Categories
Running

Running Shoes


It is always difficult to pick a pair of shoes that suites you, with such a wide variety of brands and models available. It depends upon your foot structure primarily and there are websites that will help you in deciding what to choose. I got a basic Adidas Shore running shoe when I started running, and I am now considering getting another one, in time for my first event.

Here is the list of some shoes I considered.

  • Asics Kayano XI ($130) – Stability Plus
  • Asics GT 2100 ($85) – Stability
  • New Balance 990, 991 ($105) – Stability Plus
  • New Balance 1023 ($90) – Neutral Plus
  • New Balance 766 ($80) – Stability
  • Adidas Supernova Control ($75-90) – Stability
  • Adidas Supernova Cushion ($65-85)
  • Adidas AdiStar Cushion ($90-110) Adidas
  • AdiStar Control ($95-$120)
  • Adidas Response ($80)

And based on these, I have narrowed down to one of the following three for me:

  • ASICS® GT-2100
  • New Balance® 766
  • Adidas® Supernova Control

I guess I will be bying the New Balance 766. It has also won the Road Runners magazine Editor’s Choice Award for 2005.

Categories
Running

A hectic Badminton weekend

The weekend of Aug 20-21 was spent in participating in a corporate Badminton tournament in Delhi, where I was representing my company, Cadence Design Systems (L to R: Amit, Anuj and me). The tournament was organised by ‘Eventus’, and a total of 24 teams participated. We managed to reach the quarters, before being knocked out by the eventual champions DDA (not that we would have made it up against other teams 🙂 ). Some of the best teams were:

  • DDA (Delhi Development Authority)
  • GE
  • AAI (Airport Authority of India)
  • Reliance Info.
  • Hero Honda
  • British Gas

This was a very exhausting week, and I had to take a day off just to recover from the stress. But, I was satisfied with our overall performance, with the limited training we did.

Categories
Running

The next challenge

Early in July, I finally decided to run a full marathon. With this started the search for the perfect marathon to run, which would suite me from all perspectives. Most important among the things which had to kept in mind was the Indian weather. No matter where you run, there is a very small window in which you can practice, and most of the year here is hot or humid.

After much searching, the target narrowed down to two – The Dubai marathon (Jan 5), or the Singapore marathon (Dec 4). Both were well placed with sufficient time for training, but myself and Vivek finally decided on the Singapore marathon as our first marathon. August 1st was decided as the first of the 18 weeks comprising our training schedule, which we finalized from the much acclaimed programme from Hal Higdon, senior writer with the Runners World magazine, and a great sportsperson.

Categories
Running

My first tryst with marathons (or Half)

Since a long time, I had this desire to run a marathon. It was hidden deep down somewhere in my head, and through a combination of events, it rose to the surface. Going the full distance of 42 km was tough for the fisrt attempt. However, what spurred me into action was the news that a half-marathon was going to be held in Noida (India), my very own city!

My close friend, Vivek, was as enthusiastic about this as me, and together we started on a “very short” plan geared for taking us to the completion of the half-marathon, which was supposed to be held on April 10th, 2005. Proper preparation for a half-marathon takes a minimum 2 months, as advised by the experts, but, shortage of time resulted in a 4 weeks plan for us.

Bad news came in early in our preparation, the race was getting cancelled, with the organizers citing unfavourable weather as the reason, though I was more conviced that the organizing body was not capable of handling a big event like this. Sometime later, I heard that the organizers managed to have a low key race, which I did not participate in due to the obvious break in my training plan, and lack of motivation after the disappointment.

So, this first attempt of ours to run a long distance race was unsuccessful. But later on, I realized that it actually was’nt. Because, this was going to be launch pad for future challenges.