Arun Rajaraman

Bharath (a close friend of mine, my veda guru and a runner) I'd think, got slightly serious to train for NYC Marathon only after he got his US visa around 3rd week of July. I having run the race last year and moderately struggling due to lack of prep etc, didn't want Bharath to take it lightly. Especially, after his sub-par mileage and lack of training in the first half of the year. Just for context, between Jan-Jul, 7 months duration his average monthly mileage was < 25 km. By any stretch of imagination very inadequate to run a moderately hard course like NYC. He ran the Tata Mumbai Marathon in 5:37:03 in Jan, averaging ~8:00/km pace nursing an injury and I'm sure not enjoying the second half or latter miles due to the struggles. I for one won't recommend anyone toe the line for a marathon without sufficient training. The suffering and experience isn't just worth it. Training Plan I cooked up a training plan for a duration of 14 weeks which was modelled with th

Why I registered for the NDA Half Marathon and my prep Col Suvranshu Roy, my schoolmate, mentioned to me 3rd week of May about National Defence Academy (NDA) organizing  a running event in Pune to celebrate 75 glorious years of NDA. I registered for the event promptly, only because, it would be one-of-it’s-kind opportunity to run a race in the NDA campus, it, I thought was all the more special given I went to KV NDA for my XI & XII grade and have fond memories of the campus and the fun I had back in school. This was still early June, I booked flights to arrive Thu, so I could hang out with my parents and celebrate my dad’s 80th on Fri, meet friends, run the race and get back Sunday.   At the time, back in June, I was mostly building base miles, shuffling around and mostly doing aerobic runs having run the London Marathon in Apr, you could read about it here . The other race I had on the horizon was the Malnad 50 km Ultra which Sriram, TNR and I were planning to run in Nov to