Building with Bricks...

Post my 3.34 hour FM run in SCMM 2014, I have not blogged on my running. Two years is a long period! Isn’t this the FB world in any case! :-) SCMM 2015 was eventful to me but was pretty much low key. A 3.24 showing in a FM is a reasonable outcome many would say.

Year 2015 has been fast and exciting in multiple ways. I started running in December 2011 and I have always felt that your training over a period of years starts showing up at some time.

The first question many people ask me is which club or group I belong to. (ie if people know that I run:-)) While it is sufficiently blasphemous to tell people that I do not get coached, it sometimes gets even more terrible when I say that most of the time I train alone. This is obviously not the best thing to do, but in my case it fits in well since I train at my time, pace and place. At the same time, I am great votary of learning from the best in the game including the runners and coaches I see around. In that sense I am always on the Eklavya mode:-)

But I realised early in 2015 that if I have to improve I need to start running and training with better runners. Since not many “free” runners are around, this becomes difficult. Initially I took the races to bench mark myself against the better runners, but in the second half I have been fortunate to go on training runs with some really good and knowledgeable runners.

It is also important to do well in half marathons to develop into a good full marathon runner. Hence in the previous year a lot of stress was put on doing well in those smaller distances. To reduce the timing from a 1.37 hr to a 1.29 hr in 6-8 months seems difficult, but I believe this is where your previous training plays a role.

And on November 15, 2015 I surprised myself becoming a winner in a full marathon with a timing of 3.14 hours. Again reducing the FM by 10 minutes within 10 months, is something which appeared impossible to me, but it did happen. As it should have ended, to bring reasonability into the year, I did a DNF at SCMM 2016. At the end, it is only a run!

In all this, another important leg has been nutrition. While a lot of people rely on water and natural food, being a poor eater, vegetarian and not the strong kid right from childhood, I have always relied on products which can make me healthier. In that sense I believe we need to be flexible.

Sometimes in half jest people, surprised by some of my performances (in our limited context), do ask tricky questions on nutrition and the like. As I used to grow up, I used to see kids who were more muscular, who probably thrived on meat and able to bowl fast or hit those sixes straight behind the bowler. It would have been futile to sit back and attribute those capabilities to what they ate or the bat they possessed!:-) So the key idea was to develop different skill sets which suited my own approach. And I developed into a batsman who relied on patiently taking those singles and occasional boundaries; a spinner who could bowl all day long waiting for the batsman to make mistakes etc. Running is no different. There are no magic potions or coaches!!

Finally timings are going to improve for everyone as training from an overall perspective keeps getting better. Some timings which as amateurs we used to hold in awe a few years back will no longer be the golden standard! There are some amazing people who are pushing the bar for all of us and we should pray that they keep doing it!