Sunday, July 31, 2011

Attempted 4 hour Run

As a part of training for the Mumbai Marathon I am trying to build stamina for running for longer durations of time since it will probably take me over 6 hours to finish the run. In that context, I attempted a 4 hour run yesterday morning.

I started the run at 530 am in the Hitech City area (I had parked my car close to Quality Inn hotel on the road that connects the Old Mumbai Highway to Hitech City) and ran for around 90 mins in that area – InOrbit; Shilparamam, a little beyond Shilparamam and back. Returned to my car; refilled my water bottle and then headed towards the Outer Ring Road.

I was able to run comfortably for the first 2 ½ hours but by the end of the third hour, the exhaustion was increasing exponentially. On the ORR, I was able to go a little beyond the place where they have made arrangements for the toll booth – there is a nice curving down-hill slope. I had wanted to continue onward till around 8.15 am but then my body was screaming in protest.

So, I turned around at 8 am but was so tired that I walked back most of the way. Tried short bursts of running but could not manage more than 2 or 3 short bursts of around 4 minutes each.

There was some kind of army training going on and I saw a lot of jawans in full battle attire – bulletproof vest, helmet, gun, etc – doing a long run. Passed several of them coming from the opposite direction and watching them run gave me goose pimples. (If you really want the truth, it was more than just goose pimples…. I actually started to cry).

Talking about crying, I generally break down once each time I run a half marathon event – the trigger could be some song that the live bands play or some onlooker cheering me specifically…… does this happen to others or am I this completely useless emotional wimp?

Anyways, left the ORR and walked back to my car; in between I had to actually sit down twice to regain some strength. Reached my car at 9.30 and drove back home.

While the total time spent on the road was indeed 4 hours, I barely managed to run a little more than 3 hours and I am sure that the total distance covered would not have been more than 25 kms. Tried using the gmap-pedometer to measure the distance but somehow it does not like the idea of people running on the ORR and refuses to plot the distance on the ORR.

The body has recovered pretty well though the ankles and the lower calf muscles are in pretty bad shape. There is also a lot of soreness on the outer side of my left knee – something that has been bothering me for the past few months.

Happily, my new Asics shoes are proving to be pretty good (thanks a lot to the HR shoe clinic!) and the pain in the right hip is completely gone.

Will try to stay regular on shorter distances for the next few weeks and then try another long one.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting read... Always better to start slow and gradually increase the distance and the tempo.. Best

    ReplyDelete