Mile-time-trial

Went to volunteer at the TeamAsha Mile Time Trial at the Palo Alto high school. Oh boy, what tracks they were... excellent surface. The kids here are pampered, I say!! Went there with my flip flops.. and couldn't resist running on the tracks, so, ran barefoot. It was great fun cheering runners on and pacing them - truth be said, running barefoot was so awesome (felt so light.. and more importantly the legs felt good). I was egging folks on, and just helping around, as we had sufficient volunteers for other stuff. And once everyone finished, the vols went for their time trials. I wasn't planning to do mine (first, I am not training with TeamAsha this year) but didn't mind running on that surface at all.. and if someone wants to time you and pamper you, grab it with both hands.. err.. legs. So I did that. And got a great kick out of it!

I ended up shaving about 21 seconds from my previous best to do a 6:36 mile. That means a sub-4hr marathon under ideal conditions. So, those hopes still stay alive.

After all, it looks like the legs are doing alright, with all the stretching and stuff. I have a 10k coming up in 2 weeks. Want to hit that in 55min. Let's see how that goes.. 

Playing to a gallery

It was a fun participating in the hole-in-one competition at Deep Cliff Golf Course. This is an annual event organized by the Rotary Club of Cupertino -- they hold qualifiers for ~3 weeks and winner from every day qualifies for the event. The proceeds of the qualifiers went to a different non profit association every day. I qualified on Asha for Educations's qualifier with a distance of 4ft to the hole.

Including sponsors and organizers, a total of 30 people teed off on this 165 yard par-3 hole. Every one got just one shot at it, and out of 30 people, just two made it on to the green! It is quite a tough hole with two bunkers and narrow fairway. The first one to get on the green was eventually the winner for the consolation prize for 'closest to pin' -- he got 3.5ft away from the hole. 3.5ft was the distance between him and a Mercedes SUV!!

It was my first experience of playing to the gallery, obviously.. and it was lot of fun!!