Saturday, March 5, 2011

Inspirations (again)

Had the privilege of running the lake circuit with the charming Genia Topple of our US office who is visiting India. Genia regularly runs half marathons back in the US and has been timing 2 hrs 10 mins for the 21 km run. That would be about 20 minutes faster than me and is enough to give me a huge complex.

She was gracious enough to humor me and run along with me in my run/walk/run style and that too at a much slower pace. Despite the walk breaks we finished the run in a good time of just over an hour. Good fun.

Genia’s story is hugely inspiring in more than one ways and it has been a privilege to know her and now get to run with her.

Another rockstar from our Atlanta office is Frank Zaubi and I ran the same circuit with him last year when he was here in India. Old enough to be my father, he has been running full marathons for several years now and in very, very decent timings. He has a plan to run a marathon on each continent and at last count he had done some spectacular runs at the most exotic places including the Great Wall of China and Antarctica. Yes, Antarctica.

Frank too uses the Jeff Galloway method of run/walk and he shipped me Galloway’s latest book from the US when he saw me using the same technique. A very sweet gesture.

Running has helped me connect with some really interesting people and I shall be writing about more such people in my future blogs.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Running Strategy

Took advantage of the holiday today and ran a lap of the Hussain Sagar lake – a little over 9 kms. Took me 65 minutes but was completely drained out by the end of the run. Long way to go Brajesh….. if you get exhausted in running 9 kms, how will you last 42??

Running Strategy

I will be following the same regimen that I have been using for the past years – the one that has allowed me to complete several Half Marathon events.

Introduced to me by my friend and then colleague Atish, I shall be following the world famous Jeff Galloway’s running method – a combination of walk/run segments as against a continuous run from start to end.

In this method, you run for a while, walk for 1 minute and then run again for the same time duration.

You keep interrupting your run with 1 minute walk breaks that let your muscles recover and energize you for the next segment. I have been using a 7 minute run + 1 minute walk during the 21 kms and this has allowed me to finish the runs within a range of 2 hrs 24 minutes to 2 hrs 35 minutes.

But here is the tricky part. I just did the math for the full marathon and the task is going to be very, very difficult.

If I have to complete the run in 5 hours, and if I maintain a speed of 5 kms/hr during each of the 1 minute walk breaks that I will be taking, I will have to run for 8 minutes at the speed of 8.5 kms/hr – for a full 5 hour period.

The most that I have done is 7 minutes with an average running speed a shade lesser than 8 kms/hr so this is really, really going to stretch me.

Planning to use the treadmill to get myself into the routine of running for 8 long minutes @ 8.5 kms/hr. Or, I could run for 4 minutes and take a 30 second walk break…..

Will try out all combinations – luckily there is time for me to experiment and also to build my stamina to see me thru a 5 hour run.

Will keep you posted on the developments.