The San Francisco Marathon Kesari

I am glad to have stopped training for the triathlon, and to be running again. Running and biking are great, and so is swimming but hard for me to find the time. Have a couple of more shots this year.

I did the first half of the marathon, and unlike what a lot of people say, you don't actually have to wake up for the 5:30am start. I started at around 6:45 with group 7 (I think), and ran this year's race rogue, meaning I didn't enter but ran it anyway. It was a cold and foggy morning, and I wasn't sure I was going to do it until right before. I actually slept past my alarm, but made it up at about 6, and decided the only way was to drive. So drive I did.

I don't do anything serious in the morning without coffee. Driving into SF and running a half marathon qualifies as "serious", so I was glad to hit the 24 hour donut place on Lakeshore

Kesari, if you didn't know, is my favorite Indian sweet. In learning of what it is made, it is actually quite simple and decadent, but apparently babies like it too. I was happy to know that it is also an excellent pre-race meal, since I still had half a baking dish of it left after the previous Friday's Ganesa Puja.

Here's how to make kesari. It is a really good sweet to make for auspicious occasions, and it is way easy to make a lot . . .

California Dharma

The ability to manage multiple projects with poise and sustained initiative is an interesting skill to pursue. I think some people might call it multi-tasking, while others might call it neurotic. I sometimes ride the uneasy line between the two.

In the process of writing this blog, and starting to train for the Wildflower Triathlon, I have reopened up interests and passions that had been slipping in my life. Sometimes my obsessive mind becomes terribly focused on the activity that another activity actually enabled, and I neglect the former activity until the other runs out. This, I believe, is the definition of neurosis and is what leads me to spiritual practice. In a state of perfect wisdom, I believe this confusion subsides and pure light shines forth. These are the experiences I have when I am exerting myself on these runs and bike rides, but also in the moments of joyous creation that my overactive imagination fosters like meadows of wildflowers. Aaaah. The joy of creating! It is addictive and can make your soul very very dark if you let it. It must be turned to more expansiveness, more openness, more light. For I truly believe that those who can create beauty must experience some form of suffering.

I have been working on a number of projects, but most recently I have been developing a resource for spiritual explorers from all over the world to explore the dharma of California. It is here at the link below, and slowly but surely moving forward. The integration of this Sadhana and that is the true Sadhana of Gopalswami Ramakrishna.

But the exercise has continued, with another large SF park explored by trail run this past Saturday, three helpings of morning tennis, a 1600 yard swim and a belief that the story of getting to Treasure Island is linked to the pursuit of the great jewel of Eastern thought, the diamond thunderbolt known as the Vajra.

http://californiadharma.blogspot.com

Back in the saddle

Well, my laptop was stolen this weekend, giving me lots more time and reason to train (e.g. to get the horrible feelings of sadness and loss out of my system). I did two excellent runs this weekend, one about 5 miles on the Wildcat Canyon/Meadow Canyon trail from Inspiration Point, down into the canyon, and back up the other side (map coming soon here). Yesterday I did a 7.4 mile run on the Berkeley campus through a region called Strawberry Canyon, along the fire trails, and to the top of campus where the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Space Sciences Laboratory reside. The run through Strawberry Canyon was really magical, particularly on a clear and crisp Sunday morning -- you wind along the sides of many mighty hills and get views out over the Cal campus and towards the Bay and SF. My favorite part of this run was being able to see the trail ahead of you that skirts along the side of the hills -- it helped contribute to the sense of grandeur and magnitude of the landscape, seeing far ahead the path that would confront you.

I will have pics and maps soon. My cousin Dheepa, herself a triathlete, said that 12 weeks until the Treasure Island triathlon might be enough time for even me to get ready by, so am going to work towards that. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.......

Wildcat Canyon - Tilden Regional Park

The seasons are strange here in California. If the constant gray of Seattle makes people depressed, the constantly changing weather this time of year in California seems to make people edgy. People seem to get sick here more often, and the large range of temperatures that a day can fluctuate amongst reminds me that the climate is much more like desert here. But in these parts at least, the heavy rains make the landscape lush and rich which explains the wonderful gardens and produce. Don't hate on the rain.

This afternoon I ran what is one of my favorite runs in the East Bay -- an out and back climb from Inspiration Point to the top of Wildcat Peak along the Bay Area Ridge Trail. It is a rolling and undulating run with the option of both paved path and dirt trail for most of its length. It is nice to go back and forth. The landscape in Tilden is tremendous this time of year. It is an extremely rich green in parts, and there are many lovely fields of white and yellow wildflowers (or weeds as some might call them). There are many shades of green in the landscape here, something that wasn't the case as much in the Pacific Northwest.

As you wind around the Tilden hills, you run along a ledge above Wildcat Canyon, with views out over the Bay towards the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, the Bay Bridge and Oakland. For the final climb up the side of Wildcat Peak you are mirrored by this view as you suffer upwards along an uneven dirt path. Knowing that you get to bask in this view, and see over to the lakes and hills of the further East Bay keeps me moving diligently and focused up the short but steep climb. It is pure bliss, I tell you. Pure, unadulterated bliss. The fog and the wind today only made it more beautiful.

I thought today often of paying homage to the wildcat, and the Earth through physical exertion in the outdoors. It is sadhana, and it is important even if nobody else thinks so. Nature knows your path -- it just gives you the choice to struggle along it if you want to. It must be very amusing.

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The Three Bears

I had a major moment this past Friday in thinking about preparing for the Wildflower triathlon. Basically, I don't know that I am putting in the time and effort needed to actually complete it comfortably, and started looking into other events around that time that might give me a few more weeks to prepare -- the SF triathlon at Treasure Island is in late June, but it doesn't seem nearly as pretty as the Wildflower which made me think that I need to start busting some ass to get ready in 8 weeks. Still haven't swum in open water, and need to start doing multiple activities in a day to condition my transitions from event to event.

It really is amazing how much dedication and consistency it takes to train for an event outside of your comfort zone, and I am realizing that developing that consistency might take longer than I had thought. I am committed to doing an Olympic triathlon by this summer, and am happy with my progress thus far, but am realizing that I need to kick it into the next gear.

Since cycling is probably the activity I have been most consistent with over the past year, I have been prioritizing swimming and running thus far in my training. As those of you who cycle know, going for long bike rides can be a little bit of an ordeal from prepping your bike, getting your gear together and riding for many many hours to get in an acceptable workout. This Saturday I did my first long ride in a while, about 45 miles with extensive climbing and, as it turned out, a good deal of wind.

There is a very popular bike route in the East Bay called the Three Bears Loop, which entails a hilly loop around the San Pablo Dam Reservoir that has three major climbs (i.e. the Three Bears). I have done it once before with great joy, and so decided on this past Saturday (which turned out to be beautiful), to make that my reintroduction to long bike riding. One of the things I love about the Bay Area are the rolling undulating hills which, this time of year, are an iridiscent fluorescent shade of green and have all kinds of cows and wild turkeys and deer on them. I love talking to cows when I am out on my rides and big groups of them start to stare at me.

Although I am exploring a number of custom bike and run mapping tools (recently MapMyRide, everytrail.com and MapMyRun), I still find many of these tools to be cumbersome and a little unnecessary. Especially when Google Maps allows you to draw routes in maps and get distances (but apparently not elevations yet) without the need to sign up for another one of these services. I also think it is unfortunate that cue sheets in these apps don't seem to be easily exportable (I copied and pasted and emailed to my iPhone), and that I can't get a GPS-enabled cue sheet on my iPhone that would prompt me to turn where I need to.

In addition, embedding the MapMyRide map into a website or blog includes a whole bunch of extraneous marketing collateral outside of just the map, which I find to be visually overwhelming. Google Maps also allows you to view your rides in Google Earth, which is one of my current favorite ways to waste time at my computer. Am using Earth's new "tour recording" feature to do fly throughs of some of my routes, but still working on getting them tight.

And although there is no relation between the Three Bears Loop and the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it is interesting that that story is very much about the Buddhist Middle Way (Madhyama-Pratipad) which emphasizes the importance of finding balance. I wonder if some Buddhist scholar or Western literary critic has written a paper comparing Goldilocks to the Buddha, and the Three Bears to the challenges posed to the Buddha by Mara when he was struggling to attain enlightenment.


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Finding Balance

So, back to training. Have been continuing to up my swimming, and yesterday did 5 400 yd segments in the pool at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA. I am not a huge fan of the pool there since it is a little grimy on deck and near the showers, but it does seem to be one of the few indoor pools in the area, and it is open for lap swim basically all day.

One of my major training efforts right now is to learn to breathe on both sides since this is very helpful in open water. In trying to breathe on my left side when swimming recently, I found that turning my head to the left that far started some wierd pressure pain in my left ear (I wonder if this happens to other people). It made me realize how lopsided my stroke must look in the water, since I am so clearly favoring the side I am breathing on. What I tried yesterday was using a kickboard with my head in the water, and only breathing on my left side. Interestingly, what I learned with the kickboard is that to breathe on my left side, I actually need to let my legs and hips rotate over onto their side as well. By not doing so, I can't get enough rotation to take a breath which is what was messing me up when swimming normally.

The second skill I worked on was the Balanced Body Position drill I learned a few weeks ago at TNT. This time I put a kickboard under my pelvis to give me a little more buoyancy to take breaths. It worked pretty wonderfully, as it was still incredibly challenging to stay moving with my hands at my sides and thrusting with only kick, but I was able to actually make it many lengths of the pool, thereby conditioning a lot of the core muscles I will need to do it without the kickboard eventually. Making up workouts and techniques to teach oneself new skills when training, particularly swimming, is a pretty fun little hobby. It makes the whole act of training feel creative and intellectual, something which I don't think most people realize that training really is.

Here is a shot of the Downtown Y in Berkeley:



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(Re) Commitment

So I need to update my training calendar, but needless to say, I have been training. The best thing about having an event you are shooting for is that whenev4444rrer the question comes up of whether I should go to the gym or work out, the answer is almost always Yes. I hadn't realized how rainy it got this time of year in the Bay Area, and it has made me really happy to be a member of a gym. Got on the x-country cardio machine this week and starting to lift weights, and got 2 solid swims in. This week I am going to start spinning in the morning.

I had my first injury for the first few days of this past week, but feel blessed that I haven't gotten sick yet. My calf turned to cement last week in the pool from an old tennis injury, and it took a few days to get it limber again. Overall, I can see noticeable changes in my physique and performance and am reminded of how wonderful exercising outdoors has been a part of my life.

SO, A word of disappointment:

If you train with TNT, they ask that you commit to your pledge amount by a certain date on your credit card, so that they aren't putting out a whole bunch of money and time if you aren't going to raise the money. It is called re-commitment. It makes sense but for triathlons (and the Wildflower in particular), this date is this coming Friday March 6th. And so I would have to put 3000$ on my credit card on Friday and then hope to meet the goal by mid-April. I already have multiple people who said they would donate, and an amazing shout out to Peter Rich for actually donating. But given that I can't afford to put 3k on my credit card this week, I have decided to just go forward training for the triathlon on my own and not raise funds for TNT right now.

Golden Gate Park

From Ramesh In Training

One of the best things about my new home in the Bay Area is running in Golden Gate Park. I try to do it as often as I can when I go into the city, because there is something really special about that place, and it seems to be best experienced by running.

I have basically stuck to the main roads every time so far, and every time I am completely happy. t's been about ten or fifteen times now. Getting to know the same routes is a wonderful part of running through natural wonder as I learned in Seattle. If there is something I am truly proud of in my life, it is how much time I have spent running in forests. I am glad this will only continue to grow here in California. Some of the best runs I have ever done were last year in the cypress forests in Point Lobos and along the Monterey Bay, and I haven’t even started exploring Marin by trail yet.

For now, when I go to Golden Gate Park, I park behind the Flower Conservatory and run down to the main road (JFK, I think) and follow it past the Da Young and then a creek starts to form along the path. The first time I got to that creek and waterfall, I was SO happy -- and every time since, the negative ions continue to fill me with joy. The sound of rushing cold water at your feet, and the amazing stands of eucalyptus take you far away from being in an urban center. The setting of the waterfall always reminds me of New Zealand. If you keep going, you get to a windmill and the ocean opens up with beautiful cliffs and crashing waves. Every time I see it, it really does fill my heart with joy. Here is the view:


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Here is the view down JFK in Streetview. You can see the route I did last time in my training map.



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Fists

SO, I am really trying to find ways to make this blog exciting, because frankly, the story of an Indian math teacher running and biking around and telling you what he is doing seems a little light on depth.

But here is the thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have my blog set up so that I can post things from my iPhone directly to it, like workouts, pictures and eventually maps, and am working on some short posts to explain how to do it through the iPhone and your Google account. I hope you guys are checking out how awesome my training calendar is -- it only took 10 minutes to set up with my Google calendar, and I can upload workouts to it from my iPhone when in the gym or after a run. It makes staying on training schedule so much easier.

Some people tell me my fundraising link doesn't work, but it seems to work for me. If you read this, try it and let me know if it works -- And donate money! It really is for a good cause. I found out the other day that a friend of mine has cancer -- sarcoma. He is really young and a solid person, and it sucks. I am going to see if I can make him one of my honorees even though he doesn't have blood cancer.


