Nigel Babu

Author: nigelb

  • Half Plus Half Equals One?

    Half Plus Half Equals One?

    Does two Half Marathons count as one full marathon? I don’t know, but I had a chance to find out at the recently concluded Double Whammy event.

    When I first signed up for the event, I registered for back-to-back 10Ks. I’ve done 10Ks before and I’ve done half marathons before. I figured 10K would be easy and doable. Later, I talked to Souvik and I realized 10K isn’t really a challenge. I know I can do two back-to-back 10Ks, I wanted to do something that was more challenging – so I asked to be upgraded to back-to-back half marathons. Later when I realized that it was not only challenging, it was also a little beyond the edge of craziness.

    Day 1

    The race start time was 5:30 am, which meant I had to wake up at least as early as 3:30 am to grab a snack and then head over to the start line which is a good 20 km away from home. The drive was a long one and after I got there, there was about a 1 km walk to the start line from the parking area. Once I reached the start line though, there was the cackling of nervous laughter and familiar faces. It was quite dark when we started and I maintained my pace with the other racers, incredibly enough, without noticing how fast I was going. I later learned that I was going speeding too fast. I didn’t want to slow down too much and be the last one, so I kept at it. Eventually, I slowed down to what felt comfortable (Again, I later learned this was faster than normal for me).

    The first day’s course course was tough, and we knew it. I’ve run on GFR in the past, I remember there being barely any shade, so I was ready with sunglasses and a cap. As an out and back race, I dreaded every descent, I knew I’d be climbing those back up on the way back. I didn’t really have a pacing strategy in mind, but it so worked out that I only took walking breaks at aid stations and at the big incline on the way back. That one was tough to run and I didn’t see any point in running it up. I just leveraged my long legs and took long steps up.

    Let’s Run Gurgaon events have been very well organized. We had a reasonable number of aid stations and the best thing they stocked was the 5 Star bars. They probably gave me a bigger boost of energy than anything else 😀

    Once I finished the run, I realized how long the 1km from the starting point to the parking area was. Never before has 1 km felt that long. I’m still unsure how I managed to ride my bike all the way back. My leg muscles hurt and there was nothing I could do about it. Most of Saturday was spent recovering (read: sleeping, eating, and drinking water).

    Day 2

    The second day’s start point was near TERI. It wasn’t too hard to locate given I ran through the road the previous day. When I got there, a crowd of tired, but excited runners who were all in various amounts of fatigue and pain greeted me. It was supposedly a more flat terrain on Day 2 compared to Day 1, but it was no walk in the park. Until the half way mark I managed fine, after that the muscle soreness hit me. I had to do a run-walk until the last aid station. With about 6 km to go, my phone died stopped giving me pace alerts. I remember charging my phone but when I got to the start line, it only had 30{13371f13f0bf161e7595c2ac5df92e005bed3de1d132ef646d0a44f3a1a9ee62} battery. I brought a battery pack but not a charging cable 🙁 After the last aid station, I walked pretty much the rest of the route until the last 500 m or so.

    The runner’s high from crossing the finish line was pure bliss. And I can’t remember how I found enough energy to laugh at all the silliness we were all doing. There was someone talking very seriously about Krav Maga and he tried to demonstrate, but all he managed was spill someone’s drink 🙂

    And another thing

    The most surprising part about doing this race was that, after the second day, I had some body pain, but not quite a lot of it. I did a recovery run on Tuesday and I was totally fine afterward.

    During the bib collection, there was a gait analysis and correction workshop by Dr. Rajat. He confirmed what I suspected all this while – I heel-strike. He suggested a simple activity to fix it that I’ve found massively useful – Skip in place for about 5 minutes before the run. You can’t actually land on your heels when you skip, you’ll always land mid-foot. This will create a muscle memory that’ll be carried into the run. Additionally, it’s also a great pre-race warm up.

    The disadvantage of back-to-back races is that, well, you need to wake up early on back-to-back days. This is not fun, despite me being a morning person. I had nightmares during the week of the race about waking up too late. This may have something to do with my first run on GFR. I woke up early, snoozed, and eventually started running at 6:30 or so. I didn’t bring my cap or sun glasses that day and got completely exhausted thanks to the heat.

