Reflections

 Imagine this setting. You have just won back to back Olympic Gold medals. Only three people in history have achieved that feat in your event. You are being anointed as the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) in your field. The whole world is tweeting about your feat, congratulatory messages are flowing from all directions. You also have about two hours in the airport lounge waiting for your next flight. What would you do? Will you relish the accolades, respond to those wishes and calls, read those great articles being written about you? After all, you have spent months and years toiling for this very moment. Or will you just sit still and be with your thoughts? Most of us, by default, will fall in the first category. Unless you are Eliud Kipchoge. After he won the Men's marathon event in the 2021 Olympics at Sapporo (venue was changed from Tokyo because of extreme heat concerns), Kipchoge had to fly back to Tokyo for the medal ceremony. As he was waiting for his flight, a journalist who a...

One long term goal of mine is to qualify for the Boston marathon. BQ is the holy grail for most amateur runners. The  qualifying times  are fairly challenging and will need some dedicated training effort for someone to have any realistic chance of making it.  The most important component of this training schedule is the weekly running mileage. One needs to clock close to 80 - 90Km/week to be marathon ready.  Since running is one dimensional, it is also advisable to incorporate some kind of cross training, like swimming and cycling as well. The third component is super important -  strength training. As one gets older, the musculoskeletal system is no longer in a great shape to take the pounding and needs to be reinforced.  Is that all? Unfortunately no. We also need to do throw in stretching and mobility exercises (like Yoga) into the mix. One might argue that we do not necessarily need to spend the same amount of time across all of these, but we do ne...