Comrades Ultra Marathon Training

Every now and then you seek a challenge. And then having met the challenge, you perhaps seek to do something which will test you a bit more. What started off by trying to run 1km on a treadmill 10 years ago without stopping, has now gotten me signed up for what is the biggest challenge that I am embarking on. I have signed up for the 89km Comrades Ultra Marathon from Pietermaritzburg to Durban, on May 30th this year.

Its a minimum of a 6 month training program and I for god knows what reason, could only start training in right earnest in March. I started with a 14 km run which was the longest I had run since Dec 6th when I ran our very own Running And Living Gurgaon Marathon.

Then I looked at the training program and I should have logged 51 miles that week and I had barely done 30km!!! But it was a start.

The next week I decided to go into the groove and did a 33km long run the next week with overall mileage at 60km which was still short of the required 85km that week but I guess I was climbing in mileage so I still felt fine. But I encountered a problem synching MiCoach with my computer and found the only help available was a phone line to Singapore - thats a bit tough.

The next week I got an Adidas MiCoach to test out and tried it on my runs and found the initial set up different and somewhat less intuitive than my polar system since that has a watch display and this has an audio feedback system.

But the great thing about this is that when I started my 42.2km long run on Sunday at 4am, it was easy to get the feedback of pace, heart rate and distance etc. Ran with Randeep the previous weekend and this week too, he came along, as did Arvind who joined us during our 2nd loop. Was great to run in company and also have an audio feedback in the dark.

This 3rd week of training I equaled the scheduled 54 miles.

The next week began in right earnest with the long run only a 20 miler - look at me saying 'only' - now. I was also going to Chandigarh and Shimla to work on planning and administration fr our upcoming runs there, so it was going to be great to get some downhill running training done, since this years Comrades is a down run which includes 22km of steep descent towards the latter part of the more than 2 marathon distance.

Wednesday was a reshuffled rest day and on Thursday I did a recce in the car with Vijay Parmar for adding on toughness into our Shimla Half, armed with his GPS, and then I got dropped off and armed myself with his GPS monster gadget and MiCoach and set about running the new route. It is breathtakingly beautiful - It will definitely take your breath away and make the best runners walk about a km or 2, and get people like myself to walk a bit more, over the course. I missed not having GPS, a display and an altimeter on MiCoach, which would make it more handy at a USD2K price point. Over the course of the 21.1k I found a difference in the distances on the GPS tracker and MiCoach where the latter was short by around 300m. Need to get to the bottom of that because maybe as I carried the GPS tracker in my hand for a while the to and fro arm motion could have added to the distance, so some more investigating to do.

Friday I left Vijay's house in Shimla at 430am armed with MiCoach and went down a half marathon distance, with trucks and a few buses and cars coming slowly uphill, wondering what this crazy guy was up to.

Ended the week with a Saturday 20 miler run back in Gurgaon where I started the run with Umesh and I was delighted to find Namburi, Ravi, Randeep and Arvind join us after a 11km loop and then we discovered a lovely cross country trail in the Aravallis. Need to go down further on that one this week and discover if it has potential for an entire half marathon.

More soon on that one. But I felt great at the end of that run since with 2 rest days in the 7 days, I had completed 140km of running - the most I have ever run in a week. That was like doing the Comrades and then 51km more, all in a week and coming out pain free. Now got to work on building some pace into the runs as there is a 12 hour lmit on this hill and tough ultra

More soon

Adidas MiCoach

Was in Jaipur for 2 days so I wasn't able to run on Thursday as I drove out at 6am, so I swapped my rest day with the usual one of Friday. On Friday morning my wife and I went out for a run in a lovely wooded part of town just near the University on Jawahar Lal Nehru Marg - Smriti Van - set up by Rajasthan Patrika Newspaper and now managed by the Jaipur Development Authority and the Forest Department.

It's one of the nicest in city running tracks that I have been on, lots of walkers, but unfortunately I had left My Adidas Mi coach in the hotel so my 7 mile run was one that was with the only statistics provided by my stopwatch, which was also fine. It was lovely, but no data.

Today, back home in Gurgaon, I read the instructions again, synched micoach with my Macbook Air, and checked that all systems were fine, and then I went for a 7mile pace run training for my 89km Comrades Ultra Marathon, on my treadmill, and also with micoach.