    The good part though is you get to run the full marathon distance with some rest, skip the sunnier parts of the day, and get some time in between to sleep and rejuvenate.

    This race weekend is officially my week with the highest mileage – 45 km. I can’t wait to beat it in a few months 😀 I managed to set a half marathon PR on the first day of 2:28:50. The second day saw a huge drop in my speed thanks to all the walking to 2:50:19. I’m in disbelief about maintaining a 7:03 min/km pace throughout the first day. With AHDM around the corner, I’m curious to see how well I can do in terms of pace. Next year is already close and I’m working on planning which races I want to run 🙂

    Oh, and Double Whammy Spring 2016 has already been announced and tickets are open. This time I’m wondering if I should run the 42+42 or improve my 21+21 timing.

    Not going to forget this medal for some time

  • Mailman Subscription Spam

    In the last few weeks, a few of us running mailman have been noticing attacks using our servers. Most often we end up being used as relays to send subscription spam to the servers. They pick one address and use multiple aliases of the address to send spam to. I won’t get into the details of the attack, but here’s a script that I came up with and is now modified to be friendly thanks to OpenStack Infra Team.

    Create the file /usr/lib/mailman/bin/ban.py with this content:

    def ban(m, address):     try:         m.Lock()         if address not in m.ban_list:             m.ban_list.append(address)         m.Save()     finally:         m.Unlock()

    Now run this script like this

    sudo /usr/lib/mailman/bin/withlist -a -r ban "<address to ban>"

    The ban address can be a regular expressions, so to ban an address and all suffixes, use ^address.*@example.com as the address to ban.

    Update: Matthew Saltzman pointed out that the . in .com needs to be escaped as well.

  • First Half Marathon

    First Half Marathon

    The Plan

    On June 8th, I started prepping for my first half marathon. Quite ceremonially, I skipped the first workout – stretching and strengthening exercises for 20 minutes. Over the next 9 weeks, I skipped a few days and once a full week, but managed to vaguely stick to the plan. I was already running 10Ks at that point quite easily, and I used the plan to make sure I didn’t overexercise and stuck to some sort of sane schedule. I used the Hal Higdon’s Novice 1 plan. It had the right mix of continuity and long runs. I modified it a bit to squeeze it into 9 weeks rather than the original 12 weeks. I think I’ll be continuing my training for a while in the same pattern – Stretching and strengthening on Monday, 3 days of training runs on Tuesday, Wednesday (recovery), and Thursday; cross training on Saturday (cough which I never did), and a long run on Sunday.

    The Running Plan

    Last year, I ran my second 5K in 39 minutes and I remember thinking about the folks running the 10K. I thought it was far too long and difficult to achieve. On Sunday, I finished my first half marathon in 2:46:28. It’s been a long journey to get here and I honestly probably wouldn’t have been as consistent if it weren’t for being around Souvik, Bhavya and Sumit. We’ve done quite a lot of long runs that end up in Cafe Lota.

    The Run

    Every time I’ve raced, I set a new “This is the toughest run ever” record. This race will truly be memorable for the next several months. We started off with a good deal of humidity. I took about a kilometre before I was ready to start running. The first challenge came at 3 km mark or so, where we had to cross a “small pool of water”.

    At some point, it became an obstacle course

    A little after that point, we entered the cross-country part of the route. It was mostly uphill and kind of difficult. My clothes were completely drenched in sweat. Just when I reached the highest point in the run and started going downhill, it started raining.

    It started as a slow drizzle. I felt like I walked into a shower and out of it the first time. And then it hit. The rain was incredibly refreshing and my pace increased for a while. The only problem was the route. The already muddy trail became slightly more challenging. It felt like I was running on cheesecake. Every step was unstable on some stretches. The next 7KM or so was on roads. This stretch was tricky. The rain kept going and there were large puddles of water. Initially, I tried to avoid the puddles. Later on, I just went through them. My shoes were wet anyway and there was not much I could do by avoiding them.

    Nearly at the finish with Shivang

    I made friends with Shivang from when the rain started. We were running at about the same pace from then on. He made sure I didn’t run too fast or give up. At one point when he was giving up, I encouraged him to just keep going. Once we crossed the final turn and the finish line was kind of visible, I went all out (I think I actually beat someone at the finish line).

