Last year, I missed the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon. It was just after I moved to Delhi and I had no confidence I could run a half marathon anyway. Any race over 5 km looked like a tough deal back then. All through winter, I was lazy because of the cold. It was comfortable to snuggle in my blanket than step out to run. Eventually, I did start running just as the summer started to hit. My first run in Faridabad doesn’t seem like a long time ago anymore. I remember panicking about my ability to finish ADHM if 8 km felt as difficult as it did.
I’ve run quite a lot in the last year. In fact, I’ve got a graph of it. I spent a day geeking out about various graph options to finally arrive at this one 😀
Strava also has a great video which captures my year in running quite accurately!
If I had one thing to take away from this year is to keep running. There are a lot of plans around to start running. Following them religiously doesn’t matter. What matters is you go out to run 3 to 5 times a week, everything else will follow.
Back to ADHM, I was disappointed with my performance this year. I felt like I short-changed myself by not running faster than 2h 10min. I also panicked at the start and ran faster than I should have – I did the same mistake at Faridabad. Now I’ve learned my lesson and hope to not repeat it next year. Next year, I’m hoping to train on a more advanced plan to improve my time. I’ll also have a better base mileage to start and will have lost a bunch of weight. I’ve gone from finishing my first half marathon in 2:46:28 to finishing ADHM in 2:11:21 – an improvement of 37 minutes and 7 seconds. That’s way better than I could have asked for. I already know that I can do better if I start a full 3 to 4 month prep for ADHM in 2016.
I have lofty goals for 2016:
- Run my first full marathon.
- Run a total of 2000 km in the year.
- Cycling a total of 3000 km in the year (oh,I have a cycle now!).
I don’t know if I can do it, but a near miss with 1900 km of running is still commendable!
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