Wednesday, January 21, 2015

First Half Marathon + 2015 Resolutions

Apart from pics and fb posts, Marathon gives you a new topic to write on.. You can talk about your practice, technique, goals, diet change and what not. Then about the pre race day butterflies in the stomach, finally the race and then the post race targets..

I Ran in Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2015 (SCMM 2015) half marathon in 2 hours, 13 mins and 30 seconds..

I am just gone keep this very short and won't go into the marathon details much.. Only one incident I would like to narrate it. I saw movie Unbroken few days before the race and it had nice quote  'Moment of Pain is worth life time of Glory'.. It really helped me to get through couple of pre marathon long run practice sessions. It was about 17km somewhere and a km away from Marine Drive. I was just out and felt that suddenly something sucked out all the energy and I was not moving. Technically I was still moving at good pace, but mentally it felt as if I had stalled. So I decided to recall that quote.

I said to myself - 'Moment of Pain is worth life time of ---'.. I just couldn't complete it. Forgot the word glory. I repeated the incomplete quote several times before making a guess that the word may be Glory. I wasn't confident about the missing word, but I completed the quote with the word 'GLory' which happened to be true. So yeah, I never anticipated this kind of situation to arise. A year ago I planned for 75 min for Half marathon, by the race day I thought under 2 hours would be fine. I missed entire November and half December due to various excuses. So my pace was about 2 hour 10 mins and I thought that I may go for 2 hour mark. It turned that I finally completed in 2:13:30..

I was bit disappointed post race but still happy that I did it. A year ago I couldn't run 2.4 kms properly, now I completed 21 and was still unhappy.. It is then that I realised the meaning of - 'Yeh Dil Maange More''. ie you just want more and more. I thought I'll brake into tears once I cross the line, ie the emotions would be hard to control, on the race day nothing such happened. A bit of haphazard post race arrangement cut short the celebration. That is all.


Now for some 2015 resolutions, this is the first time I am making such resolution and announcing it publicly.

1. The short term is 800 m PG Sports. I need to complete 800 m in about 2 mins 30 seconds to stand a chance to win. Today's short run made it look like impossible.. Lets see how close I can go. So its pure speed training till Feb end.

2. March - I read a story of 30 day 30 marathons and few other 30 day challenges. I will be doing minimum 15 kms run everyday on each day of March. So a 450 km will be covered in a month. This will be like stamina building and improving running form. Experimenting with different drinks and chocolates during the run. Pre and Post stretching and warm up and everything will be tested.

3. April  I plan to restart swimming.

4. The Bigger aim is SCMM 2016 - here I plan to run Full marathon in less than 3 hours..

5. Guitar - This will be my third attempt in learning Guitar. Gave up in a month the last two time when I tried.

6. Japanese needs to be looked after, just 3 months left in the course and I am still not sure what I am doing with it.

7. Project needs to be restarted in full swing.

8. There is small surprise skill that I am currently learning. One may expect a small glimpsy video of it by March end, stay tuned for it.. I just hope that I make it a big success.

9. Can't remember anything else. Sleeping less, meditation, breathing exercises and what not. I always plan for them and still can't hold on much to them..


Finally I am back to blogging !!!