I love deepzoom. I posted an earlier image out of my window to try out the technology. It is pretty addictive

So when I went to Coonoor recently, I shot a bunch of panoramic images hoping to stitch them and share. Here is one of them…

I don’t have equipment to shoot a technically perfect panorama but flaws aside, I think the technology allows to share extremely large images with exceptional details. Enjoy exploring the nice vista and have fun finding all the flaws…

To those interested, the panorama is made of 21 raw files and stitched together in photoshop elements. Each image was shot on a Nikon D200, with a 35mm f/2 AIS manual Nikkor lens. I shot them in a sequence by standing in approximately the same place and turning a bit for each shot. Shot hand held and approximately the same exposure settings. Had to adjust exposure to match the brightness of each shot. Some minor exposure adjustments (eye balling) were made in Photoshop Lightroom. The stitched image it a 500MB Photoshop (psd) file and when saved as a high quality jpeg, is about 70MB. Converted using the deepzoom composer and hosted on this site.

If you are reading via a rss reader, please visit the site for the deep-zoom content.

You might have noticed, interspersed among ramblings about cycling and commuting, I do a bit of running too. I am not a fast runner and usually do not feel the effort required to transport myself to and from races is worth it if I un for less than an hr. So I usually sign up for longer runs. That way, I can exert for longer with support (water bananas etc) which is not possible when I run (train) on my own.

Milk Run on the other hand is a short race that I have been involved in for a few years now. Though it is short, I don’t mind as it is for the sake of charity. Beyond is a primary beneficiary and it is nice organization conducting number of programs for children. The organizers have been learning the ropes for conducting a mass event and have improved much over the past few years. They were lucky too as the weather turned out much cooler and breezy this year.

I signed up for a 9.4Km run but was a bit delayed getting to the starting point. So I decided to join the community 6Km Run. While I was pacing around the starting point, the Kids 6Km Dash was starting and I figured I would downgrade myself once again and joined the kids group . As I used to be a volunteer with beyond, I recognized a few kids and some of the staff too. I blended in pretty well and I figured I can take the time to motivate some of the kids. One of the little girls took to me and wanted me to accompany her. I continued my run at the kids walking / jogging pace and motivating her to keep up and making sure she can get to the end point.

Well long story short, It took about an Hour to complete the 6K but I completed with the kid. She felt a sense of accomplishment and I felt good for doing a good deed. Happiness all around and I suppose that was the intention of the event. Great success!

It is a kick start for my training to the half Marathon in 6 weeks time.

I have been asked by numerous people on how my marathon went. Fact be told, it did it pretty badly. I can attribute my poor performance on a lot of things but digging deep down, it boils down to lack of discipline in training. As readers will know that I ride my bike regularly (and some may not know, I lost reasonable body fat). As a consequence, I figured that I can get away with just a few runs to keep the muscles and joints oiled.

Come the day of the run, it dawned that probably keeping the joints oiled is not really sufficient. The day started as had my previous runs with me breathing mu neighbors carbon dioxide and for the first km or so it is pretty tricky to get on to a steady pace. But luckily I managed to get to a part of the road where people were more or less at my pace and no overtaking going on. So I got on to a steady trot of 6:30-6:45 min/km.

After about 10 Km in the run, I was thinking hey this seems not too bad. I am about 25% in the race, am feeling pretty loose and legs are feeling good. May be, just may be, I can try to reach a sub 5Hr run. I figured there is no point in hurrying and kept up with my pace. With water points coming in at regular intervals and me taking a short breather once in a while, my pace went down to about 7 min/Km and when I reached the half way point at East coast park, I clocked in at 2:35. That was about what I did for my 1/2 marathon last year and I was thinking. Hmm this is not bad. May be I can sneak in with a bit of sprinting and fast walking and still finish around 5Hr mark.

