Last weekend, - 9th July - to be specific, my running group hosted our annual running event, the Nitros Running Festival, at the Nehru Stadium. All the other chapters of Chennai Runners had been invited to participate in a bunch of track events including a 10k race, a 5K relay for men, another 5k relay for women, a costume relay run for families and a short race for kids. There was also a 6 hour run where a few elite runners had been invited to run several laps around the the track for that duration of time. That, to me, was phenomenal how people could just run, and run and run for what seemed to me like forever around the same 400 meter track. Every hour they would switch directions from clockwise to anticlockwise but other than that the run seemed mind-numbingly monotonous and it was incredible how some of these athletes completed 50 odd kilometers in such great form. The 10k race had a cut-off time of 48 minutes and it was great watching the top runners complete it in under 40 minutes. Being on the organizing side of the events as volunteers, none of us were part of any of the races but feeling the electric ambiance of the evening and seeing the energy of all the runners, I sorely wished I could have been running on that well maintained track.
After the Nitros day on Saturday, I had zero energy on Sunday to run the 18k LSD I was scheduled for. But with the dream runners HM just up ahead, I had to squeeze in that distance somewhere and so on Wednesday I decided to get up early and go for it. I had planned on doing 6 sets of a short 3k loop around home - Kothari road, Sterling road and back down Kothari Road. By the 4th set I was bored! The same scenery looping around and around, the same buildings, the same people - and though I wasn't tired, by the 14k point I decided to stop my run short. I really should have taken the Marina beach route.
This Friday, I had a hectic day of work travel and having got back home at 12:30 am on Saturday, I knew I wouldn't be able to wake up 3 hours later to go for a long run. Saturday night was a late night as well which meant sleeping in this morning - and no run. By evening a stupendously pressing guilt trip got me do an indoor run for 2 and a half hours. I don't know how effective a training run that was but it definitely eased my guilt trip.
Given my average pace of 7'45" for a long distance run, I should be able to do my HM in about 2 hours 45 minutes. If I can push myself down a bit to 7'15" - 7'20" I could achieve a PB. Here's hoping!
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