondicherry tomorrow. Need to clean my shoes, figure out my running gear, do a thorough stretching routine... 

Gotto run... (pun intended)

Run Update 09.02.2016

Had another speed interval training today with the Nitros.

Today's workout was 6 x 200 meter repeats with 1 minute break in between repeats. 2 sets of that with a 2 minute break in between sets. The best part of today's run was that it was done on the track. Such a pleasure running on the dirt track as opposed to the concrete roads I have gotten used to. All my joints were thanking me (my shoes: not so much).

I managed the repeats in a timing of 0:55, 0:58, 1:06, 0:57, 0:55, 1:04 & 0:56, 1:02, 1:05, 1:03, 1:10 & 0:59. I think I should be targeting an average of 0:50 to 0:55 to improve my overall speed. But this is great! I love these speed workouts.

Heres another slightly blurry pic of us at the track...

Run Update 06.02.2016

Early on Saturday, I joined the Nungambakkam Nitros for my first ever interval speed training. With the aim of improving all our timings and achieving a Sub 2:00 half marathon finish for DRHM 2016, one of the members has taken it on himself to make custom training plans for all those interested. In order to do that he had us running an interval speed workout to access our running level.

The workout had us running 2 sets of 3 repeats of 400 meters at maximum effort with 90 seconds rest in between repeats and 3 minutes rest in between sets. This was my 2nd run post TWCM - the first one was a slow and easy 3k on Thursday. I felt recovered enough to attempt this but really wasn't sure how it would go.

My timings were 2'15", 2'07", 2'18", 2'08", 2'19" and 2'29" for each of those sets. The first couple of sets felt ok. The third, fourth and fifth sets felt like torture - I felt that my legs would fall off. I was so fatigued by the last set that I decided to run it at my half marathon pace and just finish the workout. The last hundred meters or so I had another runner pacing and pushing me to give my max effort. After it was all over it felt like a great workout because of the sense of achievement I felt at the end of it. I believe I should be targeting a time of 2'00' in order to improve my half marathon time. I think I could push for that.

I read up on some speed interval training and I liked this article describing the basic types of speed training for beginners.

Heres our customary - slightly blurry - group picture post run... 

How did I do?

TWCM posted the results on their page today - two days post run. Invariably the runner's high comes down and I feel deflated about my timing after seeing the results... tsk tsk. I really need to learn to enjoy the run and not bother so much about the results... 

Still looking forward to the Auroville Run though... :-) 

They don't have timing chips for that run. :-) :-) :-)