FOR MY FRIENDS

While a few of my friends have managed to retain the friends they had since their childhood, many have lost touch with friends they, at one time of the their lives, could not live without. 

Like many of my friends, sometimes I too feel that I am not lucky in matters of friendship, but at other moments, again like my friends, when I reminisce about the good times I have had in life, I cannot but thank God that he gave me the chance to have the friendships I have had. 

At the age of 50, friendship stories strike you as a strong link to your past. This is an age when you have time to dwell on what has gone by, what was put in the back burner as you got busy with other priorities in life and then as you take the time travel back into your past, you suddenly find yourself standing in the middle of a green field looking at the stupid smile of your old  friend and the same sense of die hard camaraderie engulfs you. 

At 50, you have gone through various phases in your life. You have seen days when the world seems a dirty place and friendship is the longest four letter word. You have seen days when you are down in the dumps, looking for some comfort from somewhere and someone just turns their back on you. But then you have also had days when your friend has bear hugged you and said without saying that he would stand by you come what may. 

Friends are like the family heirloom that keeps appreciating in value and emotional appeal with the passage of time. 

Thank God for giving me the friends I have.
To celebrate the spirit of friendship I am going to post songs on friendship
The top five in my list are:

Diye Jalte Hain:  

Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Chodenge:

O Yara Dildara mera Dil Karta

Yaari Hai Iman meri:

Yaar Anmulle

FRIENDSHIP

 

Airtel Delhi Half Marathon V

Hello,

This is a further update on my practice for the Half Marathon.
Last Sunday (19th Sept) I ran 5K at a reasonable pace. I ran a distance > 10K on Tuesday and Thursday and was hoping to run a 12K yesterday. I could not do it as two rather important things came up.
My wife left for Jaipur to be with my ailing mother. Mummy had a Cardiac Bypass Surgery on the 6th of August and was expected to be up and around by this time but due to an infection of the surgery cut the progress has been much slower and we are fearful of the continuous illness.
The Champions League finals between Chennai and Warriors was telecast live from 6:30 PM. I felt like watching the match.
I therefore have to make the 12K run today.
On an average I am able to run the distance of 10K within 1:20 mins. This gives me hope that I shall be able to meet my target of 3 hrs for the run in November.
The fact that now I am able to run 10K comfortably also boosts my confidence.

By the way our cricket team won the practice game against NBK on Saturday. We were playing without a couple of our good players and were still able to chase down 178 runs needed for victory in 20 overs. This victory is a good confidence booster for our team just before the league starts. We are playing the same team coming Saturday and we expect them to come hard at us. I am sure that if we play to our potential we can continue this winning streak.

Best regards,
Manoj

Airtel Delhi Half Marathon IV

Hello,

Yesterday was another wonderful evening.

After skipping the scheduled run of 5K on Saturday I ran it on Sunday but once again without timing the run. The reason for skipping the run on Saturday was that I had gone for Cricket practice in the morning and felt that I would not be able to do justice to the run that evening.

You learn by making choices and I learnt that running immediately after having a mug of coffee is not a great idea. I sweat a lot and on Sunday, when I began running, I was sweating profusely even before I had run half a KM. The regular sweating usually starts after I have run a KM and it does not tire me in any way but the sweating I encountered because of the coffee made me feel lethargic and I would have surely failed to complete any course longer than the 5K.

The planned run for Tuesday was 7K and I was wondering if the tiredness that hit me on Sunday was a one-off thing or was it something that would put a brake to my preparation. 

Such thoughts I believe are not unique. The apprehension that I will not be able to make it made me think of giving up. 

However, the run yesterday was heartening. I started with a plan to go 5K and then plan on the remaining 2K. As a 5K run now seems easy I was hoping that I would have enough steam left to go through the next 2K.

Before starting on the run yesterday I had a couple of glasses of water and a 'Kaju Barfi'. I started at a slightly slower pace and had finished 3K before I actually started to feel the run. The 5K mark was passed easily and I reached 7K only with a slight pain in my knees. I have now got rid of the knee strap and the crepe bandage on the shin and ankles. 

Although I had done my scheduled run I somehow felt I should take advantage of the fact that I was not tired and run further. The spur of the moment thought was to better the 10K run of the previous Saturday or at least equal it and therefore I kept on going.

