Wednesday, September 16, 2009
KTM 2009
I participated in the KTM last weekend. That statement may imply nothing in the first glance, but actually tells quite a bit when read carefully. I would have ideally liked to say -- "I completed the KTM last weekend", but alas, that is not true. I pulled out of the marathon midway, did around 31 km. Actually, even that is a distorted statement, I would have run for about 26 and pretty much walked the remaining 5Km. The marathon again proved that it will deal ruthlessly with people who do not respect it. I have been running about 15 to 20Km on the weekends with little mileage during the course of the week and still dared to attempt the marathon. And it showed. I could barely manage beyond the 26 KM mark and pretty much walked the 5Km to the finish line. The incident was a good enough reason to get myself resolve mentally to prepare well for the next race. The Ultra, a 50Km race, is coming up in two months time -- good opportunity to get over the KTM disappointment. Just finishing this post in a lighter note -- I did finish the two of the three races conducted that day at KTM (10K and Half Marathon), but just did not finish the one I enrolled for :)
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Michael Jordan in Hall of Fame
As I recently read the news on Michael Jordan's induction in the NBA Hall of Fame, my mind started thinking on why he rates as my (and for many others) "most admired" sportsperson. Is it just that he is an immensely talented athlete? It it that he won several Championship rings? Is it because he is in possession of every possible trophy that the NBA has to offer? For me, these are certainly good reasons, but not the only ones. I think two other attributes are equally important -- the attitude and intensity he brought to his practice sessions and his mental toughness. Try doing a web search on "Michael Jordan Mental Toughness" and you will see several several links. Here are a couple Yahoo and Google. This is clearly a testament to the great athlete's trait. I am tagging this post with those key words, you probably will get this also in search results soon :)
Why do I feel these to attributes are important? It is fairly evident that he is immensely gifted. But is that alone sufficient to guarantee success? Obviously not. A lot of people are equally talented. But why was it that they were not able to translate their abilities into success? It is because they did not spend that those quality hours in the practice sessions. It is a well known fact that MJ treated practice games with the same intensity as Game 7 of a Championship game. He never slacked off. It is so easy to get carried off with success. You do not need to go beyond some cricketers who played for the Indian Cricket team to get ample evidence. To put in heart, sole and body, day in and day out, is an amazing thing.
The second trait is his mental toughness -- ability to overcome hardships and still bring in your "A" game everytime. His performance in the win over Utah while running very high temperature is an example. He is also known to hit the gym every day, even when he had played for a prolonged time the day before. No excuses. Period. Unbelievable.
How much I wish I had atleast a fraction of those attributes !!
Why do I feel these to attributes are important? It is fairly evident that he is immensely gifted. But is that alone sufficient to guarantee success? Obviously not. A lot of people are equally talented. But why was it that they were not able to translate their abilities into success? It is because they did not spend that those quality hours in the practice sessions. It is a well known fact that MJ treated practice games with the same intensity as Game 7 of a Championship game. He never slacked off. It is so easy to get carried off with success. You do not need to go beyond some cricketers who played for the Indian Cricket team to get ample evidence. To put in heart, sole and body, day in and day out, is an amazing thing.
The second trait is his mental toughness -- ability to overcome hardships and still bring in your "A" game everytime. His performance in the win over Utah while running very high temperature is an example. He is also known to hit the gym every day, even when he had played for a prolonged time the day before. No excuses. Period. Unbelievable.
How much I wish I had atleast a fraction of those attributes !!
Sunday, March 8, 2009
10K Race
Since the Phoenix Marathon in Jan 2008, I have not run a race and so when the opportunity came up for the 10K race organized by the IITB Alumni association, I did not want to miss it. Even though my running has been sort of erratic for the last few months, it was just a 10K run and I was confident that I would be able to manage it easily.
I left home pretty early as I had to collect my running bib and reached the venue (EGL) at around 6:30AM. I was surprised that there was a reasonable crowd, about 60 people finally participated. It was organized and conducted by people like you and me, so it felt good. I did not know many people there, but luckily that changed as two of my colleagues, Amareshwari and Vinod turned up. They are not regular runners, I do not think they have run in the recent past at all, so it was really nice to see them muster up enthusiasm and show up where others would have just preferred to cuddle up and sleep on a Sunday morning.
The race started pretty much on time at around 7:10AM and the course was a small road along the Golf course where you go up 2.5KM and come back to the starting point for a 5K run. The 10K runners ran 2 loops of the same. I was told that this decision was made so that there would not be a big scatter among the runners and sounded like a fair decision.
I was hoping to finish the race in about 45-50 minutes, but given that I had not run in the recent past, I ended up finishing it in 56 minutes. I think the first person crossed the line in about 47 minutes, so not that bad. In any case, it felt really nice running a race and I hope I can identify and participate in more such runs in the immediate future.
Here is the split up of my 10k timings. I was progressively slow, except for Lap 5 and Lap 10. In Lap 5, I was running back to the starting point for the start of the second loop. I suppose there are two reasons for the faster final lap, the first was that I sprinted the last few hundred meters and the second has nothing to do with me -- my GPS watch showed the last lap as only 780m, so was naturally faster :)
Lap1 5:29
Lap2 5:34
Lap3 5:34
Lap4 5:47
Lap5 5:38
Lap6 5:51
Lap7 5:51
Lap8 5:55
Lap9 6:01
Lap10 4:11
I left home pretty early as I had to collect my running bib and reached the venue (EGL) at around 6:30AM. I was surprised that there was a reasonable crowd, about 60 people finally participated. It was organized and conducted by people like you and me, so it felt good. I did not know many people there, but luckily that changed as two of my colleagues, Amareshwari and Vinod turned up. They are not regular runners, I do not think they have run in the recent past at all, so it was really nice to see them muster up enthusiasm and show up where others would have just preferred to cuddle up and sleep on a Sunday morning.
The race started pretty much on time at around 7:10AM and the course was a small road along the Golf course where you go up 2.5KM and come back to the starting point for a 5K run. The 10K runners ran 2 loops of the same. I was told that this decision was made so that there would not be a big scatter among the runners and sounded like a fair decision.
I was hoping to finish the race in about 45-50 minutes, but given that I had not run in the recent past, I ended up finishing it in 56 minutes. I think the first person crossed the line in about 47 minutes, so not that bad. In any case, it felt really nice running a race and I hope I can identify and participate in more such runs in the immediate future.
Here is the split up of my 10k timings. I was progressively slow, except for Lap 5 and Lap 10. In Lap 5, I was running back to the starting point for the start of the second loop. I suppose there are two reasons for the faster final lap, the first was that I sprinted the last few hundred meters and the second has nothing to do with me -- my GPS watch showed the last lap as only 780m, so was naturally faster :)
Lap1 5:29
Lap2 5:34
Lap3 5:34
Lap4 5:47
Lap5 5:38
Lap6 5:51
Lap7 5:51
Lap8 5:55
Lap9 6:01
Lap10 4:11
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