Then it hit me like a rock. My feet started to ache (No blisters or cramps). it was simply pain from repeated pounding of my body weight on my feet. I could not really continue running. So I decided I would walk a few Km, then run a few and walk a few and repeat the cycle. But once I started walking, it was downhill all the way. I had to take a few breaks to massage my feet and rub in some of the muscle relaxant. I was tempted to get a massage from one of the cute girls (once a bastard, always a bastard) but decided against it. I tried to keep a brisk walking pace but the feet rubbing stops got the better of my timing and I ended up doing the second half in about 3.5 Hrs.

What makes it worse is that the finishing time was slower than last year’s 5:54 (I did that with a seriously hurt meniscus).

The positive side was that I was never really tired (of course continuous supply of bananas and 100+ helps a lot) and I had enough stamina to last the distance and more. But to take away a lesson, I should make sure I put in more disciplined runs to get the bones and muscles acclimatized to the punishment they take during long distance runs.

My start to commute was a bit tentative today. I was expecting my calf to act up a bit but as it turned out, the ride was comfortable and am back up to speed. That is good news all around.  As I mentioned, I had a stiff lower calf during the run and had to take the whole of Sunday to relax. Monday was better but I still had some residual strain which had almost disappeared by the end of the day.

I was telling my dad that endurance is measured by how much one can do when the chips are nearly down and am glad that a day after my half marathon, I am back to commuting again. I suppose I have come a little bit since I started proper training in May’06 and my investments are being put to good use.

And I could not help but hum along aerosmith’s song “Back in the saddle” as I rode.

Well, some of you would be aware I took part in the half marathon on Sunday and so did some friends. My training this year was intermittent due to various reasons but I kept up the aerobic end of the bargain by doing a lot of cycling. So as I neared the run day, I put in some runs (8-10K) and was happy I was clocking decent timing (6:15 min/Km). However, I know since I have not trained my legs for running, I am going to have modest targets.

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I set my targets (optimistic 2:15 hrs, realistic 2:20 Hrs and pessimistic 2:34 Hrs) before the race day. My initial target of doing a 2:06 (21Km at 6:00 pace) seemed too far fetched and 2:34 is what I did last year. The target seemed achievable if my legs did not complain. I started with a nice trot – felt like I could keep going for a long while at the pace (about 6:15 after a few km). since I knew the route sketchily, I set some intermediate targets:

1. Entering ECP
2. Starting Benjamin Shears bridge
3. Fort Road
4. East Coast park (U turn) – my domain
5. Fort Road
6. Start of Nicoll Highway – my domain again
7. End point

As I was reaching the Fort road end, I figures that the route along east coast park was about 8 Km. That was the usual route I used to run and enjoyed the run as the sun came up. The problem however was that east coast park is a narrow road (as compared to the 3+ lanes along ECP / Nicoll highway) and the human traffic was pretty heavy. Motivation was easy to come by – I look for some pretty babe and keep pace with her (yea I sound sexist, so sue me). So I cycled for a while between green top, tight white, short pants, great legs etc… Too may to list down here. Suffice to say, these events are great to bump into very fit girls in tight outfits.

Well I guess I got into a bit of problem around the 17 Km point and had to stretch, apply muscle relaxant and walk for a while. That slowed me down quite a bit. I was almost on target for a 2:18 finish but the walking slowed me down considerably and I finished up at 2:23. Better than last year but I suppose I can improve a lot more. May be a 2:06 or even a sub 2:00 next year is not too far fetched. I suppose a more disciplined training routine would help.

At the end point, the crowd was pretty heavy and I skipped on getting the isotonic (fearing the queue). But as luck would have it, as I was heading out, there was this pretty babe who probably took pity on me and offered a 100Plus that she got after queuing up. Thank goodness, for such nice people still exist

In two separate incidents, I encountered the issue of boredom while running. One person mentioned that it is difficult to run alone as there is not much motivation to do so. And the other was of the view that running was inherently slow and hence not as much fun as is cycling.

