Arun Rajaraman

2015 was a great running year for me. It was also my 2 nd  year of running, naturally, I was excited as a child, looking for a running event online and registering for a race almost every month. TCS 10K being the most popular 10K in the country, it isn’t surprising I registered for it too. At that time, I was training part of PaceMakers running group, TCS 10K was considered a ‘key’ race in the group, and even now is, runners train hard to get personal best performances. I used to be very diligent with my training then and wanted to clock my best time as well. A few Time-Trial runs on the actual race route building up to the event went well, 55:25 on May 2 nd , 53:27 on May 10 th , managed to run the race on May 17 th  in  52:26 . That was the last and the only 10K race I ran that year, as I was sufficiently distracted running half marathons. Fast-forwarding to May 2016, the same rut, 2 Time-Trial runs before the race, one on Apr 7 th , 49:52 and another on May 1 st ...

Background: Due to work travel in mid Oct 2018, I had to take a decision to skip running Bangalore Marathon. As a result, I ramped down my running mileage in Sep as there was no marathon in sight. This sadly also meant I would not run a marathon in 2018. But hey ho! Surprise training plan: Amongst numerous topics that we talk during our runs, during one of such easy runs with Shailja Singh, we were discussing which would be a good marathon for me to train for, she suggested I run the Mumbai Marathon in Jan. Given the horrid weather in Mumbai, I was not too inclined and got myself off that trap. I casually told her I could consider running the Tokyo Marathon (if I made the lottery) or run the New Delhi Marathon in Feb. Shailja at that time was making a training plan for herself for Tokyo Marathon, New Delhi Marathon a week earlier was a perfect race to choose, that way we could training together is what she said. After that chat/run in the morning, I got to work and was quite sur...