Arun Rajaraman

I do a 'reflections' and 'next year plan' blog end of the year. You can read the 2024 one here . Some years, I also do a mid-year check-in to see how I'm trending on my goals/plans, the 2025 mid-year one is here . When I started out the year, I had Boston Marathon in Apr and Malnad Ultra 50 km in Nov on the horizon, race-wise. As with everything, plans change, whilst I ran Boston Marathon and Malnad Ultra, I also ran Sydney Marathon and two other half marathons which weren't in the plan.  I was very fortunate to have had a decent training block building up to Boston Marathon and a decent race too which I have covered here . In Boston, I also got my Abbott World Marathon Major Six stars medal at the finish line for successfully completing all the Six World Marathon Major races around the world, a journey I started in Chicago back in Oct of 2017. The original six races are Chicago, Berlin, NYC, London, Tokyo and Boston. I have listed them in the order I ran them o...

I ran Sydney Marathon end of Aug, you can read more about it here . I have been meaning to run Malnad Ultra since 2022, I have blogged about wanting to participate back in 2022 ,  2023  and 2024 . I finally got around to running it, my second Ultra. My debut was in Jaisalmer last Dec, you can read about that here . I always give myself complete rest of 3-weeks after every marathon, which meant I slip into easy running only by Sep 21 having run Sydney Marathon on Aug 31. However, after my return from Sydney, I ended up registering for a half marathon, my favorite half in my favorite city, you can read about my last appearance at this race and the fun I had during the trip back in 2019 here . At Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon I chose to pace my friend (Gautham CB) for a sub 2-hours finish, both Gautham and I had a lot of fun during the race, the race went per plan, we managed a comfortable sub 2-hours finish, splits are here . From Delhi, I headed straight to Pune for about 10 days...