Arun Rajaraman

One race that I really look forward to running every year, the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon (ADHM). Everyone knows NCR is in the news this time of the year for it’s bad Air Quality Index and how injurious the general Delhi air is. Just for the record on the race day at JLN Stadium the AQI was 256, the accepted safe limit is 0-50, so the pollution was ~5x. This has stopped bothering me anymore. Stubbornly, I have been running this race on the trot for 5 years, I am still alive and have been running marathons after 5 consecutively appearances at ADHM so the pollution hasn’t destroyed my lungs yet  😉 . The sole reason of signing up to this race is to go hang out with my school friends who now live there and my college buddy (Sreekrishna aka Tyson). I have known these guys for 23-26 years now. It is usually a 3- or 4-days trip with the race weekend thrown in so I have sufficient time for some pre/ post race drinking, eating out and hanging out with friends. Obviously, I & Srira

World Marathon Majors (WMM) series - Berlin Marathon 3rd marathon 2nd of WMM series after Chicago Marathon in Oct 2017 (4 more to go for me to complete the 6 WMM some day) Early part of 2019 I'd registered for New Delhi Marathon (NDM) in Feb, read my Sub 4h story here . I continued to clock miles and did longer distances in Jan and Feb as build up for NDM. With NDM done and Berlin Marathon over 6 months away, Shailja Singh (my friend and mentor) asked me to chill and keep clocking base miles as it was early days for targeted Berlin Marathon training. Between Mar - Jun, with a lot of reluctance, I signed up for a few local 10 km races to get some speed in my legs and also continue to keep my legs moving. Signing up for races at times can be the much needed motivation to get out there and train in summer months/off-season, it worked out pretty well for me. Berlin Marathon training The targeted training block started from Jun with a 10 km race and 2 slightly chall