No Pain, No Gain - or How I got hooked on long-distance running!

Of course, like with all contracts or agreements one signs, it did not take very long for me to question my sobriety at the time of signing said agreement :-)

You see, the first 2 weeks is the easy part - sort of like those warm and fuzzy commercials you see about joining the army or marines :-) We ran 2-3 times a week and only about a mile each time (I think the first time was like 10 minutes or so). Since I did not pass out at the end, I decided to press on (not realizing what lay ahead :-)).

1,1,7,9,9,9,12,15,17,19,21,22,18,20,22,13,
23,30,21,33,36,22,32,35,22,34,28,16,9

No, I'm not making up my own Fibonacci series or my own arithmo-geometric progression! This is in fact what I signed up for - my mileage log from Week 1 to Week 29 of the program - all 556 miles of it!

So, what was it like? (the short and sweet version - this is the internet age after all; no point writing a masterpiece :-)):

The Highs - Too many to mention:
- The awesome coaches (Tony, Martina, Rajeev, Raman - you know who you are :-))
- The amazing organizers and volunteers - bagels, bananas, muffins after each long run, water, Gu, and gatorade at every water stop (Chicago marathon organizers - take notes here :-)), volunteers at every water stop in the pouring rain on the Oracle Trail one weekend - we runners owe you big time!
- Experiencing some of the amazing natural beauty and trails in the bay area (Sawyer Camp - spectacular!)
- The local MV running group - made of a fun assortment of characters (Gurpreet (he who is now qualified to write an encyclopedia on running injuries having been through most of them), Karthik (oh how I wish I could just give away my right ITB :-)), Kiran (blink and you'll miss him - oh wait, I'm not a morning person), our absentee mentor (thanks for the first month, and the tips and encouragement Sathya :-)), and above all, Coach Martina (for putting up with us and for her no-nonsense approach (20 lashes for being late etc.)).
- Finishing my first half-marathon: The San Francisco 1st half - 2 hrs 15 mins - after 3 months of training - not too shabby eh ?! Running across the Golden Gate bridge not once but twice made up for those wicked hill stretches!
- Managing to meet my Fundraising target - Woo hoo - thank you generous donors!
- As stated before, standing on a weighing scale and not getting the sneaky suspicion that if the scale were alive, it would be laughing at me mockingly :-)
- Getting the discipline to get up at unearthly hours (5:00 am anyone?) when the sun don't even shine
- Making new friends and being surrounded by a bunch of people questioning ones sanity (very useful especially when one is questioning one's own!)
- Many Many more....

The Lows (not too many):
- Making Pain your friend - lest it looks like I am sugar-coating this whole experience, running is not a bed of roses :-) You need to make friends with pain. The Runner's high that one keeps hearing about, comes with a price - withdrawl (oops I mean Recovery) can take a while!
- Bad Foam Rolling experience :-) - without going into too many details, me and my foam roller are not on talking terms anymore after a particularly bad rolling experience! User-error they say - HA - I'm telling you - that roller was out to get me!
- 22 miler - running out of gas - If I were to pick one bad long run, that would be it. For starters, it was probably the Alameda trail... Man, I 'm telling you - that trail is jinxed (the Fremont running group vehemently disagrees). Both my long runs there were not my best. Compounding my misery was a bad cold - kind of hard to run when one can't breathe properly! Anyways, got through it and finished and it only made me stronger (cliche I know :-)).

So, where does that leave me? At the threshhold of the frontier that I have been training hard to conquer, that exclusive club that one longs to get into (no, not the mile-high club :-)) - the Metro Silicon Valley Marathon on November 4th, 2007 (Sunday).