What was really great this year, was that my parents and brother were visiting us in this time. Actually we had planned last year itself to get them over to see this awesome spectacle, and they really enjoyed themselves the whole time.

[ My parents, brother and us at Cubbon Park.]

My brother also took some fantastic pictures of the day, which I will put online after we come back from our trip tomorrow.

Overall, looks to be an interesting run!

[Photo courtesy: 4deserts.com]

Six years ago, Sumanth Chidambi was a man couldn’t walk even a kilometre without tiring, who weighed 106 kg for his 5.11 frame. “I used to be waist size 42, now I am 35.”

(ref: Bangalore Mirror)

On 12th March 2011, he became one of the first Indians (Michelle Kakade was the other, in the same race) to complete the Atacama desert edition of the 4deserts series of runs covering some of the toughest places on the planet to run.

What was the course like? From the article he himself wrote on the race. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the course itself, the Atacama desert race is a six-day six-stage race covering 250 kilometres (or nearly 160 miles).  It takes place in the heart of the Atacama Desert in Chile, South America.  The desert itself is 15 million years old and 50 times more arid than California’s Death Valley.  The entire race is held at an altitude varying between 2,400m-3,200m above sea level.  Daytime temperatures are expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius/104 degrees Fahrenheit, while night-time temperatures may drop to 5 degrees Celsius/41 degrees Fahrenheit.

Joining me in this race were over 120 other people from 35 countries.  The entire race is self-supported which means that each individual must carry his or her own gear, food and clothing for all days in a backpack.  There are just checkpoints, plenty of water (at checkpoints and campsites), tents (at the campsites at the end of each stage) and medical assistance – no other outside assistance is allowed.

He further describes to the Bangalore Mirror:

Temperatures in the Atacama desert ranged from 42 degrees C in the day to 5 degrees C in the night. The day’s race would start at 8 am. “Most of the time, you are running with the sun hitting your face. Now imagine a 45-degree incline climb in that condition. At that altitude with the heat and the dryness, you have to combat blisters, fever, dizziness and nausea to keep going. To top it, running is a solitary sport, you have to push yourself. On Day three, I ran 26 km without a person or a tree in sight. I say it all the time, this was one hell of a masochistic experience,” says Sumanth with a laugh.

Since the race was self-sustaining, Sumanth had to carry almost everything that he needed in those days on his backpack. He writes:

My final equipment list read somewhat like this – 30litre backpack, sleeping bag, headlight and backup, compass, knife/multi-tool, whistle, survival bivvy, sunscreen, lip screen and blister kit, medicines for fever, inflammation, etc, red flashing LED safety light, jacket, shorts/tights/underwear, t-shirts, shoes, socks, cap and AC buff, fleece hat, iPod and sunglasses.

In addition, I carried food for six-seven days including freeze dried meals, nutrition fuels/gels, energy bars, electrolytes, salt stick caps, instant coffee and creamer.

References: Bangalore Mirror, Live Mint, Runners for Life article written by Sumanth himself journalling the entire experience – a must read.

Also check out the blog maintained by Sumanth’s wife Nandita to track his experience in this race.

The official Atacama desert race homepage says in Big Block Letters – 7-days, 250km, self-supported.

Just saw a friend tweet about the TCS World 10k course route having been announced. Had some trouble finding a link to the course from the website homepage. Here are the routes of all the races of the event. I have shown the open 10k route up there.

The run still starts and ends at Kanteerva stadium. the route is mostly the same as last year but for two differences:

The first difference which is major is that we will be running on Ulsoor road back and forth instead of Kamaraj road. This is really good I think because the latter is an incline on the way back while Ulsoor road, if  I recall correctly, is more or less flat.

The second difference is that because of the forever ongoing Namma Bengaluru metro construction, the route avoids the stretch near Chinnaswamy and instead comes back to MG road and rejoins last years route via Queen’s road.

The race time is given to be 8 am. I think it was that last year too but it actually started more around 8:30 am. So it would be hot.

See the full gallery on Posterous

[Photo credit: David W Oliver (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8), RenoTahoe, Keoki Seu]

Over the last couple of years since the time I heard about it’s existence, if there is one race that I try to keep up with every year, it has got to be the Bay to Breakers 12k run in San Francisco. It is a 12k run, but for the vast majority of the participants it seems to be more of an totally uninhibited carnival. As with SF culture, even photos of an entirely public event like this need an adult filter to see safely at office.

A bay area runner, Nelly, has a nice intro about this years run at his website. He also has some of the safer photos at his website. I found some more photos at Flickr which are more indicative of the unbelievable craziness of the run, and put them up above.

The Yahoo editorial team has a carefully picked selection of some of the amazing photos from the day.

[Photo credit: Jamie Carter]

Due to some unexpected changes to our schedule this weekend, we just weren’t in shape in the morning for the Sunday run. This week Runners High scheduled a 10k on the regular World 10k race route on Cubbon road, and I am pretty bummed about missing this.

We have a 12k run scheduled for next weekend in our neighborhood itself. Have never run this distance before. I really really hope things fall in place for us to make it.

After all the controversies regarding the dates and venue, the TCS World 10k dates were finally confirmed by Santhosh in a mail to the group yesterday. Time to sign up and book some tickets for folks to come watch!

The run itself was a slight bit challenging. The campus roads had such gradual slopes, that if you are not careful, you will be doing a tempo uphill. Dipika and I had decided to stay with 2:1 run/walk ratio this month, so we tried giving the runs as much speed as we could afford. But the slopes got me huffing and puffing. By the end of the first couple of kilometers itself, I could feel myself getting tired. Which is a real bad thing at the beginning of the run. Shrihari was running with us this run, and stayed with us till 6k before taking a break due to stitches.

As you can make out from the stats above, my HRM has started malfunctioning. I typically lose about 100 cals per km and the stats show that I probably need to change the battery in the Garmin HRM strap. It has been a few months short of two years since I last put in a new battery there, so I think this is about the lifetime of a battery.

Some photos at the end of the run.

See the full gallery on Posterous

(Wish Posterous allows adding photo captions one of these days. Sheesh!)

Captions for the photos above follows:

1. Santhosh, the head honcho of Runner High and uber runner. Loves dogs!
2. Shrihari doing a post run stretch.
3. Dipika, at the end of the run
4. Me, trying to do a hamstring stretch
5. Matt in his new Vibrams. Adventure crazy dude, who went on a 8000km Bangalore to Leh trip in his Bolero last year.
6. Preeti, the effervescent Runners High physio, who helps keep us injury-free.
7. Water post setup by the RH guys, along with the biscuits and bananas.
8. People resting after the run, and some doing foot drills and stretches.

Just now got a mail from Procam about the new name for their annual World 10k run in Bangalore. What used to be called the Sunfeast World 10k till now, will be called the TCS World 10k in 2011 at least. Also, Santhosh’s rant not withstanding, the website still insists that June 5th 2011 is the day of the run, and has got actually a counter running on the website.

No details on the course of the run, as usual. However, this would be more keenly awaited this year because of the massive metro related work happening all over the traditional World 10k routes.