Day 50 - Long Way to Go...

I have not made a post in 30 days... but I never stopped running. One of the previous weeks, I ran for 5 days in a row at 4.5MPH for 12 minutes non-stop.

Monday and Today, I increased the speed to 5mph and tested my stamina. I could effortlessly do 10 minutes... but at the end I had some minor pain in the left calf and I stopped for fear of more serious injury which will render me unrunnable for next few days.

I was out of balance after 5 or 6 minutes at 5mph... so, I ran the rest of the 5 minutes holding the cross-walk handles. That really helped me with stand a bit more.

I am still not ready to dream about finishing the Half Marathon... It is a Long Way to Go...

Day 20 - It is achievable...

I was able to run for 22 minutes at 4.1MPH for roughly about 1.5 miles at a stretch today. Even though the feeling was there that I could have run for another 5 minutes, I stopped as I started to lose my breath. But there was not lot of pain that I experienced the first day.

I run three or four times a week. I think I should sustain the speed of 4mph and run for an hour before for a weeks time before I increase the speed by a notch or two.

The target is 6mph for an hour. Even though it seems to be a long way to go, it is achievable.

Day 8 - Making pogress...

When I started this blog, I never thought that I would keep it up-to-date that too with this frequency (if two times in a week can be defined as "frequent"). I am happy that I am able to write few lines about my "achievement".

On day 5, I was able to finish two miles in 40minutes in two 20 minute sessions back-to-back. Both of these sessions, I could run 5 minutes continuously at 5mph. I want to bring up the discrepancy that I found in the tread-mills that I use at home and another one at work. What appears to me 5mph in the treadmill at work is close to 4mph in the treadmill at home. One of these needs to be calibrated correctly. Not sure which one is correct.

Today the 8th day, I was able to extend the running time to 15 continuous minutes at 4mph. Not bad... Not bad at all. I do not care about the speed for now. I need to build up stamina to run. Once I am able to do 30 minutes non-stop at 4mph, I will try to slowly increase the speed. My target is 60 minutes at 6mph.

Now I can confidently say that I am not just making progress... but an excellent one!

Day 1 - I am out of shape

Ever since my nephew Karthik Ravichandra ran the Silicon Valley Marathon on Oct 25, 2009, I got motivated to run at least the Marathon/2 within the next 12 months. Looking at the current state of my fitness, it is going to be an up-hill-task. The other motivation comes from my colleague who regularly runs 6 miles in an hour of so on alternate days.

It was challenging for me to run even the first mile on the treadmill. With much difficulty, I ran ( read "walked") for 20 minutes and the treadmill odometer read 1.3 miles. I ran at an average of 4mph. But really, at that speed, I could only brisk-walk. I have to keep the speed at 4.5mph in order to call it "running". I felt that I am really running only when I adjusted the speed to 5mph or higher. Unfortunately, I could not sustain that speed for more than one minute before I started losing my breath. One day after the running, my thighs are sore.

Sure enough... I am out of shape.