Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

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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42k195.com - An exhaustive marathon directory

42k195.com provides an exhaustive directory of marathons across continents. The marathons can be selected by countries, month or by a keyword. The search feature is especially nice because it shows all the details about the race - marathon route, registration page, nearest marathons, community rating, and even hotel booking amongst many other features.

• San Francisco 1/2 2008
• San Francisco Full 2007
• Silicon Valley Full 2006
• San Francisco 1/2 2005

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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.

Technorati: Running Training Marathon svmarathon

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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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Marathon and Community

I got the first feel of fellow runners marathon this morning when I was at Stanford University School of Medicine Hospital helping Dr. Suzanne Miller in a study on "The Effect of Endurance Exercise on the Cardiac Function of Recreational versus Professional Athletes". Read more about the study here. In approx an hour at the hospital, the following tests were conducted:

• Spoonful blood sample
• Height/Weigth/BMI
• Electrocardiogram
• Heart rate variability
• Heart Echocardiogram

The results of the study will be published in a medical journal and the results of personal heart tests (claimed to be worth thousand of dollars) will be made available.

"It's all about Community" said the Director of marathon on the radio yesterday. 3500 registered runners from all over the country, 800 marathoners, The Health Trust, Hilton, NBC 11, ASHA, KLIV and a multitude of sponsors and charities shows community involvement. 

My next blog will be after the run and will talk more about community.

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Running first marathon this weekend

• 21 weeks of training
• Approx 640 miles of practice runs
• Average pace of 8:35

After all this, I'm in the last week of taper down and now ready for my first marathon on the coming weekend (10/29 to be precise). Reading this article (Marathon Smarts on Runners World) has an all together different meaning now. This article gives race day tips from experienced marathoners. Most of the tips would seem natural but it's definitely worth reading again during the last days of training.

For family and friends, and anybody else interested in running along last miles:

The race course and the viewing map is here. The map gives the complete route and lookout areas.

The race starts at 7am PT. This is also the day when daylight saving ends, so the clocks move back by an hour. Going by the experience of my long practice runs, and if I don't hit a wall, I plan to cross mile 20 around 10am and hopefully the finish the marathon in less than 4 hours (9:10 pace). My longest practice run has been 22 miles with a 9:25 pace but I've done slightly shorter runs with better pace. So this seems like a stretch goal but I hope to meet this goal with your wishes.

If you plan to run last miles with me, as some of you have told, you are most welcome. I may offload my sweat shirt to you if I'm feeling hot or may ask for an additional sip of water, so be prepared The weekend weather looks reasonable and I hope it's an overcast for the first few miles.

You can read about my marathon practice and running related blogs here.

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Tapering down before the marathon

With a slow pace of 9:25 for 22 miles the weekend before, and a better pace of 8:51 for 21 miles last weekend, my final push for marathon training is over. Now I'm tapering down and waiting for the days to pass. I might do few tempo runs and uphill but other than that I can afford to be lazy in the mornings

Here are some good articles on why and how to taper.

• Tapering for Marathon
• Why should you taper for a marathon ?
• What is Tapering ?

Technorati: Running Marathon Fitness SiliconValleyMarathon

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20 miler over the weekend

4 loops of 5 miles gave me my second long run over the weekend of the total planned 4. All the training (both physical and mental) is now getting used. Here are the statistics for the run:

2 hr and 56 minutes
8:50/mile pace
2779 calories

With non-stop running for 3 hours, there is a lot of time to think about setting the marathon goal. Here is my refined goal:

1. Finish within less than 4 hours
2. No walk breaks (I've not taken any so far)

I plan to finish the first 20 miles in less than 3 hours and keep the last hour for remaining 6.2 miles. Here is my training calendar so far:

Technorati: Running Marathon Training

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Final push for marathon training

With an 18.5 miles run yesterday morning, this is the start of long runs for the upcoming marathon. It took 2hr and 43 minutes, burning 2460 calories, giving a 8:49/mile pace. Now on to longer runs for the weekends to come ... 20, 22 and hopefully 24.

After almost 5 months of training, the goal is to finish the complete marathon in less than 4 hours.

Technorati: Running Marathon Training

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Marathon Running Schedule

As I mentioned earlier, here is my running schedule for the upcoming Silicon Valley Marathon. I prepared this using a StarOffice spreadsheet, so let me know if anybody interested in using the same model or doing a run together. Most (read all) of my runs are early morning but I'm willing to change my weekend runs if I get a company

Few points ...

• A detailed explanation of the model will follow in a subsequent blog.
• This is only the first draft of the schedule and will be changed after week 2 runs.
• I'll post a weekly update to the schedule, hopefully Sunday nights.

Technorati: Running Marathon Silicon Valley South Bay

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Silicon Valley Marathon Kickoff

I registered for Silicon Valley Marathon yesterday. This is going to be my first marathon and I'm really excited gearing up for it. 20 more weeks to the marathon week and so I'll prepare my weekly calendar over the weekend and share it here.

Let me know if you happen to be in South Bay and would like to run together on weekends.

BTW, today is the last day to avail early-bird price of $65 for full marathon. From tomorrow, the price is bumped up to $75.

Technorati: Running Marathon Silicon Valley South Bay

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