Conflict: To Free or not to Free

I have been hurting a bit this week with the two races. Also I have been walking around in my Nike Free and perhaps thats adding to the pain though its hard to believe such comfy shoes can cause pain just by walking a few miles. I have gotten interested about barefoot fad and have been reading a few things about it. I just posted following argument to a skeptic.

"Lets not confuse evolution with conditioning within one's lifetime. I believe that if one spends critical physiological developmental years of childhood in restrictive shoes, it may make sense for that person to avoid barefoot running. That does not necessarily mean that person cannot develop muscles/structures needed for barefoot running but it will be much harder than someone who had been barefoot all life (particularly in early years).
This is similar argument as drinking tap water vs bottled water. Clearly bottled water is safer to drink than tap water. There are people who drink tap water everyday without getting sick. Those who drink bottled water religiously are, however, more likely to get sick drinking tap water and its hard for them (though not impossible) to condition themselves to tap water. Perhaps for them it may be (expensive but) logical to keep drinking bottled water for ever. (btw, perhaps its more illustrative to compare bottled water with open water streams as tap water itself is treated)"

I am going to make the jump to running in the Frees tommorow in a 4 mile race. If the shoes are really causing the pain then this may be a pretty stupid thing to do. But if its the over stretching myself in these races then, running in Frees would be a blessing as I am almost guaranteed to run slow and unlikely to push beyond what I should run. Its a gamble but atleast it will settle my compatibility with Free, one way or the other.

4mi RACE

This was second race of the season for me after running the HM last week. Probably not a good idea but I didnt really push hard during HM so I felt okay before the race. The weather was perfect (in fact a bit too hot at 70+degrees!). I started out a bit too fast and ran out of gas at mile 3. I felt a bit of cramps in right leg. Interestingly enough, I had felt mini cramp last week too though in the left leg and that too 10 miles into the race. In any case, I have to start training now and need to improve food balance to avoid any serious cramp problems in coming hot season.
Few more stats:
Avg HR: 184
Max HR: 196 at very finish.
Avg pace excl walking: approx 8:30
Avg pace total: 8:56
Time TO STARTLINE! = 12:27min
Distance: 4.0 Miles, 6.4 Kilometers
Date/Time: April 22, 2007, 10:00 am
Sponsor: adidas -->Location: Central Park,
NYC Weather: 67 deg, 27% hum., wind calm
Its a wake up call that I had done similar race last yearat 7:29 (56% compared to 47% today)

Another interesting development: I just bought nike free 5.0 at Niketown for 85 bucks. I am totally sold on the concept of running barefoot to improve susceptibility to foot pains and even deterioration into worse injuries. I cant wait to start training in them. I hope I dont over do it. I will try to post couple of pics.

A different type of marathon

Found this interesting time lapse video of cross country drive...

Brooklyn Half @2:03

Brooklyn Half went fine. Weather was perfect. The race went smoother than usual but also slower than I would have liked. I started feeling small cramps at the end and had to slow down. The 4 dips in graph above shows them all. Michael joined with me for the race. His first HM which is always fun. I think I slowed him down a bit especially at the end.
I really need to build up my training to attempt serious times at HMs. 2:03 wasnt bad but it sucks that I had run the same race at 1:53 last year (PR). On the brighter side, this was probably my first negative split HM, which is amazing considering the slow down at the end. 1st half 1:04:38 and second half 58:25.

मराठी ब्लोग!!!

मज़्या ब्लोग मधे शुभेच्छा।

उदया मी २१ किलोमीटर धवान्याची रेस करणार अहे। ब्रूकलिन मराथोने


Translation:
Welcome to my blog. Tomorrow, I will be running 21Km race. Brooklyn Marathon.

Woo hoo. Found this head-ache free easy too to post blog in my native language of Marathi. It is similar to Hindi as far as typing is concerned.
This is great but it would be even nicer if I can send a picture from cellphone directly to my blog.

Anyway, I got lucky and managed to get the replacement for my Heart rate monitor just in time for the HM tomorrow. With some like I should be able to post my HM graph with heartrate as well as speed tomorrow.

go@blogger.com

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

6mi 60min Nike Group Run

Today, I tried the Nike group run at 57th st Niketown. The group is surprisingly large. I wonder if that is because we are first weeks of spring. Anyway the run was fun though, the long run group thinned out pretty fast. I ran as 10mph and got to a slow start as usual. The run was really 5.72mi and not 6mi since it does not include the northern loop of CP.

Anyway, the highlight was the post training socalizing and refreshement. Sounds like a good incentive to show up and finish the training. On downside, the whole affair takes a lot of time.

Changing in work gym>commute>warmups>training>refreshments>commute back>shower>go back home took 3 hours! NOT acceptable. Need to speedup this logistics.

Also I have signed up for me favorite HM...Brooklyn Half this Saturday. I am a bit concerned about lack of training, weight at 140 and the sudden 6mi training run today. I should probably refrain from running till the race now...No thursday training.

On unrelated note, I also singed up for JPM corporate challenge but its a while before the race.

Finally, as the graph above shows, the footpod worked reasonably well today, unlike the race on April 1st...was it playing joke on me:) I think the trick is to tie the pod through all 3 lace loops. 2 loops are not enough and pot shifts around.

No training today

Legs have stopped hurting today from the 10K race. I should had got a run in today but it was raining and I had to work late as usual. Tommorow may be.
Big news is I bought a home bloodpressure kit. My crude first few readings came out at 123/76 but I think the reading comes a bit higher if I over inflate (which I have been). I will get better feel for variability on these readings soon.

10K race; 8'43''pace nice little RACE.

Distance: 6.2 Miles, 10.0 Kilometers

Date/Time: April 1, 2007, 9:30 am

Sponsor: NYRR -->

Location: Central Park, NYC

Weather: 45 Deg. 60% Hum. Wind 5 Mph
WARNING: the graph in not calibrated properly. The pace in too aggressive by 1min20sec /mile!
Actual pace:8'43''/mi
Time:54'06'/10K

Perfect weather...the race couldnt have been better. The course was same as my usual training CP full loop. As usual, it took me 2 full miles to settle into steady pace. I was hurting a bit from Thrusday training run before the race. The race went fine but I will keep an eye on recovery. The finish line had nice Scottish bagpiper band playing. Nice t-shirt too which should show up on my finishline pic if I get one.

Anyway 2 down 7 to go for the year. The big one is coming two weeks from now...The brooklyn 1/2M. That was the only race longer than today's 10K race which I have run faster than today's racfe. Its the fastest race with best weather. I just havent trained for long distances....this is a problem.