Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Pictures from Rock'n'Roll San Jose Half Marathon 2009

Here are some pictures (courtesy ASI Photo) from my recently concluded Rock-n-Roll San Jose Half Marathon:

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Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon 2009 Completed - 6:57 pace, personal best!

I ran Rock 'n' Roll San Jose 1/2 marathon this morning - oh what a joy!

The race was very well organized, ample parking space in the San Jose Downtown, very well marked course, 14 lively local rock bands playing through out the course, gun time at each mile marker, short queues at porta potties, nice big sized medal, and last but not the least cheerful crowd at each turn was very pumping.

And all that contributed to run my personal best so far, the results and time splits are:

These are my best timings for 5K, 10K, 10 mile and 1/2 marathon so far. Its exciting to shave off 34 secs from the pace from little over 2 months ago in San Francisco 1/2 Marathon. Read previous marathon results.

The winner was Meb Keflezighi who completed in 1:01:00 at 4:40 pace, congratulations! I'm happy with my results :)

I followed a 1:30 pacer for the first 10 miles but then constant coughing slowed me down little bit. But, I still enjoyed running the wide streets of downtown!

Check out couple of pictures after the finish line:

Some friends and family members ran along with me which made the marathon a special event as well. As you can see, kids also ran in their own spirit. Completing 400 miles of training from Jul-Sep 2009 was not possible without family's support, many thanks to them!

Enjoy a small video clip of the start line and at 4.5 mile:

Some improvement suggestions ...

• The pacers showed up barely 10 minutes before the start of marathon. And their timing flags did not pop out until right before the race. I've seen pacers at other marathons ready typically 15-20 minutes before the start with their flags wide above the runners.
• The water station volunteers were very cheerful and enthusiastic but were way too many. They were literally jamming the running route at some places. If a runner wants water, they'll come get it so please keep them back and the running route empty.
• Generally I don't hydrate during 1/2 marathons at all. But felt the need to drink some Cytomax around 8 miler and so grabbed a glass. It had more ice (biiig cubes) than Cytomax which certainly made drinking a bit of challenge, especially if you are trying to keep the pace as well. The glass should contain liquid and only that to make it easy for the runners.

Over all, I thoroughly loved and will most likely run it again next year, hopefully with a better timing :)

UPDATED: More detailed results (compared to other runners) are now available:



Fully searchable results and leader board is also available:

Read more detailed story listing the records made etc. here.

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San Francisco Marathon 2009 Finishers Certificate & Pictures

Here is my official San Francisco Half Marathon finishers certificate:



And here are some pics (credits marathonfoto.com):

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San Francisco Half Marathon 2009 Completed - Personal Best so far!

I ran San Francisco Half Marathon 2009 yesterday and here are the results:



I'm excited about the results because improved my timing by almost 3 minutes. And running on Golden Gate Bridge is always a great experience. As always, the race was very well organized starting from expo to bib/tee-shirt distribution, well marked course, water and medical stations, local community support, buses from half marathon finish line to start line and every thing else. A few possible improvements are listed below.

I saw Dean Karnazes (50/50/50 marathon man) and met Bart Yasso (Yasso 800 man) in the Expo. There is certainly a wealth of knowledge to pick up from these elite runners.

1. Really, really, really qualify runners in Wave 1. Ask them for a qualifying time from a previous race or something. Walkers and 10-minute milers are NOT Wave 1.
2. Separate the course going on/off the Golden Gate Bridge, not just with orange cones, but with an additional rope. Otherwise slower runners spill over on the other side and almost bumping into the faster runners.
3. The expo hall had a wonderful set of exhibitors but it became really crowded as the day progressed. Either an alternate location or back to Market/Embaracdero next year is a better option.

1. Run a half-marathon with 7ish pace
2. Qualify for Boston - probably next year

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Completed Kaiser Permanente San Francisco 1/2 Marathon - PR

I completed Kaiser Permanente 1/2 marathon earlier today and the statistics are:

• Pace groups were very poorly planned. Even though there were markers for 5, 6 ad 7 min pace at start line but there certainly were some 10 minuters over there. It easily took a mile to filter through them. I like the way waves are planned in runsfm.com.
• No race medal :( I don't mind getting charged a few extra dollars but give me a race medal, c'mon please!

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Silicon Valley Half Marathon 2008 Completed - best time so far

I completed Silicon Valley Half Marathon yesterday. Although I missed my target of 8 min/mile by 4 seconds but still improved my personal best by 3 min and 8 secs. Here are my official results:
 


A summary of half-marathoners:



And the top 5 finishers:



And then the complete results.

Even though the number of 1/2 marathoners were much smaller (957 instead of 6679) than my previous marathon but I still enjoyed the run. Going through familiar streets and neighborhood was the best part :)

Here is a short video at the start:




And another one at the finish line in Los Gatos High School:




No marathon can ever be completed without family support. All the practice takes a significant amount of time away from family. And it's certainly exciting when they accompany you, early in the morning, for the actual race. Many thanks to my family for helping in my marathons all through out these years :) Here are couple of pictures:

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Pictures from San Franciso Marathon 2008

Some more pictures (taken by marathonfoto) from my recently concluded San Francisco 1/2 Marathon ...

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San Francisco Half Marathon 2008 Completed

Even though it took me 4 minutes extra from 2005 Half Marathon but I'm happy with the results knowing the amount of practice put in. The complete results are available here.

