Friday 14 August 2009

A month to go and I fall sick

There is a month left to go before my planned first full marathon, and guess what ... I fall sick. For the past two days I have been running a temperature -- nothing too much; all around 100 F; no flu symptoms. Learning from my past mistakes, I saw the doctor right away and got medicines. I have been careful; on medication; and as of right now, the fever is not there.

Now, this has come at a very crucial stage. I could only do 1 training run out of the 4 in the week. There is a scheduled 14 mile long run on the weekend, but I'm not sure if my legs will have it to carry me through that distance. Also, do I really want to exert myself and do the 14 miler right away? I don't know.

But more importantly, I'm concerned as to how seriously this will have an affect on my performance in the Kaveri Trail Marathon.

I think it's fine that I didn't hit all my training goals this week. But the coming week's long run -- a 20+ miler -- is going to tell me a lot. The problem is, if I fail in that run, I will lack credible confidence going into the marathon -- not knowing whether I'm fit enough to finish the race.

Why? Because after the coming week is over we go into taper mode -- wherein the weekly running mileage falls and runners train less so that their legs are well rested for the marathon distance. The question really then will come down to, do I sacrifice on taper and lose out on physical strength but gain mentally? Or do I train hard in the taper weeks, and gain mentally (confidence), but lose out physically?

Trade-offs trade-offs, how I hate them.

All is not lost and as one great Bollywood hero once said, "Haar ke jeetne waale ko hi Baazigar kehte hain*" (screw you, if you don't understand Hindi).

To new challenges ... we march ... ONWARD!

*Of course, in the end our Baazigar friend has a very sorry demise, but let us not focus our attention on minor details.

3 comments:

Rake said...

and also guys named Rohit in bollywood movies never get the ladies but as you said..lets ignore the minor details.

Rohit said...

Yeah, you idiot ... thanks for ignoring the gist of the post, not sympathizing with my sorrow, and elaborating on a minor side note!

And by the way, in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, "Rohit", played by Hrithik Roshan, does get the ladies.

Rake said...

Dude..rohit dies!..its the other hrithik that gets the girl.