Finally, it is done. The race is over. I clocked about 2 minutes less than last year. Not as good as I had hoped, because the weather today was fantastic. But at least the timing wasn't worse than last year. That would have sucked. Running with Dipika again saved me from a worse timing. She has loads more energy than me, so it was a real struggle trying to keep up with her in the last few kilometers. But if I had run alone, I would have walked half of the last few kilometers.

[ Me and Dipika, at the Cubbon road stretch. Photo credit: Tom Cole]

What was really great this year, was that my parents and brother were visiting us in this time. Actually we had planned last year itself to get them over to see this awesome spectacle, and they really enjoyed themselves the whole time.

[ My parents, brother and us at Cubbon Park.]

My brother also took some fantastic pictures of the day, which I will put online after we come back from our trip tomorrow. :)

Three months of training, mostly irregular towards the end. We are ready for our second 10k, actually the second annual Bangalore 10k. Last year I was about 8 kgs lighter. But we had an eight month sabbatical in between so we basically started again from scratch. So I am hoping that I at least match last year's timing. The calf-pain in the first few kilometers still annoy me. And there is a good chance that we will be running in the rain this year. Also, my parents and brother would be there to watch us this year. :)

Overall, looks to be an interesting run!

[Photo courtesy: 4deserts.com]

Six years ago, Sumanth Chidambi was a man couldn’t walk even a kilometre without tiring, who weighed 106 kg for his 5.11 frame. “I used to be waist size 42, now I am 35."

(ref: Bangalore Mirror)

On 12th March 2011, he became one of the first Indians (Michelle Kakade was the other, in the same race) to complete the Atacama desert edition of the 4deserts series of runs covering some of the toughest places on the planet to run.

What was the course like? From the article he himself wrote on the race. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the course itself, the Atacama desert race is a six-day six-stage race covering 250 kilometres (or nearly 160 miles).  It takes place in the heart of the Atacama Desert in Chile, South America.  The desert itself is 15 million years old and 50 times more arid than California's Death Valley.  The entire race is held at an altitude varying between 2,400m-3,200m above sea level.  Daytime temperatures are expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius/104 degrees Fahrenheit, while night-time temperatures may drop to 5 degrees Celsius/41 degrees Fahrenheit.

Joining me in this race were over 120 other people from 35 countries.  The entire race is self-supported which means that each individual must carry his or her own gear, food and clothing for all days in a backpack.  There are just checkpoints, plenty of water (at checkpoints and campsites), tents (at the campsites at the end of each stage) and medical assistance – no other outside assistance is allowed.

He further describes to the Bangalore Mirror:

Temperatures in the Atacama desert ranged from 42 degrees C in the day to 5 degrees C in the night. The day’s race would start at 8 am. “Most of the time, you are running with the sun hitting your face. Now imagine a 45-degree incline climb in that condition. At that altitude with the heat and the dryness, you have to combat blisters, fever, dizziness and nausea to keep going. To top it, running is a solitary sport, you have to push yourself. On Day three, I ran 26 km without a person or a tree in sight. I say it all the time, this was one hell of a masochistic experience,” says Sumanth with a laugh.

Since the race was self-sustaining, Sumanth had to carry almost everything that he needed in those days on his backpack. He writes:

My final equipment list read somewhat like this – 30litre backpack, sleeping bag, headlight and backup, compass, knife/multi-tool, whistle, survival bivvy, sunscreen, lip screen and blister kit, medicines for fever, inflammation, etc, red flashing LED safety light, jacket, shorts/tights/underwear, t-shirts, shoes, socks, cap and AC buff, fleece hat, iPod and sunglasses.

In addition, I carried food for six-seven days including freeze dried meals, nutrition fuels/gels, energy bars, electrolytes, salt stick caps, instant coffee and creamer.

References: Bangalore Mirror, Live Mint, Runners for Life article written by Sumanth himself journalling the entire experience - a must read.

Also check out the blog maintained by Sumanth's wife Nandita to track his experience in this race.

The official Atacama desert race homepage says in Big Block Letters - 7-days, 250km, self-supported.

 

[Photo credit: David W Oliver (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8), RenoTahoe, Keoki Seu]

Over the last couple of years since the time I heard about it's existence, if there is one race that I try to keep up with every year, it has got to be the Bay to Breakers 12k run in San Francisco. It is a 12k run, but for the vast majority of the participants it seems to be more of an totally uninhibited carnival. As with SF culture, even photos of an entirely public event like this need an adult filter to see safely at office. :)

A bay area runner, Nelly, has a nice intro about this years run at his website. He also has some of the safer photos at his website. I found some more photos at Flickr which are more indicative of the unbelievable craziness of the run, and put them up above.

The Yahoo editorial team has a carefully picked selection of some of the amazing photos from the day.

After all the controversies regarding the dates and venue, the TCS World 10k dates were finally confirmed by Santhosh in a mail to the group yesterday. Time to sign up and book some tickets for folks to come watch! :)

Just now got a mail from Procam about the new name for their annual World 10k run in Bangalore. What used to be called the Sunfeast World 10k till now, will be called the TCS World 10k in 2011 at least. Also, Santhosh's rant not withstanding, the website still insists that June 5th 2011 is the day of the run, and has got actually a counter running on the website.

No details on the course of the run, as usual. However, this would be more keenly awaited this year because of the massive metro related work happening all over the traditional World 10k routes.

I wanted to start off my yet another new blog (the number of blogs I try to maintain now are really getting out of hand) with a quick writeup on our run today at Kanakapura.

The run is usually held at a spot on Kanakpura road just after NICE junction. The route is lovely, but treacherous because of the steep inclines. From the Garmin stats of the run, we climbed up and down about 108 m. To compare, the 8k run we did at Cubbon park last Sunday was just about ~50m up and down.

What surprised us was that we felt better on this route this year compared to last year. The 8k I ran last year, was faster, no doubt. But I was miserable at the end of it. But today, somehow, within 30 mins of the run, I was just fine. Quite oblivious of the fact that I actually ran a 10k over this terrain this time!  Dipika and I usually run using a run/walk method with a ratio of 2:1 minutes each. But this being a series of uphills (some really steep!) and downhills, we had to change our strategy at the turnaround at 4k for the way back. We ran on as much level ground and downhills we could, and walked the uphills. Remarkable that we managed an avg. moving pace of 8:37 on this terrain. 

I am very upbeat about the run/walk method we are doing this year. We are not much slower than last year, but the run itself is far more enjoyable. And the aftereffects of the run is far far less. I want to move up the run/walk ratio we are doing now, v-e-r-y slowly. 2:1 this month. Maybe 3:1 from next month. The long term (i mean really long term) is to go upto 10:1 one day. I dont care if people call this running or not. If this makes me enjoy the run and the rest of the day after the run more, this is the way I will run, thank you. :)

As usual, running with Dipika helped me keep to the right pace. Unlike her, I have this tendency to tire myself by running too fast at the beginning. With her, we start slow, and generally pick-up pace after 4-5k. We trail the entire crowd at the beginning. But normally cross quite a few at the water breaks. We keep stops at water breaks short, because it just takes too long for us to get back into the running mode after too long a break.

Have to really get that tiny water bottle at Decathlon one of these day. They ran out of stock recently. Waiting patiently for these to reappear.