The Starer's Club!

In the summer, when I used to take long walks on the beach with a friend, I noticed how people would stare at her for wearing sleeveless tops. The friend in question is no Charlize Theron but her exposed arms would get way too much attention. The perils of being a girl in this sex-starved city, or so I thought.

This morning, when I went on a wonderful monsoon run to Juhu, I was the victim of stares! From men and women. I was wearing my singlet from the KL half-marathon. Those running in normal t-shirts were ignored but the cross-cultural, cross-class starer's club spanning Andheri, Vile-Parle and Juhu couldn't keep their eyes off me! So what is it about arms that make them a magnet for attention?

I am without a clue!

Full speed ahead for the Kuala Lumpur 21K

It was just 2 days ago that I started training for the Kuala Lumpur Half Marathon, which is on June 26. Although I lost quite a bit of weight in March, thanks to Delhi belly and an extremly unhealthy lifestyle, while travelling on work, the shedding of weight by no means indicates that I am in better shape.

Day 1 of the training was a struggle to put it mildly. I have run 2 half-marathons, both in Delhi, and feel I have what it takes to go the distance in KL. The weather in Bombay is similar to that in KL in terms of humidity but there is little chance I will be aided by the late-evening Bombay sea breeze, which cools things down, when I run in KL.

This will also be my first run overseas and that should motivate me all the more. 53 days is enough time for me to prepared enough to beat my Delhi 2010 timings.

Home field advantage

I always believed that home field advantage was over-rated. How much of a difference could a venue make for athletes? It was a convenient excuse (or so I thought) for teams to blame the heat or the cold or the light or the winds.

After running in unfamiliar conditions this morning, I realised how much of an impact familiarity has on performance regardless of the sport. All I did was change my marathon training schedule to run in the morning instead of the evening but my performance wasn't even close to what I could manage on Tuesday.

Everything seemed to bother me from the morning chill (my body didn't warm up as fast as I wanted) to the fact that the beach was dirty! The cleaning crew was just starting to remove piles of garbage from the shore. While on the topic of garbage, I wonder why is that Indian people abuse nature like this? The sea just dumps the coke bottles, plastic bags, pooja flowers and assorted garbage that is thrown in it. I appreciate the fact that Juhu Beach is cleaned every single day and is one of the cleanest big city beaches in the world.

Back to my running, when I finally did get warmed up, it was past sunrise and not past sunset so the beach wasn't exactly as nice to run on. And the winds weren't blowing the way they do in the evenings! I managed to run 5 kilometres before deciding that I had enough. I'm going have to the hit the beach this evening again but my fantastic evening runs may have given me a slightly false sense of preparation for the big day.

I better start running more in the morning since the run starts at 6:15 am AND also start running on the marathon route to familiarise myself. The run is in my hometown but the route is 25 kilometres away from where I normally train and I better get used to the sights, sounds and smells.

Here's to not judging visiting sports teams and athletes that make valid excuses for under-performing.