    I couldn’t walk very well or climb stairs the rest of the day. Today, I finally ventured out for a run and it seemed okay. Can’t wait to do it again next month at the Dwarka Half Marathon.

    After the finish :)
  • Day Breaker Half Marathon

    Day Breaker Half Marathon

    Though I don’t drink beer, the idea of a long run ending with beers sounded pretty fun 🙂 I think I originally signed up for the event because I wanted some fixed long runs leading up to my first half marathon. For the first time, I actually drove to the venue myself (and briefly got lost along the way). This run was quite crowded compared to the last few runs – I suspect the beer was an actual attraction for quite a few people plus the route is completely on road, a good training run for the upcoming big races (cough ADHM cough).

    The race start was a bit of a confusion. I suspect most of us started from beyond the starting point, which is why everyone measured about 100m to 200m off from their actual target distance. The route was gorgeous, thankfully, with no rain. The humidity was spectacular (by which I mean awful), I’m pretty sure my clothes were soaked with sweat in the first 2 km or so. I liked that there were volunteers controlling traffic along the way. The looks on drivers’ faces were priceless 😀

    Photo by Noor Randhawa

    I started slow and picked up over the course of the race, though I did something wrong somewhere – I was completely out of energy at around the 8 km mark. Being on antibiotics didn’t help with energy levels I’m sure. For some reason, I had in my head that the ADHM cut off is 1:08, so I was targeting finishing in that range. (If you’re wondering, the actual cut off is 1:22). Eventually, I found someone who was running slowly and kind of tried to keep a pace just behind him, which helped. Eventually I set a PR at 1:09. My last 10K record is 1:14, however, since the course was off by 100m or so according to Strava it doesn’t get marked in my Strava stats. At the end of the race, I was so exhausted I could hardly stand up or even hold my phone. It took a good 30 minutes to recover properly.

    With this race, I’ve finished 60 km this month and 222 km this year. Hopefully, I’ll manage to hit 80 km for the month and 500 km for the year.

  • Discourse For Websites

    Discourse For Websites

    Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a bit of work with discourse. Here’s a couple of things I learned:

    Discourse uses Docker pretty nicely

    Installing discourse is really easy. They make it very much easy to use with the discourse_docker repository. I had discourse setup and ready to go quite quickly. And then I got stuck, for a few days.

    Sometimes things are broken but fixed quickly

    In the beginning, whatever I did, the static website embedding refused to work. I tried it with RSS feeds and without RSS feeds. Google searches lead me to meta.discourse.org and at that point I tried a few things which were unnecessary, which did not fix the actual problem. It turned out that at some point discourse had broken embedding. However, as soon as we figured out it was actually a discourse bug, the fix was pretty fast.

    Group Discussion by CIFOR on Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND

    WP-Discourse could use some love

    The discourse WordPress plugin does what it promises out of the box, but it needs a bit more work. For instance, it uses the file_get_contents function to open a URL. Some hosts block that function from opening a URL. I have a pull request to fix that, hopefully, it’ll be merged soon.

    I could be wrong, but I couldn’t find a way to bulk publish to discourse. For a site newly converting to discourse, the option seems to be, switch new posts new to Discourse, the rest stays on WordPress.

    Showing the old comments along with the new like How To Geek needs a bit of messing around with the theme.

    Documentation could be better

    I found some failures that were really hard to discover. For instance, the static site embedding works only if you’ve set a username in ‘embed by username’ – No idea why that happens, but there’s no documentation I could find for it. Then there’s help text like below.

    EMBEDDING ONLY: Whether to embed a RSS/ATOM feed as posts.

    Perhaps something better would be

    EMBEDDING ONLY: Check to disable RSS/ATOM feed as posts.

    I intend to open a pull request about this one.

    The API documentation really needs to be better, sadly. The WordPress implementation uses an API endpoint, which doesn’t seem to be documented. I had to figure it out from the WP-Discourse code.

    Error logging needs to be better

    I wish error logs gave me information when the iframe refused to load. I had to pretty much try different things to figure it out. I wish I had a checkbox that would give me better logging information. The development mode doesn’t work out of the box with the docker existing setup, so I’m stuck.