AHM 2015 - All it takes is ALL you got.

First things first – In the August edition I had shared a humbling experience at day-breaker half marathon (19^th July) where I registered my personal worst time. Here is an excerpt from the concluding section of that blog: “…Next month I am travelling to Hyderabad to participate in Airtel Hyderabad Marathon (AHM). I have heard a lot of nasty stories about the hilly terrain and weather conditions at AHM. Personally, I would have wanted to achieve anything but my PW in the last event before going into AHM next month. However, that was not to be and the only next step from here is to prepare stronger and harder…”. This edition of my ‘Running Reflections’ describes the journey from the time I wrote the above quote to the experience of running in AHM 2015.

Given that this year’s AHM was going to be my first experience of running in the testing conditions of Hyderabad, the first step for me was to understand the conditions better and customize the preparations accordingly. To achieve this, I started reaching out to all my fellow runners at Boot-Camp Yellow (BCY) who had earlier participated in AHM. Based on the inputs I gathered, it emerged that to do well at AHM I needed to overcome three challenges:

• Hills
• Heat
• Humidity

Typically, strategy consultants love to compress complicated ideas and thoughts into (apparently) neat looking frameworks. Some of you may have heard about concepts like 4P (product, price, place and promotion) framework, 7S framework etc. So, all I had to do as a strategy consultant (and of course as a runner!) was to overcome Hyderabad’s 3H obstacles. And, that’s where the preparation started.

Hills Challenge

I knew that for me to plan my run I needed to understand the terrain better. I needed to know the exact terrain (including steepness, points of uphill, downhill, plain stretch, lengths of different segments and what not). A little bit of online research and I seemed to have found a jack-pot – I came across a video of AHM’s half-marathon route with exact elevation listed at different points on the route. I used that information to build a granular profile of the 21.1km stretch with exact elevations at every 500 meters interval (shown below).

The next step was to understand what would be the ‘limiting factor’ that would determine my eventual timing at AHM - lung capacity, leg strength, cramps, hydration, body weight, pacing strategy? I realized it would be a bit of everything, but given the hilly terrain I realized that two things were more critical than others:

1. Legs would get sore sooner than usual (compared to a plain terrain).
2. Given the never-ending hills, I realized it would be important to pace the run intelligently. I didn’t want to commit the mistake of running too fast in the initial uphill segment and running out of ammunition midway.

To address the first challenge, I decided to focus deeply on building leg strength. Thanks to BCY coach Jatin in helping me identify different variants of squats and lunges which helped me build reasonable leg strength to combat the hills. In fact, 60 - 70 percent of my work-outs prior to the two months leading to AHM event (before I started tapering down) focused on legs.

To address the second challenge, I decided to pace my run based on the elevation profile. The idea was simple – given the rolling hills, there was no point trying to maintain the same pace through-out. It was more prudent to maintain the same effort through the run. This essentially meant  that I needed to run faster on down-hills and plain sections and run slower (or perhaps jog) on the up-hills. With a little bit of thought and consideration, I developed a pacing strategy for myself that would help me achieve my target timing of 1:50 for this rolling hill terrain.

Heat and Humidity challenge

To address this challenge, I started with a bit of research to understand the historic weather conditions in Hyderabad during August end mornings. It emerged that this is the period of high heat and humidity in Hyderabad. Specifically, I found that temperature could possibly be as high as 32 degree Celsius (i.e. around 90 degree Fahrenheit) and humidity could be as high as 90 percent. This is very close to what AHM runners witnessed last year (thankfully, it was very pleasant this year).

Having understood this, I was keen to understand how exactly these conditions impact running performance. A little bit of research and I seemed to have found just the kind of information I was looking for. See figure below – it provides a great view of what heat and humidity can do to running performance. Based on historic Hyderabad weather, the conditions were likely to be somewhere in the Danger zone.

Source: http://frayedlacesracing.com/how-heat-and-humidity-affect-running-performance/

I was concerned to see this and then the next question was to identify the actions to address these harsh conditions. Following are the two deviations I made from my regular running habits, specifically to combat the conditions at AHM:

1. I realized that sweating was going to be a serious challenge. To combat that I decided to cut short my running attire and minimize the skin contact with clothing.
2. I usually rely on hydration available on the route. However, for AHM I decided to carry two small bottles. I had heard that ‘thirst’ is the final warning call that the body is getting dehydrated. I wanted to ensure that I don’t reach that stage and planned to keep sipping through-out the run (especially, on the hilly parts where I planned to jog and it was easier to sip due to relatively slow motion). 

Event Day (30th Aug)

So, with this basic preparation spanning across 6 weeks came the big day (30^th August) and I was certainly anxious on the day of the run. In fact, I was so anxious that I couldn’t sleep after 1:30 am on the night before the run. After a little bit of futile effort to sleep, I decided to give up and get to the starting point. For the 6:00 am start, I was at the start line a little before 4:00 am. There was hardly anyone in the ground when I reached the venue.

A little later, my fellow runners from BCY arrived at the race venue. Their arrival did help to settle the nerves a bit. At around 5:45 am, all runners assembled in the holding area behind the start line. That’s the time when my coach Jatin walked up to me. I was certain that Jatin would share some running tip (just the way he did before the day-breaker half marathon about a month ago). However, on this occasion he did not share any coaching tip.

This is what he said – “…I know you have been working hard for this race. I don’t want to share anything specific. Just do what you have planned and things would be fine…”.

The tip may sound a little generic, but I guess that’s exactly what I wanted to hear before the start and it did help me a lot.

Shortly, thereafter the run started. Like always there was a temptation to run faster in the initial few kilometers. I guess no matter how much mental planning one does, this initial temptation does creep in. It has something to do with the ambience, adrenalin rush, loud music, and a sudden release of pent-up energy (which is desperate to be released after an hour long wait). However, on this occasion, I kept telling myself the only chance of getting close to 1:50 on this hilly terrain is to conserve energy and finish strong. So, I kept conserving energy and running as per the pacing plan I had made for myself. The other thing that I kept telling myself was to take the game into the last 4 kilometers (hopefully into a situation where I needed to strike a pace of about 5 mins per kilometer for the final 4 kilometers to get to overall 1 hour 50 minutes time).

By the time I reached the finish line, I had surprised myself by finishing good 8 minutes faster than the timing I was targeting (finished it off in 1:42). All in all, it was a very satisfying day and a very well organized event. Kudos to all the organizers for such nicely organized event - I look forward to come back to AHM next year. 

Sundeep Singh: +91 - 98181 19794

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About the Author: By background, Sundeep Singh is a Mechanical Engineer from IIT Delhi. Given his flair for mechanics and passion for running, he loves to deeply analyze the  finer nuances of running techniques / strategies. Sundeep ran his first half-Marathon on 12th Oct. 2014 and within less than a year of running, he has achieved a personal best HM timing of 97 minutes.