Beginning of new running season...

Yesterday I started my training for the current running season. The season will end sometime in Feb10 with the Auroville Marathon, before summer of 2010 sets in. Feeling lucky to be in bangalore as the rains have already arrived here and it drizzles almost daily in the evening making it cool to do practice runs and jog.

I have shifted to a new place with no parks nearby :( and will miss Agara Lake badly, where i did most of my training of the last running season. So, I thought of exploring locations near to my new place where one can at least run 3-4 kms in one loop. A loop of 3-4 km works out well for me, as on the days when am feeling lazy I can just run one loop of 3-4 kms and if energy levels are higher I can go for 8 kms in 2 loops. Mostly, I don't run more than that in one go.

The first route I explored was the road going from kudlu village towards hosa road junction. The road is without any street lights, the only and intermittent lights were from the speeding vehicles. Most of the vehicles on this route in the evening time are from Electronics City towards the Sarjapura junction as this road helps to cut the distance between these two points almost by half in comparison to the more crowded route via Silk board and Hsr layout. Also the traffic at these hours on this road is next to nil and that prompts the drivers to speed. It can't be safe for a lone runner on an unlit road with such speeding vehicles even though I was keeping to the extreme left of the road. So, i turned back after a km or so.

Then I tried the route from Kudlu village towards Sarjapura junction, this road is relatively better lit, ran a distance of almost 1 km or so on this route before taking a left turn near the IDEB Sprinville project, this turn connects straight to Kudlu panchayat office and then to my place. Guess this loop from Kudlu village via IDEB sprinville back to my home will be close to 2.5kms, will take a correct measurement someday on bike.

Meanwhile I am looking forward to run in the Sunfeast open 10k on 31st May and participate in the BSA hercules duathlon (5K running + 20K cycling +5K running) on 14th June.

Duathlon will be my first event involving a cycle but I don't have a cycle helmet as of today. Plan to purchase one sometime next month. I have very high ambition of completing atleast one full marathon this season along with few half marathons. Best of Luck to me!!