It was really exciting to be running with 19,000+ runners. The spectators, volunteers, staff, cops and everybody else were excellent. It is definitely fun to run this course with the amount of energy and planning, most likely will run again next year as well. Here is a video shot of marathon start:



Even though I ran a half-marathon but my 5-year old and wife did their own by waking up 3am in the morning, driving me around and then picking me from the finish line. Check out some pictures at:

• San Francisco Full Marathon 2007
• Silicon Valley Full Marathon 2006
• San Francisco Half Marathon 2005

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San Francisco Marathon 07 Finishers Certificate

Read all about my race participation here.

Technorati: running runsfm

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More pictures from San Francisco Marathon

Here are some more pictures (by marathonfoto.com) from my marathon last weekend:
 

I might have bought couple of pictures but a simple 5x7 is $14 and an 8x10 is $21. I think these prices are exorbitant especially when I get my digital pictures printed at $0.19 at Costco. They can certainly charge for the labor and probably better print quality, but I don't feel justified paying that much!!

 

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Completed San Francisco Marathon 2007

4 hours, 4 mins, 33 secs - yeah, that's what it took me to complete my first San Francisco Full Marathon.

I did First Half Marathon 2 years ago and First Full Marathon last year, but this was the first Full Marathon on the hills of San Francisco. Even though I could not complete within less than 4 hours but I was happy that I took only 3 short walk breaks and maintained my pace as planned. There was San Francisco characteristic-fog all through the course with no Sun shine anywhere at all, and in a way that helped. Here is the complete breakdown from the official results (bib# 1378):

Some other stats are:

The fastest male runner clocked 2:25:57 and the fastest female runner was 2:43:41.

The race was very well organized and some of the highlights that I liked are:

• The course was very well marked and the local crowd support was very supportive. This was much better than Silicon Valley Marathon last year where the course was lonely at quite a few spots. Today the course was well guided by cops or event team.
• There were ample water stations and each station was accompanied with a medical aid staff as well. This proved out to be a boon at Mile 23 where they applied Biofreeze to my sore thighs. And there was no stopping after that at all.
• There were music stations all through out the course and the frequency of stations increased during the last miles. This helped me maintain the rhythm closer to the stations. Kudos to all the bands for playing early in the morning.
• National Holistic Institute, College of Massage Therapy were giving a free massage to all the runners after the race. This helped a quick recovery of my sore body parts.

With my son before Start	Start Line
Right after the Finish	In front of the Bay Bridge
2007 Finisher Pose	With my wife and son after the Finish

And lastly, my wife and 4-year old son drove me to the race early morning and cheered for me at the start and the finish line. This was the biggest morale booster!

I read it somewhere "The only thing that does not hurt after a Marathon is your Pride". And I completely felt it today right after the race and the massage turned out to be a big blessing :)

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Silicon Valley Marathon 2006 Training Calendar

I'm recovering well after the marathon. My complete training calendar is below. I'll be happy to take any advise on altering my schedule to accommodate a faster pace for the next race.

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Marathon and GlassFish Community

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.

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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:

• Practice more hill runs as the hillocks towards the end were hitting hard
• More cross-training to develop over-all body strength
• Not sure, but loose some more weight to keep chugging along towards the end

Over all, I'm happy with my performance and learned lessons to improve upon next time.

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My first half marathon

As promised earlier, here are the details of my half marathon I ran the past weekend.

I ran my very first half marathon on the past weekend. This was San Francisco Marathon 2005 organized by Runners World in the beautiful San Francisco city of California. This is the longest (13.1 miles) I've run so far at a stretch and boy it was fun! There were more than 15000 runners for the over all race. 

I (in the red shirt in the pictures below) ran with two of my neighbors, Sridhar (with the cap in the pictures below) and Ramanath (without the cap in the pictures below). The wave starts were scheduled at Justin Herman Plaza from 5:20am to 5:35am on Sunday morning so we decided to drive to the city in the morning. Ramanath was kind (brave?) enough to drive us to the city. He had to stop the car on the right shoulder around San Francisco airport because of the morning chill and nature's call. Ramanath served well to the nature's call but the shoulder did not really like us and gave a flat tire :( Anyway, we frantically searched for our tire replacement kit and found that the jack is missing. Searched more frantically, scheduled a service call with AAA and finally found the jack. We changed the tire but then found the air pressure is not cooperating so stopped by at a near by gas station to fill up air. Finally (and luckily), we reached the start line at 5:24am.

There was no warming up with few thousand people around and so the race started right away. The course was a good mix of flats and uphills but there were very few downhills. The highlight was going over the Golden Gate Bridge.  My results are in the table below:

I don't know what two "Place Out Of" are for but I'm satisfied with my results, especially since this was my first such run. The uphill in the last two miles was sort of killing so I need to do more strength training for my legs.

Here is how the age grade scoring is calculated. Basically it compares an individual's finish time at a particular race to an "ideal" time achievable for that age and gender. World Association of Veteran Athletes (WAVA), the world governing body for masters long distance running etc. compiles the list of "ideal" times for different age and gender. The fastest person in my age group (30-39) finished in 1:22:48 with a 6:19 minutes pace. I hope I can reach that pace some day :)

You can read the official press release for top finishers and 2005 event details. The complete results can be seen here. Marathon photos photographers were scattered through out the race but they are really expensive ($15 for a 5X7 + $20 for shipping). Anyway, a preview of me running can be seen here.

I think overall, running the race was quite a satisfying experience for me and I got familiar with lot of running glossary as well. All three of us hope to do a full marathon next year, lets see!

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