Revisiting the 'revisited' place

T'was my nth(n = 7 or 8) trip to muttkadu..Never get tired of going to this place where the backwaters meet the sea. Thighs were a little tight on the onward journey and my friend(J) for whom this was the first trip made me work harder than usual. I normally warmup by going a tad slower during the onward journey and return faster. Anyway, J had to pay for his amateurish mistake during the return journey. Overall, a good ride of 2 hours.

Back to training

Its been a long time since I ran or cycled. Yesterday I went for a 2-lap cycling ride(3.5 kms/lap) but couldn't do more then a lap. Frustrated, I went to the stadium and did 3-4 400m sprints. Was satisfied that I could atleast stride well, though was exhausted thoroughly after the sprints.
Keeping a long-postponed cycling trip in mind, I went for another training ride in the insti today. The ride was 6 laps(3.5 km/lap) of gc-gate-gc, totalling 21kms. The splits for the ride are as follows:

LAP NO.......CUMULATIVE TIME.........TIME/LAP(mins)
1....................7:35........................................7:35
2....................15:42......................................8:07
3....................22:42......................................7:00
4....................30:13......................................7:31
5....................38:42......................................7:29
6....................44:44......................................7:00

Average speed/lap: 28.125 kmph, Maximum speed/lap: 30kmph


Going for a training ride after yesterdays sprints in the stadium was a bad idea, but since this is cycling, it is less punishing than running if you train arbitrarily. In running you simply cannot do three consecutive hard days(sprints/tempo runs/long runs) without the body collapsing into knee or shin injuries.
Anyway, going into the first lap of cycling, I was testing the waters, looking to see how tight my thigh muscles were and adjusting my speed accordingly. The second lap was a little awful as I wasn't still warmed up. The third lap was one of the better laps as I was cycling in rhythm and feeling good. Fourth and fifth laps were a little slog ones and the sixth lap was fast because I wanted to get it done with.
I have never cycled more than 2 laps at a stretch inside the insti and hence didn't realise that the badly patched up roads at some places affected my rhythm and the speed breakers, they just slow you down big time. Over 6 laps, the quality of the road plays a big role in the riding experience and no wonder expressways and highways that provide the rider with exclusive space(shoulders) and smooth stretches of roads are too good to resist.

New pondy

Bombay's been rechristined mumbai, madras - chennai, culcutta - kolkatta and finally bangalore - bangaleru. But wait, is that all? Next in line as proposed and approved by the central cabinet is a new name for pondicherry a.k.a 'new pondicherry name'. Considering that all the other cities have been renamed such that the length of the new names are proportional to those of their former names, I wondered as to what possible new name our good old pondicherry would receive. Pondicherry can be shortened to a neat nick name of 'pondy'. I wondered if the rechristined version of pondicherry could also be as elegantly nicknamed. Horrors of horrors, Puducherry, the new name is way off in our nicknaming scheme of things. But the thing is 'pudu' means new in tam and is sort of consistent with the need for a 'new pondy name'.That is to say the new pondy name is infact 'new pondy'. This is amazing because it reaffirms the fact that the name pondy will never go out of circulation but will sutiably adapt to become a mutated version called the 'new pondy'. Here's to the glory of the never-say-die spirit of pondy.

P.S. :)