The other day I did a fist workout in the pool on my Half-Ironman triathlete cousin Karthik's suggestion, which entails swimming with your fists. It was interestinghow little force you can create off of your fists, and how it makes you use your core to keep yourself moving and afloat. On the first day of TNT group training we had to do a swimming drill called Balanced Body Position, where you keep your hands at your sides and breathe like a breaststroke and go all the way across using only kick. I couldn't do it for more than 2 or 3 seconds at a time before I got all spastic. I don't like breathing that way, and couldn't get enough thrust in my kicks to get deeper breaths. But I can tell how much more confident I will be in the water if and when I do learn to do it. Here is a link to the drill where they breathe on their side, which might be what I try next:



And I got new running shoes -- they're red (dark oxide, actually)! Been doing lots of night runs lately.

The iPhone and Albany Hill

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A pic from my run today.
From the bench u can see the GG bridge

I am experimenting with a few different free iPhone applications to track my runs and bike rides as I train, since I would like to see them in a map and track my times and distances. So far, I have been trying two applications: Trailguru and RunKeeper. Both have their pluses and minuses, but neither is nearly as accurate as necessary to be a meaningful training tool.

As an example, a few weeks ago I used Trailguru when a friend and I climbed up Cantelow Peak. As I waited for him for 5 minutes at the top, my altitude changed by by 50 feet without me even moving! The Trailguru said we had ridden about 4 miles when we had actually done 10, and when I would look at the maps it would make, it would have me riding through city blocks. In addition, I couldn't figure out how to upload the map data to a Google Map or use the Google Earth feed that they publish on your personal fitness account. This may be due to insufficient effort on my part, but the lack of accuracy in tracking my route made me none too enthused to invest a lot more time.

Today I used Runkeeper to keep track of my favorite "out of the house" run. Gilman to the Ohlone Greenway, then shoot down Solano and up Albany Hill to the park. A huge downside of Runkkeper is that it doesn't have the ability to take pictures while inside of the application (unlike Trailguru), which made it necessary to enter and exit. This did stop the clock when I wasn't running, making the final readout (3.92 miles in 35 minutes) pretty accurate. But the report that got uploaded was not the same as what was on my phone - I couldn't figure out how to export my map data on the first try, but I hope there is a way (just like Trailguru).

The picture above is the view of the setting atop Albany Hill -- the smell of eucalyptus at the top on a wet day like today was invigorating. From the bench (and the swing) you can look out over the Bay and see the Golden Gate Bridge. It is amazing at night, to see the city all lit up, which I have been doing the past week after work.

Runkeeper screenshot:


Trailguru screenshot:

Welcome

So, I did it. I signed up to raise $3000 to be part of Team in Training and things just kicked off officially last week. I have been back in training since the New Year, as a major resolution in my life was to get myself back to the physical discipline that I had lost for the past few years. In only a few weeks, I can already see it making a difference.

The event I am training to do is the 2009 Wildflower Olympic Triathlon down in Monterey County. It is a 1.5km swim in a lake(.9 miles), 40km bike ride in hilly terrain (26 miles) and a 10km run (6.3 miles) on both road and trail. The Wildflower is a big festival from what I can gather, and we will all be camping out together in the state park for the weekend; it is often called the Woodstock of triathlons.

I've done a few endurance events before, from the Vancouver Marathon in 2003 (3:49:55) and the Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day in 2005 (154 miles, 10,000 ft of climbing in 10 hours of riding), but have never completed a triathlon. To be honest, I am a little scared of the open water and one of the reasons I am excited to be part of TNT is to help gain some confidence in the swim section from the coaches and captains.

Being part of a team is great. People support each other, we train together and it is nice to see other people willing to push themselves to make their lives better while helping others. Training involves a lot of suffering -- I've been running a lot again (got up to 6 miles on the treadmill yesterday), and it hurts. Been hitting the pool again lately also, and by the end of a 30 minute workout my arms and back feel like Jell-o. But you have to fight through it, and I love it.

I am going to start posting pictures, training advice I get from TNT, information on Leukemia and Lymphoma and cool places to train that I find in the Bay Area as things keep going. Been exploring Tilden and Wildcat Canyon Parks by bike and foot, and have been seeing some amazing things. Am still learning how to post pics from my iPhone.

Working on getting my fundraising site pimped out, but here it is right now ...

http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/wildtri09/rnarasiman

Please leave comments with fundraising or training tips. Or general positive encouragement -- getting to the Wildflower finish line isn't going to be a walk in the park.



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Training Map

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Slideshow of Training Pictures