To me, I think running or any form of activity that involves long duration of time with little change in surroundings, is Zen. In this point of view, one should run for the sake of running – The presence or absence of other runners should not affect ones discipline. If it does, then this is not what one should be doing. I guess the same point of view goes for anything one does – work, hobbies, traveling etc… As long as the purpose is clear, it would be a joy to be involved.

Anyway, enough philosophizing. I have literally a few miles to go before I sleep…

Just as I was about to start for my run yesterday, my brother tempted me to try running in the gym for a change. There is a good reason for running in the gym instead of running by the beach – it saves time. As it works out, when I do run outside, I stop a couple of Km before my house, get something to drink and walk back the 2 km to cool down. This results in adding about 30 mins to the routine. In effect, I have a sunk cost of 45 minutes whenever I run.

Instead when I hit the gym, my fixed cost goes down to about 15 minutes instead. The reminder, I could spend reading or sleeping Sounds like a good deal.

However, the flipside is that running in a gym is extremely boring. There is nothing to look forward to. I cannot motivate myself to run up till the jetty, the light house etc. Instead, I have to stare at the blank wall in front. Running becomes a chore and the only thing I can distract myself with is to run against the clock and put on some music. Further, I seem to prefer the fresh air (relatively at least) outside.

Guess if I need to save some time and enjoy fresh air, I will have to change my routine. May be I will prepare my drinks at home and chill them before heading out for run. This way, I could run all the way back home and get my drink. As for the cooling down walk, I will have to give a miss. It does not add much value anyway if I spend enough time stretching after the run.

Have you run before? Long distance? If you did and set personal targets to reach, you would know that the process helps you to discover your limits and time after time surpass them.

I started serious running last may. It is part of my long term plan to change my lifestyle. That is a story for another day and let me focus on the topic at hand. Before I started running with targets, I had a strond belief that I was not built for running. For one, I get serious cramps if I attempted running for more than a few minutes. That got me to thinking that I was probably built more for sprints than endurance workout. But with a bit of reading, motivation and soul searching, I figured that I should probably focus on improving my endurance and started dabbling in a few forms of areobic sprots – running and cycling being the prime priorities.

Organised races provide you with motivation and work towards targets you can set. Not getting into a discourse, the point is that if you have a deadline to achieve some targets, it helps a lot in sticking to a disciplined routine. I subscribe to this philosophy (atleat partially) and look forward to atleast 2 races this year. the Half marathon in August and the full marathon in December.

After slacking and resting my arse for the good part of the early year, I decided it is time to take the plunge again and get back to fighting fit form. Starting now, there is 12 weeks to prepare before the Half. That is a good time to prepare your fitness to complete the distance but too short if your target is aggressive.

My target this time around is to run the distance at a pace of 6 min / Km. That is very aggressive from my current stare of fitness. I am able to do about 9 km at 6:30 / Km tops today. So, how do I go about shaving 30 seconds off a Km over a distance of 21 Km?

I don’t know.

But What I do know is that once you starting pushing yourself, you will find renewed energy and smoke barriers. The pushing should be gradual and disciplined. The next 12 weeks is goign to look somewhat like this:

• Week 1 – Week 6: Endurace wrkout focussing on distace. Start with a 30 Km per week routine and increase to a 45 Km Per week routine. Hoping to keep the pace at 6:30 and probably reduce by 10 seconds.
• Week 6 – Week 9: INterval training coupled with endurance workout. Start with a 35 Km per week and increase to 45 km per week. Intend to have short bursts of speed and maintain 5:45 for a Km and reach a 6:00 average on shorter runs (up to 9 Km).
• Week 10 – Week 11: Do long distances (18 Km) at 6:15 pace and generally taper down the effort before the Race day.
• Week 12: Race day. Target a 2:06 for the Half.

I believe the difficult part will be stage 2 – doing interval training. Lets see…

And if you find me shagged during the coming weeks, note the shagging part happened outdoors

run like a maniac.

* The title is a take on one of the coolest tunes from pat metheny – And so may it secretly begin.