Racelogue: Lazybones to 10k

Sometimes in life we come to cross roads where we know which is the right way or the high way. It was month of October 2015, had a minor health scare called blood pressure. It called for ditching the sedentary  lifestyle ?(not doing exercises, food habits) and bringing a change. As tomorrow never comes,every day I would say I am starting tomorrow and didn't.

Eventually it was December when I finally took my sports shoes out of cupboard, and dusted them. You must be thinking where the hell sports shoes came from, this was back from 2012 when I had a fling with Gym.

Plan was for jogging but all of sudden starting jogging is not wise so I started with walking. I always believed that any physical activity you do and don't sweat its not worth it. I did a round of the lake no. 1 of lake Town fast. Drops of sweat formed. After couple of days I realized this is no fun, spending half an hour or more for a round or more. I decided let me start running and that I did.  For couple of weeks or more I completed 2 rounds which amounted to 3 kms.

This went on for few months, then in March / April I ran hardly. The scorching summer began and I started again. This time I decided I need to increase the route as going in circles is damn boring. I changed my route. This was continuing till August, was running in between 4-5km in a hrs time.

August end this was what changed my course of running. I saw a post on FB by Unnikrishnan on completing AHM Full marathon. That gave me seed of running marathon. I decided I try for it. I googled about Marathon's in Kolkata, learnt about distances. So began my journey for running 10k, I decided to skip 5k as they were not timed events and it didn't give me a kick. I saw first event was Airtel RFE in November, needed to wait for registration to open.

My plan was simple, try to run more kms till November. I kept running routine regular, not to miss  them. I did nothing special. I change my running area to Salt Lake finding it more runner friendly in terms of traffic and shade.

Slowly I increased to 7-8km , this was done 1.15 min, I was happy. I did nothing special, just  continued. Meanwhile registered for the upcoming Marathons Airtel RFE, TSK25,  Trail run. So this was going to be my journey for coming few months.

I changed my wardrobe, got proper running clothes. Tried understand the Dynamics. The journey was all alone, running in the streets in the morning. Morning walkers became familiar faces, the point where I meet them everyday became routine. It became like my clock.

Slowly October vanished from the calendar. The excitement was growing with me slowly. Questions were popping will be I am able to complete with 1.20 hrs for the timing certificate and least of all not finish last. My belief was in these conditions if I managing to run then in ideal condition for marathon, I will do better.

Then demonitisation happened, morning runs were combined with the ATM runs. This sounds funny, but running helped in this stressful situation. Week before the D-Day I had to travel out for work, and runs stopped.

I came back on Friday night and Saturday went for BIB collection. Took my BIB, checked the route map which I already check from last year data. All geared up. Sunday woke up early morning, reporting time was mentioned as 5am. Reached City centre 1, saw warm up for 21k going waited for them to move to holding area. Reached the warm area. Warm started 5.30am and it was good as I got warmed pretty good. The race began at 6am - the gun time, started moving out from the start, as I came out from City centre , I saw the Kenyans overtaking us immediately , for 21k it was loop of 2 of 10k. 

I kept my pace, as good as possible. At 3km  started to get warmed up good. I could see many Runners overtaking, then who cares. For me it was my 1st race and it was about finishing.  As I approached the Godrej waterside I was slowing down, I pushed myself , told myself I can do it. Stretched myself, kept running, reached back Karunamoyee, was happy as not more to go.

I did a time check as there was 1.20min for timing certificate. As I moved from Central Park towards Labony, my calculations said about a km to go ( I had done a route recce) , I decided to lets put the pedal on the gas. Slowly started moving faster, overtaking other Runners. This always gives a kick.

As I moved from Vidyasagar to City centre , I could see  not much more to go, I huffed and puffed. Body was aching, tired, mouth dried up, sweating, finally came the finish line and saw I managed a time of 1:15 my personal best. The high which I felt on completing the race was something you can't explain. The feeling is special only a Runner will understand.