I think what I am missing sorely, is a display I can refer to and get info real time whenever I want to. I obviously did not press the appropriate button on the pacer as I got no feedback during the run. The absence of a display and also of an audio feedback post pressing the running icon button leaves me wondering if the device has started or not. I would have loved a GPS visual real time tracker yesterday when I was running in Jaipur.

Now at 8000 rupees this is what I would expect on a running device, especially since it is now available in several phones too.

While n the topic of running devices I must add that I am also quite unhappy with my top of the line Polar system RS 800SD. They seem to specialise in making sophisticated stuff which is very user unfriendly. The battery of the foot pod has been changed quite a few times over and still functions erratically - I will try taking that out tomorrow when I do my 42km training run, and will also take out MiCoach. The heart rate monitor of the polar has been better but there again the buttons of the heart sensor have had to be cleaned with some vinegar to get rid of the green coatings!! What I love about the polar is the wireless connectivity of the devices, with the watch.

Wish MiCoach could do something similar. The latter has an audio interface but I am not a great fan of having something stuck in my ear while running.

Lets see how it pans out tomorrow

Adidas My Coach

I am about to start trying out an Adidas product - MiCoach, which will be my real time coach. Quite intrigued to see how it will work. Got it from the company yesterday.

Comes in a neat box - got out the contents, read the manual and charged it.

Would have been good if it had a small pouch to store all the contents once removed from the box.

Well the start guide is slim and non intimidating, so thats a great start, hmm but the font size could have been a bit bigger in a few places, especially the colour coded bands outlining the heart rate zones.

I charged the unit, registered and set up my account,

The Contents miss out the battery which is snugly fitted into the box, something I discovered only this morning as I was putting on my stride sensor.

Then for some reason I couldn't get the pacer to start - perhaps it was not fully charged from yesterday - so I went for a 1okm run without MiCoach today.

Am setting it up fully today to be all set for my run tomorrow and gearing up for my marathon distance run on Sunday as prep towards the 89km Comrades run on 30th May

More soon

Running And Living Marathon and a Half!! Dec 2009 GGN

IG Police Sheel Madhur Holds up 6 year old Sonu Yadav who came 4th in the 5km run

Prakash and MAJOR at the start of the Marathon - Running it was tough and MAJOR (his dog) was dog tired at the end of it- He earned his gold medal too
Dr Ashis Roy ran his 99th marathon with us in Gurgaon

"Recognize your victories"
Joan Benoit Samuelson - American Champion Marathoner
5K, 10K, Half and Full Marathon finishers You are all winners - and we at Running and Living, Frito Lays and Pepsico applaud your achievement.


Many of you did your personal bests in terms of timing and several of you ran your farthest distance yet - congratulations! We couldn't have asked for more - great information on different aspects of running at the expo - on footwear from Reebok, on Yoga from Arun, on Running and inspiration - from Dr Ashis Roy, on Running Gear and last minute tips from Running And Living, on Nutrition and a Healthy heart from Quaker Oats, with a hot sample dose to get the process of cholesterol reduction started, before the runs on the weekend. Gatorade at each aid station for the half and full marathons made sure that all were properly hydrated and energised, and for those who needed the Lays, for additional salt replenishment, or just for a change, or just for fun, it was there, along with oranges, bananas and Glucose biscuits. The folks from Elemention kept us well hydrated and the Max Health Care medical staff did a stellar job of keeping us injury free. Hats off to teh Gurgaon Traffic Police as they not only kept all the traffic at bay and blocked the road off for the runners, but they actively cheered too.Our volunteers did a stellar job and all of us enjoyed being with you, and we hope you had a great time.
We had over 800 people participate in our weekend buffet of runs apart from some spectators to cheer runners on at a couple of points! Tons of folks came from the NCR of course and then Bhiwani, Rohtak, Sonepat, Allahabad, Muzzafarnagar, and then onwards from Chandigarh, Shimla, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and even Dubai - to name a few. Course records were broken at will, in this 2nd edition of the Running And Living Marathon and a Half!!
6 year old Sonu Yadav from Manesar came 4th in the 5km open in an inredible time of 23 :18.
Dr Roy did his 99th marathon with an appropriate bib - "99 not out" in 6:39.
Our half marathon course record was set with a blazing 1:11:20 by Rakesh Sharma and the Full Marathon record was set at 2:59:22 by Pawan Kumar
The 1^st 5 places and results were as follows:

