Tuesday, November 22, 2005

The bisons went crazy! - Motive half.

It was cold at the start and slowly got warmer. The weather seemed to dance to our tunes! It was a wonderful race and I ended up having my best race ever! ...I finished with an amazing pace of 8:25 mins per mile..my best ever in a race!

Know more about how I did at motive here . Type "1741" for my Bib no. or type my name.

I guess I have been more regular for training and the long runs this year. I have been doing my stretches, icing my shins and doing a lil' bit of strength training too..Hope it stays like this!

Gaurav, vinod, ganesh and me tried maintaining a 9:00 pace right from the start. Ganesh and vinod slowed down some time before the hill. Gaurav and I actually did better than 9:00 even till the hill. I was keeping time and we were doing good at every mile. We actually did pretty good on the hills too! ..We got a negative split with the pace on the hills being better than on the flat!...and the final few miles were even better as we held on to our MGP (actually faster than our MGP)...and we finished at 1:50s for the 13.1 mile race.

O.k..enough for all the runner/marathoner/geek talk...I did much better than last year when I had a terrible shin injury. I shaved of about 25 mins from last time! The race atmosphere was in its usual glorious way!...Ppl cheering along all the way..fun-filled water stops, Girl playing huge musical device outside her house - yes we saw the same girl again!! We thanked her and clapped for her as we crossed her.I really do admire the spirit of ppl like her who come out and cheer for all the 2000 runners right till the end!..

Team Asha had its own cheering team too! Anita and radha were our only cheering team. Poor guys had no company and they actually met us at several points!...radha even ran with aravind and ashwini for a few miles with all our extra clothing!

Asha austin might really have very few active volunteers...but, they are a dedicated bunch I must say!...

Everyone had a great race and finished injury free..at least from how we felt immediately after the race!...Savitha went back to run the last bit with gloria ! We were truly getting together as a team :) ...

Team Asha or Team yellow(thats how ppl cheered for us for most part of the race..) was getting itself heard ;) ...We were crying out hoarse every time a yellow finished the race!...

Our coaches steve and ruth cheered for 'Asha' as well!!..They made sure they didn't shout out 'rogues' (thats the name of the training group :) ...)..and instead they managed a 'Go Team Asha!!'.

After the race, we went to the newly opened restaurant..and we did cause a stir at the restaurant as well...quite a few ppl asked us about 'Team Asha'!!...Three cheers to bright neon yellow t-shirts!

I am hoping for a great injury free season for all Team Asha runners....now starts the more rigorous, testing 2nd half of the training program..Now, we would be doing even greater distances and will be pushing ourselves to heights we have never scaled before!!

I will soon post motive half-marathon photos...

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