3 years - 3 hours hm AGAIN - COUNTING MY BLESSINGS

My Journey for Long Distance Running started in sept 2015.
10k, 21k and 42K

My last long distance running event was in Jan 2020 TMM Full Marathon and Feb 2020 - Half Marathon.

2020 March onwards, life had been very challenging.
I was restricted to my house.
Kids having online classes and I had to be there with them.

But as they say, in every ADVERSITY, lies an OPPORTUNITY.
I utilized this time learning psychology and growing my online business.
Which yielded out awesome results.

Now its 2022.
I am again planning to start long distance running.
Registered for a Half Marathon in oct 2022.

Counting my blessings to run and finish it STRONG.

July 2022 - I met with an accident leaving my right lower body into strength imbalance.
July 2022 to Aug 2022 - I had to prepare and appear for MA Psychology Final yr papers.
Sept 2022 - I caught severe cold.

Now my training is again impacted.

Here is how I trained for my Half Marathon after 2 years gap : 

3 days complete focus on Strength training, Yoga
Breathing workouts every day.

22nd - 25th sept - I completed 32 K with back to back training.
26th Sept - 10K spinning + strength training
27th Sept - 5K run
28th Sept - Strength training + 2K
29th Sept - 30 min timed run - 5K
30th Sept - 30 min timed run - 5K
1st - 9th Oct - I focused on some back to back runs (max distance 10K) + strength conditioning + yoga + breathing workout.

16th Oct - event day.
I had planned to include power walk in my run as my maximum training was only 10-12K

15th Oct - I went to bed at 9pm and realised that I have got fever.
ohh...
I took a paracetamol around 11pm and went to sleep as I had to wake up at 4am

16th Oct - I got up at 4am - I still could feel the weakness of fever and slight body ache.
I assume the fever could be due to the exertion on previous days due to house work, my work and kid's studies.
And it popped up as my body went to a relaxed mode - reducing the Sympathetic Nervous System impact.
When you are regularly active, your body might not signal that you are unwell as then the Sympathetic system is activated to keep the body warm and pain free.
Once you go to rest, it would reduce (sympathetic System impact) - and your body starts signalling the pain or weakness.
that is what happened with me that day.

Anyways,
I already had planned to go slow as it was my first event post 3 year.
On ground events are full of stress as you have to wake up atleast 2 hours early considering the breakfast and travel time reaching venue.

On top of that the organisers had decided to start the hm at around 7am. Which was quite unthoughtful keeping October weather in mind. 
Sun was harsh and up by 8am every day.

I reached the venue and by the time we reached near the start point, It was already 6:55am.

My condition was almost not very good.
But I wanted to run this as it. can be a good trigger for me to start my Full Marathon Training.

Being a mother of two,
staying in Noida, with no domestic help, as I dont trust the maids and servants here,
very less options to sun safe outdoors,
I wanted to take this run as my training run as I would get atleast long route roads.



We started the run.
I did interval running till 12K
After that switched to power walk with rhythmic Breathing.

As we crossed 15K from the Rajpath,
We saw a heavy flow of high speed traffic on the route.
We were a bunch of almost 20-30 runners who were doing power walk and easy jogging.

Now there was no chance to run as we managed the traffic on our own, crossing roads, stopping the flow and walking down.

Ideally the run post 15K got converted into forced walking on broken footpaths and service roads.

I had different plans.
I had planned to run interval after I cross 15K
But was stuck in the traffic.

Anyways. Somehow we reached the no traffic zone and it was only 1K near the finish line where we could run.
I did few reps of interval run in the large crowd of great delhi run.
and somehow managed to cross the finish line.

So this was my experience summed up - of a 
HALF MARATHON AGAIN - after a gap of 3 years.

My advise to the organisers, if my blog happens to reach them:

1. pls start the hm at max 5:30 am (if you are organising in oct) - Delhi weather in oct is nearly hot and runners were getting dehydrated and it could result into fatal condition.

2. My Q - why was the traffic opened after 2:30 hrs?
Kindly respect the runners - else declare it in advance that traffic will the opened after 2:30 hrs and we are only focused on runners who run fast.

Vedanta Half Marathon completely failed on the field management, however inside venue their management was superb.

For a runner, the track / route management is equally important though.