After two Saturday 10-mile runs this month, wanted to see if I could speed up a little. Last two were 10:32 min/mile and 10:04 min/mile. Was targeting a 9:45 min/mile (about an hour and thirty eight minutes) today. Due to some incomprehensible enthusiasm, started too fast. Eventually paced it out to finish at 9:14 min/mile (an hour and thirty two minutes). I did have to take two water breaks and allow myself to catch up with my breath. I have no doubt that I am going to pay for this dearly tomorrow. It was an absolutely gorgeous spring day though!!

My office colleague -Tim, was in town for some meetings. He lives in beautiful Oregon and is an active trail runner. Last night we had decided that we will put in a run together this morning. Met him in his midtown hotel this morning and we went around running in Georgia Tech campus.

The sharp eyed amongst you, no doubt have noticed that my running clothes were totally compliant with St. Patrick’s day :-). Tim, on the other hand, realized at the last moment that he had forgotten to pack his running shorts. We agreed to go ahead with the run with Plan B – his blue polka-dotted boxer shorts 🙂

It was a great run. Beautiful cool morning and Tim slowed down enough that I was able to post one of my fastest runs 🙂

It was just the two of us – Samaresh and myself representing the group in the trails today for four miles.  And one of us was more visible than the other 🙂 Ran into Manas who finished just as we were getting started and also Melanie who was getting ready to put 14 miles with her friends..

Taking a breather by the creek during the ten mile run in the trails…

A shot from this morning’s five mile run. I am sure it looks like a beautiful house in an idyllic rural setting. But the dark bars in the top is jarring and out of place – right? Now turn the picture upside down!!!! The picture is a reflection of one of my neighbor’s house in the crystal clear water of his lake. The black bars are nothing but the horse fence.

That was a beautiful morning run!!!

Trying to build back stamina for long distances…



Did not mind the getting drenched in rain part much. But the dirt roads were totally wet and was not kicking back at all. It was like running on the beach. Speed was much slower and muscles are very sore 🙁

5 miles (8K) run by myself in the afternoon. Somehow, I got exhausted. It was almost like I was running in temperatures 40 degrees higher than I am used to. Wait a minute…. That was true today …. 🙂

Thumbed our four small Bengali noses at the mighty cross that we, as a community, have to bear – “Thanda legey jaabey” (“thou shalt catch a cold”) and ran a 5K run at 5:45 AM in bone chilling cold weather. Before my Minnesota friends start yawning, let me assure you that -2F (that would be -19C for the rest of the civilized world that has figured out how to talk metric) with windchill is way too cold for us in Georgia. There is a reason we used to call this place Hotlanta!!

Amitesh, who usually never shows up, showed up, as his wont, to run on the coldest day. It is like he is on an anti-hibernating cycle 🙂 Arup made an unannounced appearance too. The ever dependable Sanjib was there to round up the team of four crazy guys.

Hot cup of coffee never tasted this good before!!!

Nobody other than Sanjib showed up for our run. I came dangerously close to be the only fool out there 🙂

Fortunately for the others, it was not as cold as it was predicted. Unfortunately for us, it was even colder !! 19 degrees F, 9 with windchill!
(I am shaking too hard to use the calculator on my phone to convert to Centigrade right now) 🙂

We two took advantage of the near desolate trails and instead of our usual 5K, put in a 8K run.

For the curious, the relentless wind in the severe cold weather did not beat me black and blue. I was dressed up that way for the run 🙂 As my dear friends from South India would have said “What to do? We are like that only” 🙂