Riding The Unicorn

This is going to be underwhelming, unlike most of my posts, which are undeniably epic.

Now that I've run the race of a lifetime, I feel strangely subdued by it. 

It’s been three weeks since I wobbled across the finish line on Boylston Street, 21 seconds away from even a PR, and no closer to having caught up with Nell than I was before.

While I cannot deny the disappointment I felt for not meeting my race goal, said disappointment is entombed beyond hope of retrieval under such a surfeit of joy that it’s barely there at all.

I did manage a satisfying 5k PR a couple of days before the marathon, and that , while just a consolation prize, is nevertheless quite enough to salve my runner’s ego.

But, more than that...

...There is the satisfaction of having been able to raise more funds than I thought was possible (given my crusty personality) for Action For Autism (www.autism-india.org).

Besides family and close friends who came forward with abundant generosity, I was overwhelmed by the altruism of people who were connected to me only by the common thread of running, some of whom I’ve barely met.

For passionate pursuers of an activity that is essentially egotistic in nature, it’s astounding how selfless the running community can be.

My gratitude is inexpressible, to those who supported the cause.

...And then, there is the race experience in itself.

Words fall short ( Yeah, like that has ever stopped me before...)

From watertight planning and organization, attention to detail, and immaculate execution, to the atmosphere on the course and in the city.

The camaraderie one feels with the best amateur runners in the world... microfriendships struck up on the trains and buses, at airports, on the street...

The brutally humbling stories one hears, of odds so immense, surmounted with such grace and grit, that they make one’s own journey to race there seem like child's play.

Small things, like free transit to anyone wearing a medal on race day on all forms of public transport... complete strangers walking up to shake one’s hand and talk  about the race because one is wearing the celebration jacket, in Chicago, a whole time zone away... 

In the most expensive race I have ever run, I mostly gained things money can't buy. (I did spend an unholy amount at the expo too, actually...)

This was Boston! The ride of the Unicorn. 

One has to try pretty hard to come away disappointed from such. I could try, I suppose, to spend some time on the usual innovative grumbling and moaning that is my trademark, but I’m afraid I have other things prioritized.

The first of which is Hyderabad, 20^th August 2017.

I hope to lop off a good two to three minutes from the top of my last year’s 1:31 for the half on the entertainingly harsh course there. Give or take. I don’t know. There will be little in terms of actual training leading up to that race. Just unstructured, maintenance mileage and a marginally increased amount of strengthening.

I feel lighter and faster, despite recent evidence otherwise. Boston was a glorious pit-stop, but a pit-stop nevertheless. There's more to be done.

#26MILESFORAUTISM

Imagine, for a while, that you’re a mathematician.

This is difficult for me to do, math being my nemesis throughout my school years, but you, I assume, are smarter than me, that way...

So, you’re a mathematician.

Long, cryptic formulae written with a healthy mix of numbers and Greek squiggles make immediate and perfect sense to you. At a glance, you can see the underlying algebra in tile patterns and pine cones. You speak the language, spouting fancy terms like ‘cosecant phi’ and ‘radius of convergence’ and, you know, ‘the square on the hypotenuse’ or whatever.

This is not just your area of expertise, mind you...This is how your brain makes sense of the world.

So far, so good?

Now, abruptly (and diabolically), I pick you up and drop you in the middle of a bunch of, say...ballet dancers.

Whoa.

They’re all wearing these peculiar tights and hopping about while turning circles in the air and saying all this French stuff like brise and temps leve and sur le cou-de-pied , what-have-you...

And you with your plaid jacket and pencils and notebooks are so impossibly out of your element, so irreparably different... best case scenario- they ignore you. More likely, you are actually ridiculed.

We humans do not take kindly to those different from us.

Take heart, dear mathematician. Your ordeal is temporary. You can always just walk out and catch the first bus back to your mathematician friends, and go back to socializing over talk of indefinite integrals and asymptotes.

Unless...

... you’re the only mathematician...on the planet ... and it’s a planet that is just one huge ballet company! 

You’re born into it, you can’t learn ballet and, you can’t leave. Where would you fit in? How many friends would you have? Would you have a job? Find love? Be valued? The thing that sets you apart has no significance on this planet... People will forever be trying to get you to do plies and fouettes as a precondition to acknowledging you as a person. 

Welcome to the mind of an autistic person.

Granted, this is a bit of an extreme example.

But being different is an experience most of us tend to avoid, naturally organizing ourselves into cliques and clubs, gangs and groups, families, factions, races and nations, just so that we have around us, others we have something in common with.

This is how the human world is structured, tied together with types of social interactions that we take for granted. And this world does not quite fit people with Autism.

When you first meet her, you’ll probably see her as a typical 9-year old, probably with a doll under her arm, doodling on paper, humming a song to herself.

