Last words..

Our team felt pretty bad about the weather and sanjeev is fighting flu. The change of weather has caused trouble for some of or runners. Vinod, the expert marathoner in our team sent a few last words...

Folks,

There is a lot of talk about cold weather and winds and visualizing
your race. You have heard about it incessantly from Steve. So I wont
say anything about that.

Au contraire, don't spend too much time thinking about the race. You
have all done your homework and the months of training will help you
accomplish your goal. Think about where you were and what kind of
shape you were in before the training schedule started. Reflect how
you have matured as a runner over the past months.

The one thing you should do tonight and tomorrow is to load up on
electrolytes It is very important to load up on electrolytes
especially in the last 60 hours. No matter what your choice of
electrolytes is, make sure you are well loaded with them. Plan on
drinking atleast about 1-1/2 to 2 gallons of electrolyte drinks
uniformly distributed over today and tomorrow. Also strictly avoid
alcohol (and thats not just for Santhosh).

For the rest, sleep early and sleep long tonight. You have to get up
very early on Sunday morning, and it is easy to not sleep well on the
night before the race. So please make sure you sleep well tonight and
are well rested.

There will be lots of Asha folks out on the course to cheer you on the
day of the race. We have folks coming from Asha Houston as well. There
are excess of ten thousand people running the marathon. The atmosphere
is going to be electric. Soak it all in and just enjoy your run, you
might even miss seeing the finish line go by.

Good luck to everyone. That said, I'll shamelessly paste here what I
had written on last year's mailing list.
______________

It will be over in two days. When you cross that finish line come
sunday, you will experience a joy unlike anything you have ever felt.
Every aching muscle has been reflected in the face not in the form of
a grimace but as a smile and a grin. Wherever you are, whatever life
has in store for you, I know that all of you will succeed. Success
comes not from complaining but from overcoming difficulty by sheer
dint of work and persistence. Courage is not the absence of fear but
the ability to continue despite it. It took courage to walk into that
room in Texas Union in that other lifetime a long time ago. It took
courage to lace up those shoes and head out the door on every run you
did in the past 5 months. It will take courage to cross that finish
line a week from today but I have the greatest of confidence in your
indomitable spirit. The same spirit that saw the pioneers blaze the
path westward a hundred and fifty years ago in this country. The same
courage that saw Tenzing and Hillary climb Everest. The same courage
that saw Leonidas and his men refuse to surrender to the Persians and
choose to die to the man at Thermopylae. In that famous battle the
most courageous was Dienekes who, upon being told that the Persians
had so many archers that their arrows would darken the sun, said
"Good. Then we will fight in the shade".

George Sheehan uttered these famous words - "I have met my hero, and
he is me." Go out my heroes one and all, let us conquer Austin.

-Vinod