The familiar faces showed up. I put in a slow 5K recovery run together with Sharmila.

Thanks to my good old friend Mary Banks, I tried a new way of running today. No, this is not about how to run and get a visit from the ambulance. It is actually about running and walking. She suggested that I try out 3 minute run and 1 minute walk all throughout the run. She also suggested that I would be surprised by the average pace.

Which is exactly what happened. If you look at the graph (blue line) you can see the 3 minute runs (the troughs) and the 1 minute walks (the peaks). I would have guessed that I would average out around 12 minute mile given the heat and direct sunlight. Instead, it came to a pretty quick (for me) 10 min 15 seconds.

Couple of things I noticed – my runs were faster than expected since I was catching up with my breath during walks. And the walks had become faster than I would expect because I was already energized by the run. Finally, the muscles felt much better at the end since the wear and tear was distributed because of varying of the speed.

You will notice in the red line (time) that there were three temporary stops (vertical segments). The first one near 4 mile marker was a water break. The third one right after the 10 mile marker was waiting to cross a road. The second one around the 7 mile marker? That was to give the right of the way to a three feet King snake crossing the trail!!!

Many of you may not know this, but my running career started rather ignominiously. Almost to the day, ten years back, I went out for my maiden run at 11 am in the heat of Dallas. Let’s put it this way – I had to be helped back home by the paramedics. Ten years later, I had a sense of deja vu today.

It all started with Sharmila offering to pick up Natasha from her horse stuff which is what I usually do. I got all excited that I had some more time on hand and decided to put in a long run. I realized it was going to be hot (85 degrees) and in direct sunlight – so I chose a very flat route to try and put in a half marathon – a little over 21 km or 13 miles.

The run itself actually went pretty well. Surprised myself a bit at the pace – 2 hours and 14 minutes (at a pace of 10 min 15 sec per mile). At the end of the run, I was tired but was feeling fine. I reached for a few bottles of water from the car, the phone and plonked down in a shade. I figured I would recover for about 20 minutes and then head back home.

Sipping water, I glanced at the phone. And that is when everything went into a tailspin. I was immediately greeted by a text message from Sharmila telling me she was on her way with Niki to her dancing class and that like every week, I would need to drop Natasha at her classes. In all that excitement of putting in a half marathon, I had completely forgotten about Natasha’s classes!

I had thirty minutes of time and it would take fifteen minutes to reach home. I realized I might be in trouble. Started all sorts of mental calculations – should I keep a few minutes at hand to take a cold shower before I dropped her (I needed to quickly cool down my body temperatures after being in 85 degree direct sunlight for over two hours) or should I grab a lot of carbs for a quick lunch so that I would not faint. (I had dropped 1600 calories at that point of time).

Realizing I did not have much time in hand, I got up to go back to the car. That is when I realized I might have bigger decisions to make. I staggered to the car and started driving. In about two minutes I realized that I needed more recovery time and I was feeling doozy enough that I was going to endanger my and others’ lives. So, I just pulled over to the grass from the road and laid down in the shade of a tree. The spot happened to a minute’s walk from a firestation.

About five minutes later, a gentleman called Sam came by asking if I needed help. I was able to talk fine – I told him I need rest. He suggested we get help in case I have a sun stroke. He and his girlfriend made a call and also called Sharmila to let her know of my status. Soon, we had the cops and ambulance on the spot. By that time, I had started recovering slowly. A quick check of vitals showed there was nothing to panic about. The cops left but the lady in the ambulance hung back suggesting that I do not drive at all and she would wait till somebody showed up for me.

As you might have guessed, figuring out I was not going to go anywhere in a hurry, I just hung back and chatted her up about her life and how she grew up. We talked about the business she and her husband also ran (lawn mowing) and we compared notes of pros and cons of Fitbit, Runtastic (she had one on) and Nike Fuel. Also the challenges of iWatch technology for people with tattoos on their wrists.

Meanwhile, Sharmila had told a few of our friends – Samaresh and Amitesh in particular to see if any of them could reach me earlier than her. Samaresh was the first one on the spot. And he was totally underwhelmed. Here he was expecting to see somebody lying down on the road with all sorts of flashing lights around and people peering into me on the ground. And here I was – now pacing up and down in front of the fire station and stretching my legs 🙂

We decided to go to the Starbucks nearby (I needed some sugar shots quickly). Amitesh with his family and Sharmila and Niki showed up there to meet me. As I looked around, I suddenly realized that not only was this one of my better half marathon practice runs, I do not think in any actual half marathon race, I had had as many people ever come to wish me well 🙂