In all probability, she won’t acknowledge you, averting her gaze after a fleeting look, and you’ll think... okay, she’s just shy. Some children are.

You’ll say ‘Hello, Shravya’, and that’s when you’ll get the first indication that she’s different. Because in the rare event that she says anything at all, it’ll be ‘Hello, Shravya’ right back at you.

Shravya is autistic, and one of her symptoms is echolalia- a tendency to repeat back words and phrases said to her. Other than that, she talks very little. Using a language as a method of interaction, something blatantly obvious for most of us, is something her brain is just not wired to do. For her, trying to talk is like a mathematician trying to do pirouettes.

And this isn’t a rare, backwater condition. An estimated million people with Autism are added to the population every year.

No apparent causes.

No known cure.

Most will require care and support throughout their lives.

A few weeks from today, I will be running the 121st Boston Marathon. It’s my privilege to be able to use this opportunity to try to raise funds for Action for Autism (www.autism-india.org), a Delhi based non-profit that is deeply involved in autism related research, care, education and support. I hope some of those who read this will find it in their hearts to open up and donate generously to them. At the very least, please spread the word.

Donate at https://milaap.org/fundraisers/twentysixmilesforautism or http://www.globalgiving.org/fundraisers/26-miles-for-autism/

Bermuda-Triangled

The Bermuda Triangle, as many of you will be aware, is one of the most fascinating unsolved mysteries in the world.

A fairly large patch of the North Atlantic Ocean, this region has earned notoriety in popular culture as a sort of magnet for aircraft and ships headed for a less-than-ideal fate. Explanations ranging from alien spacecraft to lost continents to wormholes to freak geo-magnetic anomalies have been proffered on various occasions. It makes for very captivating entertainment tropes.

However, the most sensible explanation seems to be, simply a matter of statistics. The area is just a very, very busy place, with a large number of shipping lanes and air routes passing through it, and misfortunes within it are bound to happen every once in a while.

Shit happens... what can you do?

When put that way, the whole thing just becomes, well... ordinary. The glamour of the unsolved mystery vanishes with its solution.

After much contemplation of my inability to finish the Mumbai Marathon this past Sunday, I am thinking that I have been, to coin a phrase, ‘Bermuda-Triangled’.

Here’s what happened.

Since August 2015, I have been fortunate to have had a series of satisfying races... two good half-marathons at Hyderabad, one at Goa, another two at Delhi and a great marathon at Dubai.

In spite of a few minor molehill-sized bumps in the training progression (which I never fail to make mountains of) I have had little to whine about in the scheme of things.

The more things went well, the more the chances of things not going well crept up through the ranks, from possibility to probability to certainty. Buoyed up by a good-ish ADHM in November and blissfully ignorant of odds stacking up against me, I continued through some fairly haphazard and inconsistent training as race day approached.

In all honesty, I don’t recall what possessed me to even register for this one in the first place. With Boston looming in April, a January marathon leaves no window for a proper cycle of recovery, build-up, training and taper...

But register I did, and that figuratively placed the RMS Titanic at Southampton, on course for a jolly rendezvous with a certain innocent-looking iceberg.

I landed up in Mumbai with the usual concerns... training, nutrition, conditions, the Trump presidency, real estate prices, the depletion of the ozone layer... all credible excuses for a bad race were rehearsed to perfection.

But there are no excuses that can cater for what seemed to be a ton of wet bricks to the head, three-fourths of the way into the race.

Pain and fatigue aren’t strangers to distance runners. Running with and through them... that’s what we do...

This time, however, I couldn’t even take fifteen minutes of it.

I started conservatively, took my gels, stayed hydrated... did pretty much everything right. In spite of being spot on target pace for a 3:10 finish until just before the thirtieth kilometer, I sank without a struggle by the thirty-third. In that short duration, not once did it occur to me to man the fuck up and dig in.

Off came the bib. I thumbed a scooter ride from a good Samaritan and reached the finish in a fantastic time of 2:58.

It took many beers at multiple locations around the city over the course of the rest of the day to stop agonizing over the whys and the wherefores.

Much can be said after a DNF...

From a dismissive “Some days you just don’t feel it” to a long tirade of real and imagined reasons. The truth will lie somewhere between the extremes. To find it will, much like in the case of the Bermuda Triangle, remove the charm of the unsolved mystery. Sometimes it’s more fun not knowing.

All said, the experience taught me some profound technical, spiritual and moral lessons...

Haha. Just kidding. No it didn’t. I already know everything.

The Long Run Anthem.

Yo DJ.

Drop that beat now.

Doomchickachickadoom

Doomchickadoom

Y’all ready to cringe?

Well, you clicked the right hyperlink!

