Scaling the Mount

My cousin, who works at b'lore had come to my uncle's place. He runs often, getting in 3 runs/week including a longrun during the weekend. When I met him yesterday night, he was pretty excited about running to the St. Thomas mount and back, stating that it would be a great "hill" workout. The distance as measured by him, from Adayar to Mount and back was around 17kms. I wasn't as much worried about the distance as those 'killer' hills at the mount. My left knee was not in a good condition and I didn't want to risk a long-term injury by doing that workout. So I suggested that we do a flat course..We finally decided that depending on how I felt in the morning we would decide the route.

I had put a night-out the previous night and had trouble falling asleep yesterday night...I kept looking at the clock and the last time I saw it, it was around 1:30 am. I fell asleep but had nightmares about the run....I got up at 4:15 am, we did some warmup and we decided to go ahead with the original plan.

We walked around half kilometre, till we hit the main road. I set my stopwatch and off we went.
I had two small 200 ml bottles, one in each pocket, while my cousin had gotten a fuel belt which had 5 small bottles placed evenly around the belt so that when you wear the belt, it fit you snuggly and you wouldn't even notice it being there. I kept sipping water every 10 minutes.We were going at a moderately slow pace of 9 min/mile...My knees didn't give me much trouble at this pace.We were really surprised at the amount of traffic on the roads at this hour... We hit Kathipara Junction in 30 minutes..We had little trouble crossing over to the other side as the vehicles were moving at a pretty good pace.
We had to run single file from here on as there was no foot-path or side-walk to run on!!..Some corners were really dangerous and we had to be really cautious watching out for vehicles...
We soon reached the turning that lead to the Mount. Man, what a change in ambience...lots of greenery and birds chirping around and what a pleasant time of a day it was to be running in the military quarters.
My cousin warned me as we approached the start of the steep climb to the top. We just slowed down to a 12 min/mile pace and just slugged it out. The last 50 - 100 metres is pretty hard. I walked this stretch...We were finally at the summit. The view from here was simply fantastic. Only the Pallavaram hills stood taller than we were. We decided to do that hill when he returned to Madras again.
After a brief stop, we headed down the hill and believe me downhill is a lot tougher on the knees and I thought I would have to stop after a few minutes...But luckily I felt better once we got down the hill...It was 1 hr since we had started and I felt like I had just warmed up, but I am not sure my cousin felt the same.. The return was more or less eventful, I picked up speed as I approached the Anna University but my friend was wobbling a bit. He asked me to go ahead, so I kept increasing the pace till I reached my uncle's place..It had taken me a total of 1hr 45mins...
We had a post run discussion and reached a consensus that the run was simply great and out of the world and that we shall try out some of those hills in Pallavaram next time or run a flat stretch of 20 kms....