Boston Qualification, wiggling big toe

The title of this post is a nod to Kill Bill where the protagonist says before embarking on her venegeful spree that she must first wiggle her big toe first!

For those of you not deluged with my immodest status updates on FB, I ran in the Avenue of the Giants Marathon 2011 y'day. I finished in 3:09:46. I was 7th in my age group and 18th overall.

This is a PB by 50+ mins for me. Shows the quality of my superman coach.

Thanks are in order to various people who cheered me including over a thousand runners/spectators at the race.

My modest target from the race was to run 20 miles in 2:20, a pace of 7 min a mile, mostly since I was using this race as a tune-up to a more serious attempt at a BQ on 5th June at the Rock n Roll San Diego Marathon. I had run a maximum of 18.5 miles in training before this race. So my coach and I were keen to ensure I got a quality run of 20 miles and then anything better would be a bonus. I got to the 20 mile mark in 2:21. Alarm bells had begun ringing at around mile 17-18 itself since I pulled my left hamstring then. I had been carrying a lower back injury for a while now, ever since I got back from my trip to Hawaii. That injury induced stress moved down to my leg over the course of the race and morphed into a nasty strain. However our gamble to run 7 min miles till mile 20 paid off as we knew I would have 50 mins to run the last 6.2. It almost didn't happen as I was about a minute off the pace at 3 hours. But some amazing prodding by the superman and pacing by a fellow participant (Thanks Anya) who finished 2nd among women (we ran quite a significant part of the race either together or within a few yards of each other. We also finished within seconds of each other).

Phew!

Onto San Diego and some much needed rest in the meanwhile.

Of course, this is an opportune time to plug my book again. Publishers are welcome to enquire :)