Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Arun Gupta is a technology enthusiast, a passionate runner, and a community guy who works for Sun Microsystems.

« Previous day (Oct 29, 2006) | Main | Next day (Oct 31, 2006) »

Monday October 30, 2006

As I mentioned earlier, running a marathon is all about community. So I decided to show my support for GlassFish community by hand painting my running shirt on the day before marathon. My dad helped me trace it and then I painted it. Learn more about GlassFish and it's community. Get Started, Get Involved and participate in the Roadmap discussion.

Read about community awards given for participation in GlassFish community. And you can read about some great testimonials, again from the community, here. Oracle, BEA, JBoss, SAP and Tmax Soft are partners fostering the community spirit. Also read about how GlassFish works with a host of application frameworks, applications, tools etc. available in the community.

Check the complete flickr slideshow of me wearing this tee-shirt.

Posted by Arun Gupta in General | Comments[0]

|
|

Completed my first marathon

4 hours, 6 minutes, 57 seconds and a pace of 9:25/mile.

This is what it took me finish the Metro Silicon Valley marathon, my first one. Almost 7 minutes behind my targeted goal but a PR. A hamstring pull on mile 18 & 23 completely slowed me down. The complete results are available here. I read somewhere "After running a marathon, the only thing that does not hurt is your pride" and I fully realized that yesterday. The fastest male was 2:42:40 and the female was 3:07:25.

This was not possible without all the wishes from family and friends. Especially Sanjay, Satish, Dhiru and kids Ankit, Shubhankar, Vaibhav, Varun and Prateek who all ran along the last mile with me and those who could not support me as front runners. And of course the faithful and constant support of my wife and son for the 5 months of practice. I'm here because of this support system and now it's time to payback morning time to family (which I've not been able to do recently because of early morning runs), for at least next few weeks until I begin my training again for the next marathon.

Watch a 23 second video clip of run with them here. The kids were really enthusiastic and enjoyed running along. Check out the flickr slideshow.

Although there were volunteers scattered through out the trail but the race manifested into normal trail running at several places. At quite a few places there were more bikers and dogs and no spectators making you feel lonely on the track. I was also disappointed that there was no coverage in print edition San Jose Mercury News this morning but here is an online version.

I learnt the following lessons from the race: