2.45 hours Feet on the Street

Had been doing 2.30 hours run on two consecutive sundays - 2.27 being the half marathon race at Hyderabad on August 28 followed by a 2.30 hour run last sunday at the Bandra-NCPA group run. So, decided this run today would be a 2.15 hour run in preparation for next sunday i.e september 18, kaveri trail half marathon. There are so many group runs going on nowadays in Mumbai that it is getting difficult to say no to friends. That being the case set out on a 2.15 hour feet on the street run today at Aarey Forest. The weather was quite good in the early morning with some welcome showers also in between. Navigated the hill first itself and thereafter it was rolling hills all the way. Found Hemant at about 3 kms into the run and he decided to stick with me. True friend that he is, we both stayed together until almost the very last. He was doing a 3 hour run and going very steady, neither too fast or too slow, good rhythmic pace! We decided to stick to the flats rather than go for the hills so set about discovering new routes. We did find one towards the Aarey Diary which was a good road, nice overflowing tree cover and latter part it sloped downwards. Once we hit the main road, the roads were pathetic. 1.30 hour done i took a 5 min walking break and then around 2 hour mark,we came across a shop - quickly purchased one litre of cold water and refilled our bottles as well as drank some and splashed some on the head, face. 2.20 hours done the sun was out now, but not too difficult to run. Hemant left me at this stage as his car was parked up the hill and his route to the top would take him to 3 hours. I decided to go uptp 2.45 hours, but the last 20 minutes was like difficult. Perhaps running alone at this stage was the factor. Took about 3 minutes walk here and crawled to the 2.45 hours mark. Did not get a rickshaw so had to walk another 1.8 kms before i got another bottle of water, took rickshaw and went home.

medial chain

Heel Cord

Dr. Ruth Heidrich

Amazing story of 76 year old Dr. Ruth Heidrich, cancer survivor for nearly 30 years, a triathlete, senior olympian and also most importantly a vegan athlete. She recommends a full vegan diet is sufficient for runners and also triathletes. Having survived cancer without undergoing chemotherapy and being cancer free for nearly 30 years and also multiple winner in marathon, triathlon including ironman events, that does bring some major credibility to having a vegan diet plan. Her story is told here

Lower Leg Mobility

Recovering your jumping calves

Bandra-NCPA run - Sunday, 4th September 2011

About 30 runners turned up today as against 43 that had confirmed both on RFL and FB. It was a very windy run today throughout the run and at some places the winds were very strong. I don’t remember such a windy run ever on this route, despite the route almost skirting along the coast. The humidity was not such a factor today because the winds were drying you up but at the same time forcing you to work harder. As usual we started in batches with the slower runners moving up ahead before the faster ones. Varun Joshi & Kavin were planning a 30kms run today in preparation for the Vasai-Virar marathon on 18th September and they along with Ronak did an extra loop of the Carter Road before joining us. Few runners started from Khar road – Kaushik, Unmesh, Dhanraj, Santosh, Sanjay etc. This run was falling in the middle of Ganesha festival – so we expected to see many Ganesh pandals along the way – the one opposite Bandra talab had so many trophies kept there, probably won by them as prizes in the best pandal competition, but everywhere we could see only the ad hoardings, not the idols themselves. Only at one place i.e. opposite Shivaji Park could we see the pretty looking Ganesha smiling at us from inside.

Giles Drego was going slow to ensure that all the runners from behind were taken care of in terms of knowing the route etc. Only when he was sure that they were all okay and knew the route that he sped ahead somewhere around Worli. We went through the Annie Beasant road instead of taking the Worli sea face road because of the huge winds. Stopped for taking a water refill at Haji Ali juice centre. By then the flow of runners from the opposite had already started – saw Sameer coming that way. Navigated the Pedder road incline comfortably – yesterday I had done the dreaded killer at Aarey forest comfortably, so was feeling doubly happy for that. Mani and myself had thought of taking the diversion i.e. the hill after the Kemps Corner flyover and come out of Malabar Hill, but he went ahead as he was to do only 15 kms and so that project awaits another day.



I had planned to do a 2 hour run today since I had already done a 2.30 hour (well, almost) run at Hyderabad last Sunday, but decided to finish the course at NCPA which became about 2.30 hours. At Marine Drive, it rained heavily for precisely 2 minutes, after which the winds increased its intensity as if angry at the rain gods’ intrusion at what was its day today morning. We could see lot of muck thrown up at the Marine Drive promenade from the sea – there could have been high winds at the bay, perhaps a couple of days earlier.



The Mumbai marathon training season is fully with us as many runners did 20+ runs today – Ashok, Sameer, Manoj, Varun, Kavin, Ronak etc.



Thanks to everybody for coming today and welcome to the newcomers today – Sanjay Padmanabhan, Shyam, Kshitij Sharma, Sebastian Schuller (whom we will be sorry to miss as he is leaving for Germany in a couple of weeks).



Next run on Sunday, 2nd October 2011.