Boy! Was this fun!
Anil and I had decided to run 2-3 hours on the tracks in Saratoga as our "long" run. We chose Friday, July 28, as our day.
I had gone with Anu to Redwood Shores for her open water swim. By the time she and Rajeev Char finished the swim, it was about 8 pm. I decided to eat dinner, around 8:50 pm, in an Indian restaurant called Das Prakash in Santa Clara. I reached home around 9:25 pm. I promptly put on a pot of coffee and spiied on the hot brew while chacnking on my e-mails. I hit the road at 10:15 pm and reached the tracks around 10:25. Anil showed up 10 minutes later.
We started running at 10:45. 10 laps counterclockwise, 10 clockwise, 10 counter ... The miles piled up. Around 9 or 10 miles Anil suggested that we run "faster" (10 min/miles) for 3 laps, slower for 2, faster for 3 laps as in order to get in some tempo running. Off we went. I wound up running the last lap at around 7:30 pace. 2 laps slow were followed by 3 laps fast again, with me doing the last 200m in 6:55 pace. Whew!
We finally called it a "night" :) at 1:45 am, exactly 3 hours and 13.85 miles later. Our aim had been to find out what it took to run past our usual bedtime. We discovered that keeping awake would not be a big problem.
The nice thing is that we will have plenty of light, in the form of moonlight, during our 24-hour run the weekend of Aug 12. We intend to start at 6 am on Saturday and run till 6 am on Sunday.
5 comments:
Where are these tracks? I thought that most tracks are shut out to people?
Nope. The tracks are on the West Valley College campus in Saratoga (just off Fruitvale).
Hey rajeev:
Awesome blog sir.
What's your email address? Had a few offline questions :-) Send me email at avsingh'at'gmail'dot'com with email id if you don't mind.
-av
Yep, It was a very good experience and was glad to see we managed 3 hr run without much of a problem.
The fast run in between added some fun. Interestingly with the adrenaline staying awake wasnt a problem, I wanted to suggest a all night run, but had to go back home to spend day with Rush :).
this experience was very positive, looking fwd to 24hr effort to be on foot.
what a blast!
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