The General Motors

This is a running related post and not anything else...

Found a good article about this 4-star general in the US army who is a very keen runner and how he uses running at the center of his philosophy. He says "This [running] is where the world's complications become clearer to me."

Interesting to note at the end of the article how with age this person now seems to be stepping down from the god like complex. The reporter after getting totally beat down by the severe competitive spirit of the general asks him his thoughts on a quote by E.E. Cummings: "Nothing measurable matters." The general replies "I'm increasingly thinking Cummings may be right, as you get older, you're less keen on having somebody start a stopwatch."
The general even finds out what his recruits and aides are made of by taking them out for a run. He says "when we bring a new guy in, I take him out for a run," and then the general will try to "waste" this person.

Read the article here: The General Motors

Another 21.1kms...

1 hour 51 minutes and 24 seconds...1:51:24. This number brings an immediate smile to my face...it is the time for the half marathon (HM) I ran in the Bangalore International Marathon 2007 that happened this past Sunday.
It was my best running performance till date. I sprinted the last 400 meters inside the stadium, quite a contrast to the dead horse like finish last time.
After training quite hard and setting the target of doing a sub 2 hour HM, I was still in doubt about doing a sub 2 hour race. Before the race I had calculated that I'll probably finish in 1 hour 57 minutes. That was too close for comfort. A single race day incident or delay or problem would push me over 2 hours. But nothing of that sort happened ;-)

The race for me was an amazing one. The weather was perfect...no Sun, cool breeze and good supply of nutrition by Mr. D during the run. D, sadly could not run but was sort of the hero of the day, handing out Electral and nutrition bars to S and me...Salaam to you D!
The split timings I was getting on my watch were just too good. I was at 5kms in about 24 minutes, then halfway (10.5kms) in about 52 minutes, ahead by nearly 3-4 minutes of my target. But there were still questions about losing time near the end and just running out of steam. But when I crossed the 16km mark I was about 6 minutes ahead of my previous best performance and at that point I knew I was having a good day. I paid attention to my strides and found that they were still decent. I was running with good 'form' and even my mind was fresh. It hadn't dulled down or anything. Finally when I entered the stadium I looked at the 400 meter track and just went for it.
Later I realized I ran the whole race and unlike previous races and practice runs, at no point did I feel like walking or did actually walk. I stopped twice to drink water that D was handing out and that total may have taken 25-30 seconds...

In the end my average speed for the whole 21.1kms was 11.4 kms/hour...
That's all... :-)

Bangalore Habba

...or should I say Bengalooru Habba! What the heck I still call Mumbai Bombay, anyway, the habba (meaning festival) is a really nice event that happens in Bangalore every year in December. It is usually about 10 days long and happens during the chilly December month which really reminds me of the Mood Indigo days from IIT...
This year’s Habba started on 30th November, you can check out the details on their web site. Click Here...
Some really good plays are there this time and the usual thriving mix of Carnatic, Hindustani, Jazz and Rock music concerts are there. The arts and crafts display that used to be put up on M G Road has been shifted to somewhere near Cubbon park...


This is one of Habba posters this time and I found it really funny. Gallate means creating trouble, sort of rioting or danga. I bet he won’t have that wide smile when you see him at the Habba ;-)

Naagin - Decibel

This rendition of that Naagin movie song on the guitar by an Indian rock band is so worth checking out. It is instrumental and the guy taps the heck out of the guitar. I don't know if the technique is hard or what and the notes are sort of repeated throughout the song but what innovation! So much fun to see someone trying out something like this, weird :)
The band is called Decibel. The mp3 is available from Decibel's website here.