First Half Marathon - My experience in SPCM, Chennai 2020

My 2020 New Year's resolution is resuming blogging. It's been six years since i penned a blog post. Lot happened in this six years and to list few highlights, i am back to hometown in 2014, practiced photography, switched two companies, got married in 2017, became father in 2018 and took up running seriously in 2019 for fitness. All these years, I never stopped expressing my views through words but i switched the platform (FB) which i regret big time. I am not dogmatic here on medium that one should use blog. But I felt that FB is not ideal place to jot down our thoughts which will fade away or wont reach the target audience in the midst of attractive unwanted posts of mass. So here i am, my FIRST post of 2020.

FIRST is always special. Life is full of FIRSTs and they will linger in our mind forever. Personally they are like time machine, we can travel back to our vivid memory anytime and dwell in nostalgia for a while. Isn't it true? Our first kiss, our first day in college, our first love, our first job, our first salary and many more firsts. All my FIRSTs are gushing in to my memory now. This post is about such First. My first Half Marathon (HM) experience which i completed yesterday (05th Jan, 2020) in SPCM, Chennai. 

Marathon, arguably one of the toughest sports in the world considering its duration and intensity irrespective of climatic condition. I’m confused now where to begin as I have so many different emotions swirling around inside of me. It is now reality that i finished 21K which i once thought impossible. I feel sense of achievement, triumph, pride, happiness and price for hard-work & dedication . I have been updating training pics and progress constantly in stories of Whatsapp/ FB and now i wanted to immortalize all above said feelings and experience while i am still savoring it. 

I was a gym loving guy and passionately hit gym for 9 years till my wedding. After marriage, for all possible reasons i became lethargic and lazy which ended up in weight gain obviously. Then on one fine day, i came to know about "Chrompet Cheetahs" in my locality through Adaikappan fondly known as AK. Chrompet Cheetahs (CC), one of the running chapters in Chennai and i must dedicate a separate post about them who plays major role in my running activity.

Training: 

To sum things up, I have only been running for little over an year and participated in one 10K and 12K race officially prior to 2020 HM SPCM, Chennai. So i never ran beyond 12K and I was so skeptical to register for HM. Frankly, the thought of running 21K scared me and i waited till last day of registration to signup for the challenge.

Meanwhile i know i should hit the road hard and test my fitness level. So putting my fears and doubts aside, i started my preparation around October end. Here comes the role of CC who charted out well designed plan for each week according to the target timing. Since this is my debut race, i was not worried about the timing. Long Slow Distance (LSD) in weekends were challenging as my legs were not used to run beyond 12K. Looking back at the training mileage (215 KM in two months), it is incredible to know how far i have travelled.

It is so easy now to type that i have done 2 months of training before the race but every part of training was equally challenging. Training made me to gain confidence that i could complete the HM. Training was mixed bag for me. Experienced pain, dehydration, cramps, recovery, demotivated at times and was confident many times. Throughout the training, one thing that kept me disturbing was my shin. Mostly i ran through pain and i felt like self torment. Often i questioned myself, Does it worth it? Only at the fag end of training, i realized the fault in shoe lace pattern and that helped to overcome the shin pain. I should thank Thamarai for all those pep talks during LSD and selection of different routes and Sharmi for tagging me in all LSDs. Whenever i run in MIT track, many seniors helped me in correcting my running form and as i said earlier, i should write individual post about CC to thank them.

D-Day:

We collected the BIB on 4th Jan 2020, previous day of race. Doctor Rads and Master Daya arranged van for the race as start and end points are in different location, we avoided taking own vehicle to the venue. On Race day, I woke up @2.15 AM to get ready for 4.45AM start time. Bus started at 3.30AM from MIT with 22 co-runners and we reached the spot well before reporting time. San Chan helped me with little warm up session and we geared up for the real challenge.

With my training experience, i set reasonable self target of 3KM 8 pace as warm up, 12KM 7.30 pace and push last 6KM with stored energy. I was so naive here, missing the climate part totally. Usually on December and early January, winter should peak in Chennai. It is the dream period to run comfortably in city. But to my dismay, climate was so horrible on race day. It was an anxious start and i stick with my own plan of 8 pace till first aid station. I already drenched completely, thanks to the weather. Then i picked up my pace to 7.30 and carried the same till 10KM. If it was other normal day, i would have happily quit the race.

 I felt tired legs and started pondering how to cover other part of the race? Still 11KM to go. The same thought beats me down and lowered confidence. I have a strange mindset that once i start walking, i could not run further. So no matter how hard it is, i try to push myself to run rather than walk at least @8 pace. Hence the walk + run methodology won't suit me. Post 10KM, i started running @8 pace and covered another 6KM. 16KM done around 2 hours. By this time, I would have gulped truck load of salt and electrolyte. There comes the back stiffness. All my shortfall in training started staring back at me with evil laugh.

Every step post 16K is blur and i couldn't pick up pace beyond 8.30. I was so stubborn not to stop running and didn't want to succumb to the relief until reaching the finish point. But my mind lost to the body fatigue. I tried last possible strategy. Yes, i hate to try the walk + run. Epic fail in the attempt and i managed to cover another 2KM with this method. Still 3KM to reach the destination and with no other go i started walking @11 pace. Aim is to reach the destination and i consciously crawled which brought me close to the ultimate goal that i had been painstakingly working towards over two months. There i spotted Master Daya and AK. I got sudden gush of energy due to Alppa santhosam watching them walking and joined both for the climax. I badly wanted to see the finish point arch and pushed last attempt of running with whatever energy left. I told AK and Daya to finish at same time and we executed at least this as planned. It was a dream moment for me. 

It was a tough race. As the cliche goes, it was more of mind game. Finally i completed the race of 21K in 3 hours 6 minutes. I planned for 2 hours 45 minutes, i was in such confidence at start of race. Nevertheless, i am proud of myself that i completed the race without any injury in testing weather and not so pleasant running atmosphere. It is a never ending process. Every run is a new run, new opportunity to learn about myself and improve on the shortfalls. I have learnt more about myself as a runner on my bad days than i do on my best ones. There is no open secret behind this success. Set a goal, no matter how hard it is. Work religiously with dedication, be with like minded people to guide and you will get there!! With this philosophy, i finish my post. Hope to run more in coming days.

Thanks for reading!!