I did my first 10k in my first race. I didn't trained special, no guidance, no interval training, no hills. This journey was in not  giving up, continuing the runs. Before the race I believed I could complete the race. All one needs to believe is in self and enjoy. Set achievable goals based on time periods and you can conquer the peaks. Thus started my journey into running. In 3 weeks time I brought down my personal best to 63.40 min chopping off almost 12 min then that's another story.

Racelogue -TCS Open 10K Pacers report

As a kid growing in 80's we had nothing other than Doordarshan for entertainment or information. Olympics used to be my favorite event to watch on TV. As I remember  I  was watching one of the long distance run at Seoul Olympics and heard for the first time word "Pacer". From my knowledge of English, I understood he is the one who sets the pace. Watching the entire I understood that Pacer is runner who sets the pace for someone who is targeting a record or personal best. This was all I remember as a kid.

Back to present, when I appeared for my first 10K in Nov 2016, I started seeing the words 45 min Bus. 60 min Bus 70 min Bus. It took bit of time to understand. Its a Runner who is pacer who is experience Runner who is going to help you achieve 45 min personal best (PB) and the group who follows the Runner/Pacer are called "Bus". As I was new , I didn't need to be on a bus as any time was going to be my PB. My next few races went the same way, I didn't get my timing bus or there was no bus.

Moving on, I attended the TCS World 10K in Bengaluru, I still like the name Bangalore. 10K had 18 buses the most I seen for any 10K race. After finishing the race with my PB, I thought about how did the actual pacers performed. It took time for me get the timings from the event site, their name on event handbook and registered name were different. The table of pacers came out like this

S.No.	BUS	Name	Net time	Gross Time	Deviation
1	0:45:00	Umang Kamra	0:44:11	0:44:24	0:00:49
2	0:45:00	Murali Gaddam	0:44:00	0:44:22	0:01:00
3	0:50:00	Sumit Chadha	0:49:25	0:49:54	0:00:35
4	0:50:00	Sukhchain Singh	0:49:07	0:49:53	0:00:53
5	0:55:00	Akhilesh Kamath	0:54:30	0:56:52	0:00:30
6	0:55:00	Dinesh Heda	0:53:16	0:54:50	0:01:44
7	1:00:00	Arun Mahendrakumar	0:59:26	1:01:07	0:00:34
8	1:00:00	Kartik Subramanian	0:59:58	1:01:15	0:00:02
9	1:00:00	Sandeep Cr	0:59:14	1:01:10	0:00:46
10	1:05:00	Karthikeyan Balasubramanian	1:05:10	1:06:40	(0.00)
11	1:05:00	Sunil Chainani	1:03:35	1:05:30	0:01:25
12	1:10:00	Devander Bhatia	1:10:24	1:26:27	(0.00)
13	1:15:00	Mahalakshmi Sagar	1:13:37	1:16:43	0:01:23
14	1:15:00	Lokesh Rekapalli	1:12:05	1:14:56	0:02:55
15	1:20:00	Nandini Ashokumar	1:19:53	1:27:54	0:00:07
16	1:20:00	S Jaya Jaya Raman	1:19:44	1:27:48	0:00:16
17	1:30:00	Rajapriya Sivakumar	1:29:21	1:38:05	0:00:39
18	1:30:00	Govindarajan Krishnan	1:29:23	1:38:06	0:00:37

The list shows most of the Pacers did the job, only 2 pacers missed the time planned for their bus. Some bus was real fast reaching 2 mins or more before the time. I had read somewhere the bus for 10k , net time should be at least 20 secs lesser than the planned. Pacer uses the smartwatch for the time, and as manual error can creep in they will be always looking to finish before 30 secs on their watch. I mentioned the gross time which is the gun time of the race starting. If we look into the buses of more than 65 mins the gross time are big as they start from last zone. Just to add , Mr.. Krishnan ran the Boston marathon 2017.

From my perspective 1 min before the planned finish will be little difficult for runners who are trying breach the mark, this depends on the bus which is gunning for the time. 2 min and plus will be real tough on the guys who are on the bus. It would have been interesting if timing of runners who were on the bus was available. Pacing is a difficult job when you are sacrificing your pace, the runner who runs consistently tend to be better pacers. Closing off ,the pacers did their job brilliantly. The results speaks of their work.