THE LONG RUN ANTHEM. 

Christmas morning, I step out,

Wearing just my sexy pout,

(Also shoes, and shorts, and hat)

To put the Tiger in the Cat

The second mile is fun, and how!

In this mile I chase a cow.

At Mile 4, some dogs chase me,

There are many dogs (Well...three)

There ain’t much to see in 6,

Except this ugly pile of bricks.

8 Mile, I pause and think, “Ahem!

I’ll make like rapper Eminem,

As I run, to pass the time, 

I will make a horrid rhyme.”

Then, Mile 10, I turn around,

Out-and-back, so homeward bound.

12 and 13 really suck,

And I swear it’s cold as...um... a frozen duck.

When I reach Mile ten-plus-four,

Everybody walk the dinosaur,

16 went by, really slow,

By now, I was hungry, bro,

18, 19 come and go,

I’m like, “Gosh darn it! One mo’!”

20 miles in snow and slush,

All my muscles turned to mush,

Happily I stagger home,

To show for it, I have this...pome.

*Crowd goes wild.

Mirror, Mirror...

I read somewhere that speaking in obscure metaphors makes you sound smarter. So, well...

I think that the function of a race in the life of an amateur athlete is effectively that of a mirror.

When I say that, you may think I’m referring to a mirror's ability to reflect the truth. I’m actually being clever and referring to the exact opposite. A mirror will reflect one’s outlook, more than one’s look. Even the average cave troll sees good things when he stands in front of a mirror with optimism and hope in his malformed heart.  

Either way, I always see a greek god. Go figure.

Race results are reflections of training effort. They are what they are, but we can choose how we see them. In races, with exceptions, most of us step up to the start line knowing that we’re not going to actually win anything, in the generally accepted sense of the word ‘win’.

This puts us at an advantage, because it allows us to define our victories for ourselves. Hell, it allows us to pretty much take obvious, utter disappointment, shrug our shoulders, and shout “Success!”

I like to think that I have, after four years of relentlessly using the above method, become somewhat of an expert at self-delusion.

Yesterday, I ran the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon in a time of 01:23:55.

On the plus side, unless my math is wrong (as it often is), this is 01 minute and 44 seconds faster than my previous personal best of 01:25:39.

On the other hand...I am also aware that this is 03 minutes and 55 seconds slower than my preposterous primary goal of 1:20:00, besides being 02 minutes and 04 seconds slower than Ms Nell McAndrew’s time over the same distance. I am aware that I may be quite close to the last PR I will ever clock. Progressively faster race times have been coming to me with happy regularity so far, but this, too, shall pass. I am aware that I was unable to summon the resolve to train as well as I wanted to, this time.

Still, I call it a resounding win. It’s not, I know! It’s ambiguous at best. But good luck trying to sell me on that :P

What I choose to see, is that I ran my heart out.

That I ran among good people.

That I ran in a city that looked beautiful in the morning, on a road that felt like a friend. 

That I asked my body for more, and it gave me more than I asked for.

That there was flow and pain and joy and rage and doubt and euphoria.

And that, at the end, I felt like a goddamn prince.

If you choose, that is what victory will look like, no matter what the numbers on the clock say.

Hyderabad Blues

     I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but sometimes I find myself a bit lost while, say, driving somewhere. I'll be navigating by some vague instinct-based compass and turn into a strange street that I don’t remember, on a route I thought I knew well. And I’m all like, Hold up...wtf? This can’t be right...

     But that compass inside me is still working, and while I’m a bit tentative as I continue driving, I’m thinking, Okay, if I just take this right over here, and then a left somewhere up ahead, I should be getting somewhere near such-and-such.

     And so, while my wife is generally facepalming and rolling her eyes at my insistence that I know exactly where I am (I don’t) and I don’t need to stop and ask for directions (I do), I stubbornly take that right. 

     Stoic calm never leaves my face, but my heart soars as, sure enough, there is a left turn where I have prayed it should be. And when I take that left, I’m back, baby! There’s a familiar landmark right there, not quite where I thought it was, but close enough. I grin smugly at my wife. She, in her infinite wisdom, facepalms and rolls her eyes again.

 

     I may not be precisely where I want to be, but it's a relief at least I’m not lost anymore.

     That’s an accurate, if preposterously roundabout way of describing how I was feeling this last Sunday when I took that last left turn into the Gachibowli Stadium at Hyderabad and stepped over the finish line, an hour, thirty minutes and fifty nine seconds after I had stepped over the start line 21.1 kilometers away.

     If you have read my last blog post (which is, I assure you, even more dull than this one), you will know that I had been having a bit of a crisis of confidence, and had thus traveled across the country, third year in a row, to race at Hyderabad, looking for redemption. I hadn’t trained for the race, specifically, though I did manage to get some good mileage in during the past few weeks.