I met Noel who plays cricket at Sharq United on Fridays. Earlier Victor of Sharq United has also seen me run. I am not sure if they are surprised or aghast about my plans. After all most of them are 10 years my junior and the HM is a punishing distance. I also met Anku, Vinod's son who was walking with his father after having cycled on the previous two days.

These diversions are good as they take your mind away from the running. Other diversions are looking for familiar faces and trying to figure out their walking/running plans for the day. Looking at people and calculating how slow or fast I am in comparison is also a good diversion.

Anyway before I realized I was already at 9.5K and still feeling good.

It seems I made a small mistake here and tried to pick up speed for the remaining 1.5K. I was able to do it but the higher speed affected the kees and the runners knee was back. It was however much lighter this time and after having done the cooling off walk of two additional rounds I went home took a quick sower, dressed up and was at Salmiya market to order for our clothes for the cricket matches.

Things are getting exciting here as well as the season draws closer. We have a good team this year and God willing we should beat a few of the fancied teams. This Saturday we have planned to have a practice match with NBK.

If we do well we will celebrate.

Best regards,
Manoj

THE AIRTEL DELHI HALF MARATHON III

Hello,

Yesterday I started for my run at 7 PM. The Sun was down and there was a pleasant breeze blowing. It was perfect weather for the run as even the humidity which had been a big bother in the past seems to have come down.

I took a quick bite (Lebanese sweets prepared at home by my office colleague) and had a glass of water before I started from home. The walk to the park is about half a KM and provides me an opportunity to test my aches and pains. I felt good as the calf pain that had been developing over the day was not bothersome any more. The crepe bandage taping over the calf seemed to have helped.

The plan was to run 6K and after the disappointment of the run on Monday I was apprehensive.

Once I started my run and completed half of the 1K circle of the park I started getting confident that I was not going to see another failure.

I completed the 6K without mishap or tiredness and as a celebration walked two smaller rounds of the park on the paved track.

The shin pain was more or less absent during the run and I think running on the dirt track instead of the paved one has helped. I now have pain in the calves.

The pain has travelled from the knees to the shin and to the calf and I hope it is on it's way out. I now have two days of rest or cross training before the 5K race on Saturday.

We, ie my son and I, plan to go for a swim today. Tomorrow I will play cricket in the morning.

Earlier I had planned to do the 5K on Saturday morning but the Bank Cricket league is starting on 9th October and we have a practice planned for Saturda morning. This means that I have to do the run in the evening.

I am planning on doing the 5K run in 35 mins. 7 mins to a KM over 5K should be good for achieving my target of doing the HM in less than 3 hours.

Best regards,

Manoj

The Airtel Delhi Half Marathon II

Hello,

A few days back, on Saturday, I ran my first 10K.

It was very satisfying as I have continued to train through the problems of 'Runners Knee' and 'Shin Splints'.  The 'Runners Knee' troubled me a lot during the first week but I have not been bothered again by it since then. However, the 'Shin Splints' seem to be a different problem altogether. It started in the second week of the training and turned severe in the third week. The third run of that week was a 6K run and I had to stop after 3.5K as going any further was difficult.

I took help of Dr. Scholl's soles that provide arch support and the pain became bearable. Now into my 6th week of training I do not get the unbearable pain I experienced in the beginning but my shin still hurts in the beginning and the end of the run.

I have noticed that I get a feel of extra energy at the 3K mark and it seems to last for a few KMs after that. Like in the 10K run on Saturday the run from 4K to 9K was pretty easy.

Till now I have been focussing mainly on completing the planned run and have still not timed my runs accurately. It does seem that I am doing 8 minutes to a KM.

At this rate I need to add another 30 seconds per KM for the HM and that would give me a timing of 3 hours and 4 minutes.

This is slightly over my target of 3 hours and I will try to bring down my timing over the current week.

Disappointing news is that yesterday I had a setback and failed to run the 6k I had planned. I got so badly drenched in sweat by 4K that it was impossible to continue further. I completed the 6K by walking through the last 2K but it was not the same. I walk pretty slow and I was slower after the exhaustion. 

I went through a few blogs of first time HM runners and was surprised to note that they completed the run in the 2 hours and 30 minutes range. 

I hope that I am able to run within 3 hours.

Best regards,

Manoj