Intro

This blog as might be apparent from the title has to do with running, biking and basically other outdoor individualistic sports, sometimes extreme, such as rock climbing . But don't be surprised if you find articles on work, personal life, music and even philosophy, this blog is an exception in this aspect in the blogosphere of running blogs and I am trying to revamp the blog to make it more runner friendly. You might want to look at the sidebar titled 'categorised', which as is obvious, categorizes my posts into different areas of interest.
The other thing that might interest many people is a section on 'running videos' and 'general videos' on the side bar, which I keep updating now and then.
I plan to bring in more posts on running and biking, with some added colour, so as to make them 'complete'. That's about it for now.
As a post-note, I have run a half-marathon, but I am yet to attempt a marathon, which through some concerted effort and time should happen in the future, but that ofcourse is not the culmination of this blog, it would on the contrary be something to jumpstart this blog onto new vistas.




Friday, September 23, 2005

Waking up

When do you sleep and when do you wake up(this tone reminds me of Godsmack - serenity lyrics)? Do you sleep regularly and do you need to sleep regularly?
When I sleep, atleast, when I am in the campus is completely variable. Depends on a lot of factors..
Do I have some deadline to be met tomorrow? Am I completely jobless(read idle)?
Take the example of reading a technical paper...
The time taken for finishing a paper, would be directly proportional:
1) to the number of pages.
2) The amount of technicality involved in the paper.
3) Any additional reading requirement to understand the paper.

Now most of the papers would take an average of 4 - 6 hours of reading time..Having said that, when is the best time to do the same..Again, you can list out the ideal conditions to do the same:

Period of time having :
1) the least average decibel level
2) Minimal external stimulii (someone knocking on door,etc).

I have found from experience that the time period 12 am - 7 am satisfies the above constraints..
But, ofcourse you wouldn't use the whole of the above time..You have two clear options now..
1) Sleep at 3 am(Having done the reading of paper).
2) Get up at 3 am and do the reading till you finish it.

Technically speaking, both of the above sub-timeperiods are equivalent or the same...But there is one difference..It's got to do with the natural biological cycle or rhythm which favours the latter.
Hence the saying 'Early to bed and early to rise makes you healthy,wealthy and wise' might actually do one a lot of good in terms of perfect compatibility with this natural cycle, and the associated benefits as the saying goes is manifold.

2 comments:

NaiKutti said...

karthik, i personally feel that u need a good 8 hrs sleep a day... some people are okay with 7.5 hrs and ofcourse some are okay with 5 hrs too... but, even if i get to sleep an hour less, i feel that am tired the whole day ;-)...
but given other constraints, we feel its preferable to work in night, but i can promise you that u will get used to the external noise and constraints soon and would be able to do your stuff (like reading journal papers) during normal times...
and something i heard recently was that your body and mind has a lot of energy around 10 hrs after you wake up and seems like that would be a good time to do some sport... don't know how true is that...

Arbit said...

@cecila,

There are many websites offering good training programs for any distance...5k, marathon, etc..You can try out www.coolrunning.com, www.realrunner.com,
www.runningtimes.com,etc..
As regards info. on marathons in India..there is no website which gives such info.

As far as my training schedule goes..
I normally do 3 runs of (5-8)km and one long run on a saturday or a sunday..I am very flexible regarding the timing of these runs..
As regards the diet..The food intake does increase(more chappatis or rice, for example) as you start running regularly, fruits and other nutritious stuff would help.Otherwise I follow a normal diet(can't expect much from the mess!!).

Hope that helps.

Kennenisa Bekele with the WR

Robbie Mcewen and steve o'grady - The 'Nudge'