     Hyderabad was a test. And I am chuffed to be able to confirm that I passed with something like bunny-hopping, if not exactly flying colors.

     I would have loved to break the 90 minute barrier in a race where my previous best was 01:35:44, and indeed, there were times during the race when I thought I would finish in about 1:28-ish. But that turned out to be an illusion caused by the kilometer markers on the road not quite matching up with my Garmin by around half a click. The route as a whole, however, was accurately measured, and as a result the last kilometer just seemed to go on and on and on...

     Post race, I shoveled a ton and a half of sweet, sweet halwa into myself and I meditated on the race as I mingled with the great crowd of runners, friends and strangers, who had braved the undulations of the course.

     It had been warm, humid and hilly, as promised by the race tag-line ‘India’s toughest city marathon’. Thankfully, it had remained overcast, so that was something. 

     Also, probably unintentionally, I don’t think I raced at my absolute best effort. I don’t remember feeling the intense discomfort that a full-out race entails. Yes... in hindsight, I think I could have run this one a couple of minutes faster. Pfft.

     Still, I can take an extensive amount of comfort in the fact that I am, as of August 2016, faster by just a hair’s breadth short of five minutes over the half marathon distance, than I was in August 2015.

  

     I have definitely not (yet), as I have feared, hit a plateau.

     Yay.

     This makes an 80-minute half in mid-November Delhi conditions an achievable goal, in dogged pursuit of which I will throw myself with effect from next week. I will be periodizing my training expressly for ADHM, as opposed to last year, when I ran it as a tune-up for my BQ full at Dubai. I would be mighty thrilled just to get to Nell McAndrew's 1:21:51, but hey, in the words of Lois McMaster Bujold (by whom I have read nothing...)

              "Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off."

     I will be running a couple of easy halfs in Delhi when I’m there in September. In the Dwarka Half Marathon, I’m looking forward, for the first time, to pacing. I’ll be driving the 1:45 bus. Let's see how that works out.

      

Runners Angst

I haven’t written here in a while. I like to sometimes stroke my ego and imagine legions of loyal readers biting their nails and sweating while obsessively refreshing their browsers, praying for my next post.

Riiiiiight...like I’m the George RR Martin of running blogs.

Heh.

For the past two months, I have been doing a moderate amount of running, combined with a fabulous amount of overthinking.

I seem to have descended into the runner’s version of the hell of existential angst.

Who am I? What am I doing here? Where am I going? What the living fuck does it all mean?

After a lot of brooding and despairing, I have come to the conclusion that I am in this unenviable state of mind because I may have accidentally given myself a subconscious impression that I am plateauing. Aging and plateauing.

"Oooooold! I’m so oooooold!" my id keeps wailing.

It’s probably not true, I guess, and it certainly isn’t based on any statistics other than the fact that I didn’t quite reach my race goal at Bangalore a couple of months ago. Given the conditions, I did have quite a nice race, however. 

Also most of the really fast runners I know of are actually upto ten years older than me! I’m just a kid in this game!

But I can’t bring myself to reconcile to these obvious facts.

If anything, my plan of raising my base (I’ve heard all the ‘Baby ko base pasand hai’ jokes, thank you very much) seems to be quite splendidly on track, with 50 to 60 km weeks coming easily to me. This, as opposed to the mostly lame 30 to 40 km weeks that I launched my previous marathon training cycle from.

Speed wise, too, I seem to be doing my moderate/tempo paced runs 15 to 30 seconds per km faster than I used to an year ago.

So why is my stupid head full of this self-doubt? Wish I knew.

I do know, however, how I can snap the hell out of it. The answer lies in Hyderabad.

The Hyderabad Marathon is also becoming a bit of an annual tradition for me, much like ADHM. It's hot and irritatingly hilly, but exceedingly well organized. Definitely worth the travel. I formally initiated my pursuit of a BQ there, two years ago. Last year, I mentioned it in my late blog as a sort of a benchmark race.

This year, again, I intend to go there, mostly untrained, run the half, and see where I stand.

I am optimistic that I should be able to better my last years showing of 1:35:14. Significantly, I am curious about exactly how much better I do. Last year, I was about 10 minutes faster at ADHM in November than I was at Hyderabad. And while I am well aware that running math doesn’t work that way, if I can break 1:30 for the half there, I think I can realistically reach for Nell’s 1:21:51 with another three months of training.

That should get me ‘up and running’ again, so to speak.  

I do have to amend my plans at Cochin, on 13th November, though. It doesn't make sense to run a warm 42.2 there just a couple of weeks before taking a shot at a PR in a cool and flat 21.1.

See you at Hyderabad, those who’re coming :)