My First 5K Run

I have always had an active lifestyle and workout regularly about 4-5 days a week; unfortunately this never shows up on the weighing scale which for me always goes one way... UP
None the less, I haven’t lost hopes of seeing the scale dip down in my favour someday. I have been brave enough to face the taunts that my jiza showers me with whenever I tell her "jiza aapne Portland ke snaps dekhe ya jiza aapne Boston ke naye snaps dekhe" ... and jiza always has the same answer... "haan dekhe and tu pehele se mota lag raha hai" , "u are now looking like your age or more than your age" . I know jiza you mean well and I hope you know that I am making every effort to lose weight to look good in the snaps when the time comes :) , but I am after all a Panpalia ... our dna is such that love for food and heart disorders are engraved in it (sorry jiza I know I could have used better words and better language). Anyways I always thank jiza and Neha for motivating me to at least try to be in shape in their respective ways. Ooh that reminds me, jiza I lost 1 pound the last time I was on the weighing scale... though i now realize that it must be water loss after the workout.

Coming back to the topic at hand, I decided to give my fitness a go and enroll myself in my first ever 5k competitive run. For those who are not familiar 5k run is as the name suggests a 5 kilometer or a 3.1 mile run. After enrolling for the run, I had about 2 weeks to prepare for the run, though I can run continuously for about 40 minutes or so, I wanted to concentrate on increasing my stamina and developing my speed ... but alas 2 weeks is a short time to do so and at the end of the 2 weeks I was clocking at about 35 min for the 3 miles run.. So finally the day or the race arrives, thanks to a heavy buffet and a afternoon nap the day before, I did not get much sleep at night ... but got a chance to catch up on a French movie I was dying to see for a long time. The weather wasn’t great either, it was a little cold and was raining and to top it off I forgot my nylon running tracks ... Neha was kind enough to offer to go back and get it for me, but I didn’t let her. We arrived early and I was given the number 55 for my race, the number does not mean anything, it was just a random number. So we were just hanging around watching the other racers, some were warming up, others were jogging and some were like me just hanging around. I did some stretching myself and then went out with Neha for a small run around the parking lot.

Finally the time for race came and all the racers including me arrived at the start line ready to make a dash, the quick runners were at the start, the slower ones at the end. I was somewhere in the middle. The racers were a good mix of athletes, men and women in good shape, teenagers, young children and some elderly folks as well. My sole aim was to complete the race within 35 min, which was my target, and of course finish before the elderly :)
The gun was fired and everyone started running , I ran fast and was initially among the first 15 racers , but soon I realized my mistake , I didn’t have the stamina to ran that fast and I was soon running out of gas. Then people started overtaking me, and that’s when I was telling myself that I should have paced the race. Nonetheless I finished my first mile in 8 minutes, which was the quickest I ever ran. Also I must remind you guys that it was raining and unfortunately my specs did not have wipers on them... i did take nehas advice and wore my "Superman" Cap straight to keep water from coming onto my glasses. So I was then running and all the time was thinking that should have carried my music with me. I was so used to running listening to music that now that was all I could think of ... Tupac, NWA, Bhootnath, Krazzy4 ... etc ... running through my mind as I see racers ran past me. In spite of this I finished my second mile in 10 minutes , I was very pleased with myself for the speed but I knew that the last mile was going to be extremely tough since I was already running out of gas and to make matters difficult the terrain was all upslope , and my lower back was killing me.

I kept on going telling myself that I have to do this, and more importantly I knew I could do it. Running outside in the pen is so much more different than running on the treadmill. No Matter how many inclines you add in your routine on the treadmill you can never simulate actual outside terrain and I was witnessing it first hand. I was finally running my last leg, and I could hear Neha and some other people cheering me on, though obviously Neha was the loudest... urging me to complete the race.. and as I ran the finish like I saw the timing 30.12 minutes, which was much better than my target rate ... so I was happy ... Neha hugged me and told me that I had a good race ... Later I found out that the quickest guy ran the race in like 17 minutes, but I wasn’t competing, I was doing it for myself.. to see if I was indeed fit enough to compete the simplest of all races.. the 5k

And now as I continue to train myself, I got a book on the running which explains the how, what of running. My next aim in a couple of months is to run the 10K, obviously will keep yall posted on the developments.