Hundred Pushups

Having struggled all my life trying to do 5 continuous pushups(for someone aspired to become a footballer, hands didn't matter I thought), doing hundred pushups is something unthinkable. The hundredpushups plan is a program that takes you to 100 continuous pushups in 6 weeks even if you can do less than 5 continuous pushups. The plan has 3 different columns for people with different capacities. While I don't have any hopes of getting to a 100 this lifetime, a 25 looked like a practical target for me. My initial attempt didn't last beyond the first two weeks where I improved my number to around 10.

By the time I started again when I was recovering from my knee problem, my number had dropped again in the 0-5 range. But this time I persisted and finished the first 2 weeks program, but could only muster only 12 continuous pushups after that and hence couldn't qualify for the third week. You need to hit at least 16 continuous pushups.

So I started from beginning and moved to the next column(5-10) now that I could do 10 pushups continously. The first week went well with one or two repetition of some days, but the second week looked like a steep climb. First workout of the second week itself took a week and the second one took more than a month. And this seems like a real wall that I can't climb without some steroids to beef up my puny arms(I have to remind you that I do have a pair of powerful legs btw, especially the left leg:).

But this was great progress anyway from what I could do before. So I am keeping at it and I guess things are improving, but at a very slow pace that may not be observable in a day or two or even weeks or months! But my continuous pushups went up to within striking distance of my target of 25, to 20, which is a descent number I guess. So I could get onto the third week's program, but I am planning to complete the second week's second column(for 5-10) before that.

But it is a very simple exercise using your body instead of any weights that can be done anywhere anytime without any extra gadgets. So I am going to keep doing the program and would let you know how it goes. I am wondering if anyone got to 100 from just 5 ever - that could have been a long drawn out program, not surely within 6 weeks! But the program looks well crafted to make some good progress and keep it interesting!

Organic Terrace Garden by Purna Organics

After realizing that it is not really hunky dory trying to do a terrace garden ourselves, we have got some help, at some cost off course, from Purna Organics to setup one, and with support services as well.

We have had a descent harvest of okra, carrot(most of them looked like potatoes but) and tomatoes(were good for salads, not the size we wanted) though monkeys raided and harvested it couple of times. But the plants were not really healthy and was regularly attacked by pests. Though the organic pesticides worked, pests did hurt the plants and the produce.

What we didn't do well ? Poor nutrition - it was written all around the plants. While we did add composts and some organic manure, it was needed more frequently. And the size of the garden was a bit big for beginners like us to chew - there were too many tomato and carrot plants. The mix was overly skewed. We should have thrown out some of the plants initially. Also the initial enthusiasm died down and we couldn't sustain the effort.

So we found Purna Organics and they seemed to be doing a good job at it, but with a bit of money(Rs.250/sqft). I met Mallesh, CEO of the firm and saw their demo OTG at their office. He sounded very reasonable and he seemed to have done his homework and experiments well. I was impressed, but leaving your garden to someone else was not something that we wanted to. Mallesh said we could try on our own may be after 6 months once we have a better idea of things and he will supply the materials in any case. And we needed some help anyway.

Money was a bit too much if you look at just investment and returns - for a potential return of 5K, we would be spending more than 25K. So the only question that remained was the money - may be I am not buying that flat panel TV this year, or a holiday(anyway we have to water the plants) that we haven't done for while, or that book shelf that we wanted:) In the end, we felt it was worth the money. In order to keep our appetite for doing some thing our own, we thought we would do some on our own as well.

So finally stuck a deal around the new year! It was installed in another week at our terrace.

2009 and Happy New Year!

2009 started with a flu after being flu-less for almost a year. Flu came back couple of more times - could have been the running (longer distances and higher pace) or just the flu! All in all a good year, but ended with a low having injured my knee running and the low impacted life(and blogging) in general. But it was an eventful year overall, the "green" bug really bit me during the year.

• Commute by cycle for 8+ months(suspended after knee trouble since October)
• A truly car free commute except for one day(to carry old clothes for N.Karnataka flood relief), and just 2 long drives.
  
