Samir and Amisha displaying their medals
Congrats to Samir/Amisha who participated in the Mumbai Half Marathon today (Jan 15, 2012) and completed a distance of 22 km in a little over 2 1/2 hours. They had been training for this for some months now with regular practices. We hope one of them writes an article about the details of how to train for a marathon.
Hopefully this inspires some of us to set an ambitious goal and then relentlessly work hard to pursue it.
Samir/Amisha had participated in the Dream Run segment of Mumbai Marathon in 2010 which is for 6 km. This year they ventured to outdo more than triple 2010’s feat. Here is Samir’s previous post related to the Dream Run 2011. A radiant glow of achievement was evident on their faces when we visited them today.
Sandeep Shah is the other hero who has run the half marathon earlier in San Francisco. Here is the post that Sandeep wrote on that occasion. I believe Maitrayee Shah has also run the half Marathon in USA.
Kudos to Samir and Amisha and may we have many more runners in KV.
Congratulations!
Congrats Samir and Amisha. This is really good!
Maitrayee had started the training but had to discontinue due to ankle injury.
I would highly recommend everyone to start some long distance running. Not only it helps you stay fit, but you will also feel more energized, more focused. That said, I myself am out of running after Ronil was born and trying to get back to regular running.
That’s great!! congratulations!!
Wow! Congratulations to both of you ! A great achievement indeed. Your full marathon completion news doesn’t seem far now 🙂
In 2011, we ran Standard Chartered half marathon and completed it in just under 3 hrs. We did training practice on our own starting with about 2-3 kn run and during the practice maximum we ran was 10km.
For this year’s Marathon, we decided to join Mulund Sports Academy (MSA) and get formal marathon training through a coach and the experience has been out of the world. During last 6 months we have been practicing. In the beginning the training was for 4 days a week and later on became 5 days a week. It consisted of highway running (flat long run), hill running, fartlek, floor exercises, vigorous workout sessions and aerobics. Each session was preceded by stretching and warm up and ended with cool down.
When I first did long run on highway during the practice session, I felt overjoyed and later on came to know that running gives you “runner’s high”.
In the beginning sessions during training we used to get very very tired but slowly got used to the routine. Typically Sundays consisted of long runs for which we went to Juhu Beach, Khargar hills and Nariman Point by waking up at 5 in the morning.
One of our friends ran the full marathon (42km) shared this quote “Marathon running is a mental game. Only the insane run”.
And we really have felt this when we were sacrificing our weekend sleep:-)
Training helped improve my time by 20 min compared to last year.
Thanks Prashant for the post. That was quick 🙂
It was Sandip’s post mentioned above and inspiration from another friend who has run both the SFO and SJ Half marathons that triggered the thought of participating in a Half marathon. Do agree with Sandip that long distance running is an excellent way to keep fit and proper training typically ensures that u stay injury free.
Our training group consisted of about 50 folks (about 6 – 7 couples) of which close to 35 finished the half marathon. The target time to complete the Mumbai Half Marathon is 3 hours. If one goes beyond it then they do not get a certificate. 25 from our group did finish under the 3 hr mark and Amisha was the fastest among 9 females who ran.
In the end, as folks say “sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination itself”, both of us will cherish our training more than the actual run.
@Sandip: Please consider providing some inspiration in form of a running group – I am sure many of us are on the fence, a little nudge will go a long way!
@Minati: I would highly recommend to join training program. I trained with Asha. http://sv.team-asha.org/
There are others like “”Team in Training”. http://www.teamintraining.org/
and San Jose Fit: http://www.sanjosefit.com/
All of the above are pretty good. Please let me know if you have any questions. The coaches in these programs are really good which is very important in deciding which training program. There are others which I dont know much about.
Wow !! Congratulations!! Sameer & Amisha.
Congratulation Sameer and Amisha !!!!
@Sandip: Its the fund raising that annoys me about Asha & TIT…
@Minati: Try San Jose Fit. They do not have fund raising requirement. There are others in bay area which do not require fund raising. Nike has online training.
Congratulations!! Sameer & Amisha
Congratulations Amisha and Sameer !
Congratulations Amisha/Sameer – This would serve as an inspiration to all who have the new year resolution of losing weight/staying fit (even if they have already broken the resolution:) )