Running And Living 5km Run
Position Name Time
1^st Ram Singh 19 mins 36 secs
2^nd Manish Yadav 20 mins 46 secs
3^rd Manish Khosla 21 mins 50 secs
4^th Sonu Yadav 23 mins 18 secs
5^th Rudra Bhanu 26 mins 50 secs


Running And Living 10km Run

Position Name Time
1^st Sonu Sharma 37 mins
2^nd Sunil Sharma 37 mins 10 secs
3^rd Gautam Singh 38 mins 22 secs
4th Sandeep Yadav 40 mins 10 secs
5^th Francois Delannoy 45 mins 30 secs

Running And Living Half Marathon
Position Name Time
1^st Rakesh Sharma 1hr 11mins 20 secs new course record
2^nd Sudhir Singh 1 hr 11mins 45 secs
3^rd Ajeet Shukla 1 hr 13 mins 23 secs
4^th Anil Kumar 1 hr 14 mins 16 secs
5^th Rakesh 1 hr 16 mins 35 secs

Running And Living Marathon
Position Name Time
1^st Pawan Kumar 2 hrs 59 mins 22 secs new course record
2^nd Naresh Kumar 2 hrs 59 mins 30 secs
3^rd Gautam Singh 3 hrs 13 mins 26 secs
4^th Ajay Kumar Pal 3 hrs 13 mins 26 secs
5^th Jaswir Singh 3 hrs 40 mins 34 secs
Some comments froma few runners of the full marathon which we got in were:
“I feel like I could go on a few more miles” said Namburi and Ravi Parmeshwar, both from Cargill,at the finish line where both ran their first full marathon.

Prakash Gupta – Executive Director at Frito Lay, ran with his dog – Major, for the 3^rd time in a Running And Living endurance event – This time the full marathon. Both were beaming at the finish, where Major was also awarded the gold- finishers medal.
Tanvir Kazmi of Cadence running his 6^thmarathon with his 2^nd best timing at 4:48 said, “I could think of one line which differentiates this marathon from any other marathon in India - "The kind of runners support which the Running and Living marathon provides exceeds by far anything seen in any other marathon in India, even if you go as far as the Mumbai marathon and Delhi half marathon. Continuous supply of nourishment in the form of Gatorade, biscuits, chips and bananas is something you won't find anywhere else, and runners simply love it here."

Dr Ashis Roy, running his 99^th marathon said, ”This is the real marathon, for runners by runners, where every detail is planned and managed, with the runner at the centre”, after he finished in 6 hours and 39 minutes.
We had runners from Japan, the US, UK and France and Germany and Malaysia with us and that added to the flavour of this being a unifying experience - from Japan to Jhajjar, from America to Allahabad, from France to Faridabad and Germany to Gurgaon. We have many photographs for you to enjoy of the different runs
Check out over 1000 snaps at 5k/ 10K, Half and Full Marathon and much more at
If you have clicked some snaps - upload them onto Picasa or Flickr or whatever and send us the link by replying to this email so that we can share with all. Timings will be posted by Thursday
We however know we had opportunities for improvement on the 3rd day of action at the half and full marathon as we had a few volunteer drop outs, due to personal emergencies.as Zoobie and Anita manned the ends, Emily manned the middle and Rahul ran the course checking, as we shuffled, water and Gatorade and other supplies as required and some runners missed the hot Quaker Oats at Club Florence Post the runs, as they nursed their feet and cheered other runners at the finish point.
We would love to hear from you about opportunities for improvement - just let loose. We mean it!! We are all fellow runners and would appreciate your inputs.
We hope to get chip timing next time around, triple the number of participants, 6 times the volunteers for the marathon, and 10 times the fun.
Now that you are infected with the running virus - go infect everyone around you- we are glad that running is contagious!!
"They say you can't run away from your troubles. I say that you can"
John Bingham, Marathoner and writer

Best
From all the volunteers who enjoyed seeing you smile
ps - see you soon at our next runs in the NCR and beyond