• Terrace Gardening(that was a bit of surprise to myself - monkeys had a good share of our harvest though)
• Composting at Home
  
• Trained to run(ended up with an injury and a runners' low though)
• New job closer home(nothing exciting but a job!)
• Nishka growing at an amazing pace(it is fun)
• Free from colas, packaged juices, milk and junk food, mainly relied on tender coconuts and fruits and nuts
• Frugal(12K cycle was the major investment) and debt free at the moment.
  

No major goals for 2010 - need to keep myself healthy physically and mentally, keep running and biking and hope to get more returns out of the terrace garden.

Wish you all a happy new year!

New Running Shoe - Adidas Response Control

After going through a knee trouble that kept me off from running the Bangalore Ultra 2009, I was under therapy at Recoup. After couple of weeks of therapy, I was declared fit to run and started running. But the knee could last only about 30 minutes, the muscles got tighter and the same pain starts. So my therapist suggested a shoe insert for my pronated feet. I then figured out that I had used my current shoe ,which was a control shoe to handle the pronation, for more than 1400KMs which was way over the recommended distance of around 500-800KM, especially for people with overpronator like me. I also remembered that I didn't have any problem for the Ultra 2008 25K whereas I had problems at Kavery Trail Marathon 2008(and 09) - the difference was the shoe!

So I went around Adidas shoe shops in town, but my shoe, Adidas Response Control was out of stock and the newer shoes, Adidas SuperNova Sequence were comparatively expensive(INR 7K) as well. I cursed myself for not having picked up one when there was a 30% discount on Adidas shoes. So I was going to check Reebok and Nike shoes of the control variety. But I happened to be around the Brand Factory in Wilson Garden and just stepped in to check the shoes. They had my shoe and immediately picked it up at a 30% discount, INR 3700.

Now the problem is, this shoe is gone out of production and I may need it in another 8 months. Either I need to pick up another pair or shop around for another descent one with more money. With an average 80KM of running per month, it will be 600KMs in around 8 months. Not a good thing but. And remember this is crutch that will help you run, the real problems will be hidden for a while, before it resurfaces again when the shoe wears out. So the real problems need to be attended too - strengthening the muscles around the knee should be an important thing to do to keep me running till I am 100!

Vmware's Virtualzation Seminar Series - Bangalore 2009

Though I am not an IT guy, I attended Vmware's seminar series at Bangalore. Overall there were nothing new at the conference, and in fact reading the virtualization blogs would have been more productive use of the time at the conference.

It was at Leela Palace, one of the top hotels in town, but the conference room settings were a bit disorganized. Though there were many doors to the main hall, you need to enter through a door near the speakers. The rest of the place was packed with chairs. The breakout session was in a pretty small room which was cramped for space as well. It appears that VMware has been able to get good sponsorship from their partners in crime to offer this as a free one.

The morning sessions from Vmware India leaders were particularly dull. There was no passion in the top two people who talked about the market and features. In fact one of them almost said View from Oracle instead of Vmware, and it turns out that they hired her from Oracle recently. Not very impressive on stage at all - for such a hot product and company, they found it difficult to articulate the state of the product and vision, especially the director from Oracle who wasn't at ease with the products at all. Looks like Vmware have hired some typical boring mid-tier executives. Then the usual partner talk from the platinum sponsors followed, nothing really new - yes, we are lock step with VMware! But the HP guy did talk about non-x86 products and platforms to show their other offerings. But surely, VMware is the new king of infrasturcture software!

The talk from F5 on long distance V-motion and Vmware on View were interesting. Otherwise there were nothing new to call for a conference in my opinon.

Getting out of a Runners' Low

After nearly 2 years of consistent running, I have been laid low by an injury, pretty common among runners - ITB. I was in a training group, Runners High, to improve my running and ensure that I run properly without getting injured. It turned out that the training was a bit too much for me and I had to back off from the Bangalore Ultra-09 25K. Also there are other suspicious activity like cycling that I was doing during the training which could have worsened the situation. I thought I was taking it easy by not pushing for longer distances than last year by sticking to distances under 25K. Instead I was training for better timings, which was more injury prone I realize. The training programs were a bit more work than the Galloway programs that I was following. There were indicators that the training was a bit tough, I had a series of neck sprains and the knee started collapsing once the distances got more than 15K. But after the poorly paced half marathon at KTM, it was difficult to run even 10K when I decided to stop and take some action finally!

But it was a real low which was tough to endure. I couldn't do cycling or even skipping(jump) rope because everything hits the knee. Found it really difficult to get up and go swimming as well. Life in general was hit, hit badly with strong shades of blue for a while.

I turned to my trusted Orthopedician, Dr. Deepak Sharan who runs the Recoup clinics all over the city. The only sports med specialist I know of, Dr. Rajat(a runner himself), moved to Delhi with his clinic. The Anjanapura clinic, which was recently built, is pretty close to where I live. Dr. Deepak is a well known Repeitive Stress Injury(RSI) specialist and though he is not a sports specialist, most of the running injuries being RSI ones, he sure is a good doc to go to. He didn't need much time to diagnose the problem and the inflammation under the knee which was caused by the weak ITB was the problem, it was not just the ITB. It was very painful when he stuck his finger a bit below the knee. Treatment was manual therapy mostly, just massage out the tightness or inflammation. What I like about Dr. Deepak's treatment is the non-invasive nature of it - rarely does he prescribe any medicines except for some vitamins or other advanced therapy using some machines. While it takes a while to see some improvement, it works well! I have had some RSI problems earlier which was treated the same way. Needless to say, Dr. Deepak's diagnosis has always been spot on all the time. He is not that friendly with the patients, but what matters is the right diagnosis ultimately. And the approach to treating the problems have a holistic touch, not a short term quick fixes. He recommends yoga as a long term solution for many of the RSI problems.

After a little more than 2 weeks of trigger point manual therapy for a little more than 2 weeks, things look good. The main problem was the inflammation under the knee, which took some time to heal. ITB eased off within couple of days of therapy. Walking a bit was difficult during the first week of therapy, but things improved quickly and I am finally read to run again!

Lessons learned

• I don't need no training to run(that should have been straightforward!), I need to get back to the Galloway method of running which helped me run the distances. I just need to stick to that program and don't get distracted by time goals.
  
• Training to improve timing is wrought with danger, and the kind of fitness I am in, it is not worth it.
• My goals for running are to keep myself fit and enjoy the runs - the added pressure of time goals make the runs not so enjoyable, but more stressful. And to be fit, I need to be running for a long time
  
• Stop running if there is a problem - and fix it before you get back. It is really stupid to carry on with pain. Recoup is just round the corner!
  
• You don't really need the running "events" to enjoy your runs - that can be anywhere, choose the simplest thing that works! It also reduces the stress to prepare for an event.
• It is important to have another couple of other fitness activities to keep yourself occupied in case of an injury.
  

So I will carry on running, and see how much I can go and stop immediately when in trouble. Armed with the most natural running technique from Jeff Galloway, I sure want to keep running till I am 100 and enjoy it too !

Produce from the Garden

After more than 2 months of our foray into Gardening, we are harvesting vegetables - ladies' fingers are in regular supply, though the plants were lucky to survive the pest onslaught, picked up some carrots, which resembled like potatoes than carrots! The soil was a bit hard for it to go down easily and it got stuck there. Also the multiple plants in a single pot seems to have hurt the growth. From the top, it looked pretty healthy ones, but it was able to go down easily I guess. We are hoping that the next set of carrots would turn out good because the soil was prepared for carrots and the plant has enough space in a single pot.

The podland pink tomatoes are ripening, but with an orange shade though. There are couple of trusses with 3-4 tomatoes on most of the plants, but after that the next set of flowers didn't really produce anything.

Hopefully things will improve in the next round of cultivation and may be we need to seek help from some experts!