12 miles in the hot sun equals 15 miles

Well, that is true, if you run on a hot day in the sun, the sun saps the energy. But what if because of carelessness, you ignore your turn around point. You end up actually running 15 miles in the sun and cry for rest of the day. "But Gaurav, you were supposed to run 12, how did you end up running 15?" Well, I will tell you the long story.

Since there are many different types of runners, and since they don't want to crowd the trails and roads with lots of runners, the TNT team trickles runners on to the trail. So with people of different abilities and target events running different mileage, they send runners in waves. Since the South Peninsula team was also running with us this weekend, there were even more runners. So, they had to create at least 5-6 waves of runners this last weekend. I started in the second wave at 9 AM. It was going to be hot and hilly, so I came prepared with three gels and 4 small bottles of water in my hydration pack. They told us there are three water stations and after the third water station, its out and back. The first 5 miles was a nice tear drop loop around Woodside. The weather was just perfect when we started, the course was not too hilly, and it went around the humungous estates of the ultra rich. Some of the houses had the front yard much much bigger than our entire apartment community.

Anywho, I did pretty well in the first hour, and after finishing a major hill, I reached the second water station. I was running towards the third water station when another team member from the south peninsula team, Pat, caught up with me and we started talking. After taking a little break at the third water station, we started running. We were thinking we must have run about 5 + 2 or 2.5 miles so the turn around point should be close. We knew there were two other runners ahead of us so we didn't quite worry about the turn around point and kept on running and talking. After a little while we really wondered if they forgot to mark the turn around point. Right then we saw those two runners and they told us we were about 100 yards from the 16 mile turn around point. Our jaws dropped. I was in no shape or mood for running a 16 miler. That run was a month from last Saturday. So, getting a little frustrated we started to walk back. Then we thought, oh well, we were not feeling too bad, we should just run as much as we can. We also met another captain who had missed the turn around point so he was also running back with us. We took a good break at the third water station, filled up our hydration pack and ate a gel for the run back to the start line. The volunteers at the water station told us that if we kept running straight instead of tracing our path back, we could cut our run by 1 mile. So we did just that. And thats how I ended up running 15 miles instead of 12.

My legs were tired but fortunately, I did not have any other major injuries. That whole day, I was so tired and dehydrated that I couldn't sleep and had a headache. They had told us about the advantage of an ice bath, so I tried taking that as well. If you haven't tried this, defn. try it when you are super exhausted due to too much exercise. It helps you recover fast. So, I sat in the bath tub, turned on cold water. Kept shouting and singing (this song) at the top of my voice as the water inch'ed up. To top it all, added some ice when the tub was full. It almost burns when the cold water touches you but after few mins, it feels great. I am not sure if it helped as the bone in my right leg still hurts, but I am guessing if I hadn't taken that bath and the icing that I have been doing every day, it would have taken longer to recover.

After that adventure, it feels really good to have run the farthest distance in my life ever.

Thank you all for your support!! Go Team!!