SCMM 2011

Last weekend, I did my 5th marathon - Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2011. Of all the marathons in India, SCMM is beyond doubt the most renowned and the biggest of them all. And to add to that, this probably is one of the very few marathons in India where the whole city comes out in vociferous support for the runners.  Needless then to say, this is one marthon in the "to-run" list of most runners in India.

The run up to the race itself was muddled with a lot of confusions and uncertainties. First the train ticket did not get confirmed till the last day (in spite of having been booked almost three months in advance). Then there was the nagging cold and cough which I contracted exactly four days before the race and one that threatened to only get worse by the day. The third was the unexpected hospitalization of my aunt, with whom I was planning to stay.  Luckily, I was able to work around these and for my cold, I just took a chance hoping that the cold will not cause too many problems during the run.

I had my uncle's driver drop me close to VT on the race day, around 5:30 AM and in the morning and as I walked towards Azad maidan, the starting place for the race, I met Shantanu, Prateek and Anjana, fellow Bangalore runners. The place, as like the previous year, was buzzing with activity and enthusiasm and that atmosphere alone is worth experiencing.

The race started at 6:15AM and I ran the first KM or so a little slower, primarily because of the traffic. I gradually picked speed  and maintained a steady pace thereafter.  I am not by any yard stick, a veteran runner, but having run a few marathons before, I have always felt a similar pattern to my thinking during long runs. The first few K's, the mind jumps around, all doubts creep in, all question marks raised. Once this period is overcome, then comes the next stretch where you do a steady run, the mind sort of goes blank and you just enjoy the running to the maximum. Then at around the 25K or so, when the tiredness start creeping in, the mind comes to party again. It keeps playing games with body, often forcing the body to walk at stretches where it could have easily run and the frequency of such games between the mind and the body keeps increasing till the end of the race. I had pretty much the same experience this time as well. I was worried that I might feel totally tired and exhausted because of the cold in the first few kilometers and once the mind was convinced that this was not the case,  I  entered the steady phase. This continued till the sea link where the third phase started. I started to do little walks and the frequency of such walks kept increasing as the race progressed. I had set myself a personal target of 4:30 hours for the run and had thoroughly convinced myself that I will be happy with that timing, given the cold, cough etc. In the end, I think that hampered my final timing more than it helped me. Towards the end of the race, it was pretty apparent that I was going to do well inside 4:30 and so my mind convinced me to do a lot more walks than needed. In retrospect, I should easily done 5 - 10 minutes faster if I had pressed a little more harder.  Nevertheless, when I completed the race, it was below 4:30 and I really felt good.

I wanted to dedicate this race to two of my aunts, coincidentally both of them reside in Mumbai. One is my mother's sister and the other is my father's sister.  The former has been a tremendous source of inspiration for me for her toughness and the way she faced and overcame the various kind of hardships that was thrown to her incessantly all through her life.  The second aunt could have easily passed of Aunt Dahlia, of Bertie Wooster fame, not in the "scariness context", but more from the "I know what is good for my nephew much more than he does and I will get him to do it" context. She is a very close to me and the kind of care she showed, right to how I should get rid of my cold to what I should eat before the race, was amazing. She in fact took a hour and a half long train ride from her home to VT to see me complete the race, though unfortunately, she missed her train and came in after I completed the race. Nevertheless, she was affection personified.   

Head First Design Patterns

For any professional programmer,  knowledge of Design Patterns is necessary not only designing efficient solutions to problems, but also to add to his vocabulary while interacting with other technical architects as these terminology have found widespread usage in design discussions.

Head First Design Patterns is clearly not the book that a design pattern veteran would pick up, nor will it ever be the go-to book when you want your hands on a reference book on the subject. And the book clearly mentions that it is not written with this intent. Rather, this book is for somebody who wants to get an idea of what these design patterns are -- not just their definitions, but more practical explanations such that people do not forget these definitions once they close the book. And I should  say that this book meets this goal.

The book covers 13 design patterns in detail and each and every one of them is explained based on a (though sometimes overly synthetic) problem with accompanying Java code. Patterns are introduced gradually in each chapter within the context of solving a specific problem, rather than traditional approach of defining them first and then following it up with an example. I think this is a pretty good approach. The one let down is that though there are exercises at the end of the chapters,  for most part, I feel that they are a little trivial and could have been made a little more challenging.

At the end of the day, this is a book which I would whole heartedly recommend for anybody just learning design patterns or somebody who is staring at a problem and wants to quickly check if any of the design patterns would fit the bill.

Bye 2010, Welcome 2011

Another year and it is time to reflect back if I have grown one year wise or just one year old. Pretty difficult question, I should say.  I am not going to try and fool myself answering this question one way or other, instead let me try to list down some of things that come to my mind as to how 2010 progressed.

The three marathons that I ran this year should definitely qualify as one the highlights of this year, with each race being a challenge in itself. Mumbai 2010 was my first marathon in two years and I need to overcome the mental demons as much as the physical challenges. SFO in July 2010 was an unexpected marathon and so I was not clearly as prepared as I would have liked to. Also, this was marathon was after a long layoff due to the shoulder surgery and given the course, this was a difficult race to run. Finally my first 50K race at Ultra in November.  Needless to say, any distance after 42.2K is challenging and 50K was a real challenge. That I did them, though not necessarily with exceptional timings, but without any injury was real satisfaction.

On the work front, this was a reasonable year -- Could certainly have been better, but it was not too bad either. We had one aborted release and one release hitting production. Though the reasons for the postponement of our first release were beyond our control, it was  pretty disappointing. Glad that we were able to put that behind and actually get our stuff into production in the next release. Also, this was my first ever year as a "Manager". Though I had only two people reporting to me and these were smart people (luckily) who did not need much management, it was definitely a new experience. I think, looking back, I did enjoy this position, though I am not sure if I am cut out to being a manager for a much larger team.

If there is one clear area that I would clearly like to improve upon next year, that must be to improve my self-discipline. Identifying what needs to be done has not been as difficult as actually going ahead and executing them. As a result, some of the stuff that I earnestly wanted to do in 2010 -- reading (both technical and non-technical stuff), writing,  or gymming (to name a few, there are many many more) -- all suffered. It was clearly a lack of discipline and laziness.

At the end of the day (or should I just say year), I think the only one resolution for me would be is to be self-disciplined, sacrificing the immediate pleasure for the long-time needs.  It is obvious that if I can get this done, I should be able to define and achieve all I set out to this year, professionally and personally, without much ado. As with any other self development trait, this is much easier said than done. Only time will tell and I really hope it tells good news :) 

P.S. I have started a new blog to keep track of the books that I read this year and sort of take notes on them. That should give my grades at the end of the year of how well I have kept up my resolution.