I love the look of both the GPS watches, particularly the uber sexy Garmin Forerunner 310XT GPS Watch
These are now available at the Garmin stores as well as online on Amazon, $369 for the Garmin Forerunner 405CX
Tag: Misc
Its been a couple of days that I discovered that Google had enabled Get Directions for their Google India maps. This means, you can enter any starting and destination locations on their website (maps.google.com ), and they automatically draw the shortest/best route on the map.
Below is an example route drawn by the software from Indirapuram in Ghaziabad to Nehru Park (my favorite running route) in Chanakyapuri. The distance comes out to be 21KM. If I drag the route to take me via the Noida Delhi DND, the distance becomes 29KM. Now I know which way to go:
This kind of service is already available from mapmyindia.com , but when it comes to usability, Google is the King! Once the route is drawn, you can easily drag points on the route to select alternative routes, very smart implementation. Also, I tried the exact same thing using the Google Maps software on my mobile, and that works well too. I suspect that this thing has been turned on for India very recently, maybe just a few days back (unless someone points out that this is not the case).
Event dates: Mar 24th – Mar 29th, 2009
Venue: Gachibowli Stadium, Hyderabad
Updates:
Mar 29: Taufik wins in straight sets. Indians Jwala/Diju lose in the finals.
Mar 28: Jwala/Diju move into mixed finals! Hafiz Hashim and Taufik Hidayat set up an exciting mens final!
Mar 27: Saina loses to 6th ranked Julia Pei Xian WONG 🙁 Just doubles left for Indians!
Mar 26: Another day of bad results for India. All, except Saina, lost in singles. Jwala/Diju and Jwala/Shruti keep the colors flying in doubles. Taufik and Hafiz Hashim progress.
Mar 25: World #1 Lee Chong Wei loses in 1st round. Sad 🙁 I had great expectations from him after his Swiss Open super series win over Lin Dan. Chetan Anand, India’s #1, also loses in straight sets in the 2nd round. Saina Nehwal sails, and so do most of the other Indian mens seeds.
Besides running, I am a great fan of Badminton, and though I wanted to be in Hyderabad to see this event, I had to leave that for the even more exciting World Badminton Championships which will be held in August 2009, in Hyderabad, and which is simply not to be missed.
Live scores from the Indian Open Badminton below:
http://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/tournament.aspx?id=72F1F101-544B-4C1F-B8BE-11BB3296ADE8
I had enjoyed watching the 1st edition of this event last year in Hyderabad, in which Chetan Anand went all the way upto the finals and lost to Boonsak Ponsana from Thailand.
Update Mar 13: Pain wins this time. 2010 event awaited.
The 5K run at my place of work is an annual event. It started off a couple of years ago as a charity run for various causes, and has been an out and out success. To put it into perspective, more than half the employees take part in the various runs on the day, including a competitive 5K, a non-competitive 5K, and for the first time this year, a competitive 5*1K relay.
Preparing for an event like the 5K takes quite some time, to be fair about 2 months of dedicated training. However, with the recent Gurgaon marathon, there is only about 10 days of training days left to prepare for this one, and so, one can push it by only so much as to not get into an injury situation. Last year, I ran at just about a 5 min/km pace, and I hope to cut it down this year. By how much, remains to be seen… though I have my targets.
Below are some of the 5K training plans I refer to.
- Hal Higdon: 5K Training [8 weeks]
- Runners World: The Beginner 5-K Plan [5 weeks]
- Runners World: The Intermediate 5-K Plan [5 weeks]
- Runners World: The Ultimate 5-K Plan [6 weeks]
- Jeff Galloway’s 5K Training [15 weeks]
- Furman Institute FIRST 5K (pdf) [12 weeks]
The run is on the 18th of March, I am sure it will be hot with the way the temperature has been rising in the recent days.
Just read a few articles on proper warming up before a 5K run. All of them essentially advise 3 things:
1. Doing 1-2 miles of slow running
2. Doing 3 to 4 strides on 50-100 meters
3. Doing a bit of in-place jogging while waiting for the race to start
Here is an article from Running Times magazine on 5K warmup. Will try to stick to this and see how it goes.
I had heard of this exotic group called Marathon Maniacs, and in fact knew about a couple of people who were there on its list of maniacs.
Today, I went to their website and found that they in fact have an entry criteria for being an official maniac. There are several levels of maniacs, starting from the Bronze level, and then higher up to Silver, Gold, etc. The bronze level criteria is as follows (one of):
1. Back to Back Marathons (two marathons in consecutive weekends, races can be run on either Saturday or Sunday).
OR
2. 2 Marathons in 3 weeks (2 Marathons within a 16 day time frame).
OR
3. 3 Marathons in 3 months (3 Marathons within a 90 day time frame).
I was delighted to see that on Feb 22nd, 2009, I just completed their 3rd criteria above, when I ran the Running and Living Gurgaon marathon (in fact, I completed the 3 marathons within a 57 day period). The complete list is as follows:
- Running and Living Gurgaon Marathon 2009 (4:38)
- Mumbai Marathon 2009 (5:21)
- Mawana Sugars Indian Open (Full) 2008 (5:11)
So, I am a Marathon Maniac now (though official confirmation is pending)! Way to go!
Note: Other Indian runners on the Marathon Maniacs list:
- Dr. Ashis Roy (Silver, 3 in 3 weeks)
- Sunil Chainani (Bronze, 3 in 3 months)
- Rajesh Vetcha (Bronze, 3 in 3 months)
- Bhasker Sharma (Bronze, 3 in 3 months)