Sub 100 minutes Half Marathon

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 & Sriram will run ADHM in 2020 as well to repeat all the fun!

Having finished Berlin Marathon just 3 weeks ago, I was not sure how my body would respond to a speedy Half Marathon. I rested the week commencing Oct 30^th, resumed training with some easy runs from Oct 5^th.  In the 2 weeks building up to ADHM, I did very little speed work and a few easy runs to keep myself moving. I knew the mileage put in for Berlin Marathon would carry me through this race, moreover I didn’t have a lot of time between Berlin and this race for doing any specific race prep and build any expectations whatsoever.

I flew into Delhi with my friend Sriram on Fri afternoon. Met with some school friends that evening and then we were over to Tyson’s place to be pampered. It was his birthday, went to a nice North Indian restaurant in GK and then some Single Malt that night. Saturday was spent lazing around at home, except for an easy run at Siri Fort to check out the weather. I went out to Khan Market in the evening to catch up with another school mate.

Before the race - warming up

I was apprehensive about the late start (6:40 am) but can’t do much about it. Made it to JLN Stadium on time to allow for a km warm up and some foot drills. The race flagged off at 6:40 am. I told myself to hold a 4:45-50/km, so I end up with a finish time in the range of 1:40:00-1:42:00. The first 5 km came in 23:41, at an average pace of 4:44/km. I was generally feeling good, maybe it was the flat and fast course, decided to increase the pace, the next 10 km came in little over 46 minutes, average pace for 4:37/km for those 10 km. I was confident at this stage of the race of managing a personal best time, i.e. finishing under 1:43:50. The remaining ~6 km the plan was to hold 4:50/km to finish 1:40:00 or thereabouts, I however managed to run those kilometers in ~4:37-4:40/km to finish in 1:38:36. All through the race I ran strong, the mileage I have been putting in is helping dial up the pace during the race day and the body seems to respond nicely.

Post race - taking photos and selfie (The part of races I hate the most)

Shailja, my friend ran a speedy 1:35:44 and was 7^th fastest women that morning, such a noteworthy performance. She is kicking ass in all her recent race appearances. What an impressive race she had. It would interesting tracking her at NYC Marathon in November. My friend Tyson ran a 2:04:54 brilliantly paced by Sriram, Sriram ran Chicago Marathon just last week hence was just taking it easy and enjoying the course.

Tyson beaming in happiness after getting a personal best time

What next? Well... Try and train regularly, have fun and hopefully keep improving slowly.

Downing some pints at Social, CP