Treadmill Half Marathon

I have only run a single race till date and that was a half marathon. This is of course excluding all the embarrassing races I had run in school. I still remember the 400 m race which I ran when I was in 12th. I came last and was almost lapped by the winner.

So where was I ... yes, only one race till date.

So, RFL organizes these fortnightly runs and I had never been to any of them. They had one today and I had decided to go. The only problem being it was starting at 6 AM. I set an alarm for 4 AM yesterday night and went to sleep at 9:30 PM (we runners need a good night's sleep .. eh?)

When the alarm started ringing I hit the snooze button. When it rang again, I hit it again. This kept on happening; I no longer needed to open my eyes to shut the alarm. My reflexes did not want me to wake up. My phone finally gave up after an hour or so and when I woke up it was 8:30 in the morning.

Dissappointed, I went through my usual routine. Went to the nearby Darshini; had an idly-vada and filter coffee. Read the newspaper. Went online. Checked mail. Checked orkut/facebook. Checked mail again. Looked at who all were on IM.

After four or five loops of the above I Started feeling guilty of not having gone for the run. I thought I could maybe run somewhere nearby: Agara Lake? Then I had an idea: Why not run a half marathon on the office treadmill? It was a challenge not just because of the distance, but because running on a treadmill for so long is DAMN boring. So that's what it was going to be.

I went to the office and long story short ran for 2 hours 10 minutes, covering a distance of 21.1 KM. My Garmin Forerunner acted as the stop watch and I had the Sansa Clip for musical harmony.

I shaved off 4 minutes from my previous half marathon time. I think I have also recovered well: I just have a blister on my right foot and no major knee pain. Tomorrow should give me a better idea.

Anyway ... YAY!