Fasting and Feasting

Nutrition and a good night's sleep, there cannot be enough stress on these two ingredients for a good mindblowing run.

I remember the first time I attempted a 32 K, around three months back, along the absolutely sultry trails of GKVK. A dinner of a cupful of rice and a tiny portion of veggies rested lightly in my stomach, I had decided to stay up all night watching an ancient kung-fu movie, had drunk hardly a litre of water over 24 hours, I was dressed in thick cotton track pants and a T-shirt for the run, I was definitely destined to keel over and die; and guess what, I did so quite successfully. The sun beat down mercilessly as well, and suddenly I was seeing mirages of huge vats of hot chocolate fudge, my breathing was more labored than a three year old solving an intense 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and the run simply stank, stank, stank!!!

I have never made those horrendous mistakes again. I eat like a pig; I would rather eat like a pig than run like a sumo wrestler. I dress light, I have steadily got on to the Climalite bandwagon, I sleep like a 2 month old baby. Actually I picked up that last habit from my favorite running partner, a gorgeous German lady, Sabine. As most Germans go, she is a disciplined little girl.The very whiff of a long run sends her scurrying off to bed at the crack of dusk. 5 pm, she has had her huge pasta dinner, and by 6 pm she has tucked herself into bed and is in la-la snoreland soon after. Mighty admirable! I still cannot manage the 6 pm lights out, but I honestly try to get the 8 hours of much needed slumber.

I am fixating on food and sleep today cause I saw what the lack of it can do to even the most seasoned of runners. Athreya, another of my constant and much admired running partners, went out on the town last night, tanked up till 4 a.m. this morning, and whoopsie daiseee (lord,does anybody use that expression anymore), was ready to run a 36K with us at 7 a.m. He managed just fine for the first 23 K and then his poor abused body just crashed out! He was nauseous, had a side stitch, his left leg cramped. Now he is the most effortless runner I have ever had the pleasure of seeing in a marathon. So it was quite weird seeing him this morning so down and out. We were in an isolated part of GKVK, with no mobile phones, and nothing to drink but Gatorade. We did stumble along and manage to complete the loop to finish a 31K, but it was quite a nightmare run for him.

It just drives home the fact that it is so essential to listen to your body. Alcohol severely dehydrates the body and that definitely is not a good start for a long distance run. Now there are articles aplenty on how beneficial alcohol is for runners. And of course, the story of the ultramarathon man, Dean Kanzares, having started his career of running after an all-night drinking binge is being totuted as the reason to indulge some more, but they definitely do mean that you limit your consumption to a glass or two.

A lesson to learn there for the ultra. Stay awaaaay from the bottle. And if you do go for an extra tipple or two the night before the run, make sure you eat plenty and hydrate yourself throughout the night.

It was our last big run before the ultra, a bit of a disaster, but if every run was a runaway success, how would we learn what not to do. A teeny bit wiser now, we are going to begin tapering off.

Tomorrow is a scenic run around the Bellandur Lake. A pleasure run for me, there will be a zillion and more Runners for Life meeting up early to do various distances. Looking forward to just running for the sake of running. Will post the details on that tomorrow.