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Week 16 training and my first outdoor camping trip

After the rough 20 miler last weekend, I was not able to run any of the mid week runs this week. But I did manage to run the 12 miler weekend in the hilly (compared to flat arse Illinois) roads of Wisconsin. Looking back at it, I don’t know, if it was prudent to run on a county highway at night without any visual alerts (reflective dressing, LED etc) on me. It was a tough run, but I took it one hill at a time and I have two proud bleeding nipples to show for it!! :).

I was in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Dells to be precise) over the weekend on a camping trip with the good folks from Team Asha. It was great to see all the runners at one place and it was my first outdoor camping trip. I did stay in log cabins before, but this was the first time I had to pitch a tent. And for those that haven’t done it before.. it is NOT so difficult :). You just have to spend a hour of so, figuring out what the hell you are doing, or take a few minutes and read the instructions :).

Much fun was had with food, liquor and music!! 🙂

[The Gang]

[How many runners does it take to pitch a tent??]

[Cool new Asha Running Shirts]

[Important Stuff]

[Rohit showing off his volleyball skills]

[Sri getting ready to make killer omlettes]

[Is that fun or what??]

More pictures here..[http://flickr.com/photos/kudithipudi/sets/72157607569023137/]

September 30, 2008 by Fun Photography Uncategorized 2

Skyscrapers, McDonald's and weasels…

During dinner with a friend recently, we brooded on these three topics..

  1. Skyscrapers : My friend lives on the 34th floor of a 47(?) floor high rise and we were discussing if that constituted her living in a skyscraper. Both of us couldn’t remember how many floors a building had to have, to be designated as a skyscraper. Intrigued, I fired up my trusted friend, Google, and found out that there is NO precise definition of how many stories or what height makes a building  a skyscraper!! So in essence, if you are living in a 10 story building in middle of North Dakota (no offense intended to people living in this state), you are considered to be living in a skyscraper :-). Was proud to find out that Chicago had one of the first skyscrapers in the world!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyscraper).
  2. McDonalds : The Rock N Roll McDonald’s at 600 North Clark Street in Chicago used to be one of the highest grossing McDonald’s in the world, before the one in Red Square, Moscow, Russia opened up..This used to be one of my favorite McDonald’s. You could always count on some fresh fries after a night of clubbing in the gold coast :). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_N_Roll_McDonald%27s)
  3. Weasels : Finally, we spoke abt Weasels and wondered why the weasels got associated with weasels!! :).. For an animal that looks so cute, I cannot for the life of me figure out why it got associated with such a bad meaning.. I haven’t been able to find the history of this yet. If any of you do, pls post a comment.
September 29, 2008 by Fun Rantings Uncategorized 0

HOWTO : Use find and grep together

If you ever wanted to search for a particular text in certain types of files in Linux, you can use the following combo of find and grep

find / -name \*.xml -type f | xargs grep -i “text_to_search”

I used *.xml (note the \ before *) as the mask in the filename to look for all XML files.. then I piped this to grep using xargs.

A colleague pointed out that I can do the same by using

grep -r o-i “text_to_speech”

September 23, 2008 by HOWTO Linux Uncategorized 2

A couple thousand more reasons to run the marathon

I was watching a recent episore of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” (sports show on HBO), which had a story about the plight of “debt” children from India. These children (in the cities of Meerut and Jalandhar) are forced into child labor due a debt their family got into. The terms of the debt so bad that the family never gets to pay it off. The children are then forced to work for nickels to stitch footballs. While the poverty of the family plays a role in this situation, an educated parent wouldn’t have allowed this to happen. If these folks had access to programs run by organizations like ASHA, they would have probably have gotten better paying jobs and their children wouldn’t have to be in this situation.

Running a marathon is a hard task, but nothing compared to the plight these children go through. I am proud to be helping eradicate such things from happening in the future. Help me raise money for ASHA, by clicking on this link (http://ashanet.org/chicago/teamashawiki/index.php/Runners/VinayKudithipudi) and donating whatever amount you feel is appropriate.

I have found my inspiration.. have you?

September 23, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Rantings Uncategorized 1

Week 14 & 15 training update

The last two weeks had been a bit crazy at work due to the recent hurricane hoopla we exeprienced here in the US. I was barely able to keep up with the mid week and weekend long runs. And I oficially missed the 4th race I registered for this year. I planned to run the Banco Half Marathon, last weekend, but wasn’t able to due to a hectic work schedule. I am so proud of the folks that ran it though. It was pouring all morning and I can only imagine how difficult it would have been to run in soggy shoes and clothes.

The 20 miler this weekend was tough. I started off strong and ran ~13 miles without any issues. Then the heat and humidity started to kick in and I had to literally walk the last 3 miles.

September 23, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Running Sports Uncategorized 0

Did anyone notice?

That the folks at McDonald’s are once again aggressively pushing the “super size” meals? It was interesting that, they stopped doing that after the backlash against the “high calories” and the obesity caused by these meals a couple of years ago. Do you remember the “Super Size Me” movie from 2004?

Looks like it is back to business as usual :-).

September 9, 2008 by Food Fun Rantings Uncategorized 0

Quotable quotes from the Conventions..

Quotes from the recent Democratic and Republican Conventions..

Democrats : Bill Clinton “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.”

Republicans : Sarah Palin “‘In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.

September 6, 2008 by Politics Rantings Uncategorized 0

Joys of running and week 13 training

You know what one of the biggest joys of running is?? You can eat a full sized steak, some mussels with beer and top it all of with a tripe fudge chocolate with caramel and ice cream… and still not feel guilty about it :-). That was my dinner last night with my friend Brian and I was able to run 18 miles today without breaking a sweat (alright.. I am exaggerating here 🙂 ).

Another successful week of training. Was able to do all the mid week runs and the long run. Hopefully, will be able to keep it up till the marathon.

September 6, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Running Sports Uncategorized 0

Confessions and Week 12 training..

As most of you saw, I only ran 10 miles in week 11. I was supposed to run 16 miles that Saturday. I ran for 10 miles and did the one thing that any runner would dread to do.. I stopped, gave up and took a cab back to the starting point. I was exhausted from running in the sun and thought that I would have a sun stroke.. Everyone, I spoke with said that I did the right thing by listening to my body..But long distance running is as much  (or more of) a mental challenge as it is a physical one. I felt crappy the whole day when I remembered that I gave up..

That night I was going through my e-mails and read all the encouraging and supportive e-mails, I received from friends and familly when I told them that I was running the marathon this year, to raise money for uneducated and unprivileged kids in India.. I felt that I had a mission to accomplish and that I couldn’t give up on these kids. And did I kick butt this week :).. I woke up at 4 in the morning on Saturday and ran the 16 miles I missed last week. And not only that.. I also increased my speed to an average of 10 min/mile.. Thx guys..

September 3, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Running Sports Uncategorized 0