Run 4 Fun

Past Sunday concluded HARRA warmup series race leading to Houston Marathon. FinishLine sports organized 30K race starting/ending at Sugarland town square. The race included running out about 3 miles, doing 3 loops of about 4.3 miles and returning back to the start line. Verdict: 18.6 miles in 2:06:58 or 6:49 min/miles. Race Report: On the way to the race: I thought I had enough gas in the tank only to realize that I am in trouble as I was getting closer to sugarland. Thankfully I reached parking garage just in time without having to push my car :) Many thanks to Benard Castro for picking up my bib a day before and handing it out to me on race day morning. I also thank Chris McGrew for letting me use his Garmin 405 for the race as my Garmin is giving me some problems lately. Pre-race warmup: It is cold but not that cold. I decide to run in a half-sleeved shirt with gloves and a warm cap. I didn't do much of a warmup before the race as the race is long enough and I want to start out...

If I wake up tomorrow morning early enough and join BCRR for Sunday River Oaks run it will mark a special occasion. This will be first week in my three years of running that I will run 70 miles in a week. I am excited about it and more so because I am feeling very good about my training and I have no aches and pains whatsoever. Edit: I did wake in time to join my BCRR friends for a nice and easy 12 mile run in chilly weather. Here is a table showing weekly mileage data from August 2010. The cells marked in red are my LAZY weeks which is my secret of not getting hurt and giving my body enough time to recover from training runs. Week No. Week Miles 1 Jul 26 - Aug 01 35.8 2 Aug 02 - Aug 08 29.76 3 Aug 09 - Aug 15 40.94 4 Aug 16 - Aug 22 42.63 5 Aug 23 - Aug 29 40.65 6 Aug 30 - Sep ...

I think you can't beat a 10K with $15 entry fee (no ridiculous $2-4 service fee on top of race fee), a long sleeve cotton shirt, 1.5 bottle of red wine the night before and 1.5 hours of sleep going into the race. Top it with terribly humid, almost 75 degrees temperature and it is a perfect recipe to have fun and don't run for time race. If weather predictions were good and I was serious, I would have loved to break 40 minutes again but I was in no mood to spoil the fun yesterday. The race started pretty normal and first 2 minutes or so were spend weaving around people to get in front. On a normal day I would be little pissed but Bob Brown said something which made total sense. He said they have paid the same money as you and to hell with race etiquette in a Turkey Trot. Who are we? I am not even middle of pack runner from racing standards so I can't complain. I saw Simon Brabo running with Caroline Burum ahead of me and I thought about reeling them in next mile or so. Caro...

Many thanks to Lisa Foronda for picking my bib and sprinkling good luck on it :) I wanted to break 1:46 in 25K as mentioned in my previous blog post. I had a good week leading to the race except a few glitches. I usually like to do one quality workout in the week leading to the race. On Tuesday evening I wanted to do a hard 6-7 mile tempo run at 6:35-6:40 pace. But it got so dark and there were so many water puddles around Rice that I opted to do a long Marathon pace run (10 miles at 7:10) rather than a tempo run. I ran easy rest of the week (Wed/Thursday). I took Friday off because I wanted to join ASHA folks for an easy run on Saturday morning. Now, running with BCRR has taught me to be very prompt for runs. I showed up exactly at 6:40 for 6:45 am run and had to wait till 7:25 to start the run because no one showed up in time. Bummer !!! However, there was a silver lining. I met Sachin who is a relatively new runner and very enthusiastic about running. I ran 6 easy miles with him at ...

Weather prediction looks great for 25K on coming Sunday. Hopefully, it won't be too warm and humid like half marathon 2 weeks back. I ran this race last year and broke down mentally in the middle of race. After finishing two loops (around 10 miles) when David, Scott and Jay hendrickson opened a gap on me, I stopped in my tracks and started walking. I jogged/walked rest of the course and finished just under 2 hours. I didn't feel like running 30k last year and my training took a little dip and I didn't finish the marathon within my goal time. This year is little different. I am training more diligently and am running more miles. I am already up around 50 miles/week. I hope I can reach 62-65 miles/week by mid December. I had a good long run on Saturday with Bob Brown and Mark Conran. We ran last 3 miles of our 18 miles run successively faster and finished at 7:15 min/mile pace. On Sunday, I wanted to do easy 12 miles but Dave helped me push the pace little bit. For 10 miles I...

This was left in the "drafts" section for so long that I am not even sure if this should be published. But, anyways. Prelude: The weather was not ideal for most of the people for racing. At the start of the race, temperatures were around 75+ degrees. I knew that I had done my homework for the race. Good training was done and my only concern was getting dehydrated in the race and facing cramps towards the end of the race. I made a mental note of drinking as much Gatorade during the race as I can. I also used a Gu Gel pack 15 minutes before the race and stored another one in my pocket in case I feel like running low on fuel. Warmup: I did around 2 mile warm up with Jay Hendrickson, Mark Conran, Simon Brabo and Carolyn Burum. This was the first time I spoke to Carolyn though I see her name among top women runners all the time. At the start line Jay tried to find Ed Fry but we couldn't find him and the race started at sharp 7 am. Since Scott Bounds was not runnin...

Initial euphoria of 10 miler has subsided and now I can think little more clearly. The 10 miler race boosted my confidence and proved that negative splits exist. I used to believe that if you don't go out fast enough you will lose that time and sprinting towards the end would not be possible. I was able to run later part of my race pretty well. Pertinent question is, if I could have gone little faster in first half and still managed to run a negative split? Gerardo, Rob Walters and Scott tend to think that I could have gone out little faster. I might just try that in upcoming half marathon. VDOT of 53 equivalent performance for half marathon predicts 1:27:04. This is 6:39 min/mile. This would be an ideal case for a flat race. However, the course for Houston marathon has some hills. There is almost half mile long not so steep uphill after turnaround point. This means I have to preserve some energy for the later part of the race and gain advantage of downhill part of the race. I was ...

Prelude to the race: I desperately wanted to RACE Space City Alliance 10 miler. It is literally a while (February) since I raced a race longer than 5k. I had mixed feelings going into the race. I ran this race last year for the first time and got busted in it. Last year, I ran it within 48 hours of getting off a really long flight from India. I was in India for almost 5 weeks and had opportunity to run only twice in 5 weeks. Needless to say that my legs cramped at mile 6 and finishing the race was painful but I still managed a time of 1:11:xx which was less than 2 minutes off the time I was expecting. This year was a different story. I didn't slack off much during the summer and was running about 20-25 miles a week. I started running around 35-40 miles for August/September. The big difference came in the length of training runs I was doing. Last year, I was running more days in a week but was only running moderate distances like 4-6 miles per day. This year I changed my approach. E...

One may be amused by few things in the 10 miler Space City Alliance race on coming Sunday. 1) It is the first race in Houston marathon warm up series. 2) It happens to be on 10/10/10 3) It is a 10 miler race So what? What makes this race special? I have only run this race once. I ran it last year when I had just come back from a 5 week long vacation to India. I had lost lot of conditioning in those 5 weeks but I decided to run it to gauge my fitness level. The race went all right and I finished in 1:11:xx. However, my legs were cramping up from 6 mile onwards and it was painful. This year, I feel that I am better shape than last year. I experience no aches/pain while I run and I am looking forward to the race. If the weather is good, I would like to run sub 1:07 in the race which translates to 6:42 min/mile or faster. It is an aggressive goal because I haven't raced much in last couple of months. I raced toughest 10k few weeks back and couldn't hold 6:40 pace on hills. But, I r...