August 09, 2025 - Road to BM HM

If you’re wondering what this is about - One year ago I crawled through a 5K in 50 minutes—now I’m attempting the slightly unhinged goal of running a sub-2-hour half marathon, documented through daily brain dumps complete with training chaos, 5 AM existential crises, random tangents, and way too much heart rate data.

Disclaimer: Posts are lightly edited with LLMs for grammar and spelling, but the sleep-deprived thoughts and stubborn optimism are 100% human.

Sleep: 5h2m – Low
RHR: 57 bpm
HRV: 64 ms

Workout:
Warmup - 5 mins
Long run - 14.48K @ 6'24"-7'33" min/K
Goal pace - 3.22K @ 5'36"-5'39" min/K
Cooldown - 5 mins

Total: 17.7K - 02h09m

Pre-run brain dumps

I slept a bit late last night, around 10 PM. My sleep stats are low, but the breakdown was good. I had more deep sleep than usual, although I’m not sure how accurate these are; they’re better than usual. Again, I’m skeptical about concluding from a sample size of 1, but I did take Magnesium Glycinate last night. I also have ZMA (Zinc Magnesium Aspartate), which I used to take in the morning. ZMA is recommended to be taken on an empty stomach—I’m not sure how to do that in the evening before sleeping, but I think it would be good for sleep and recovery. Also, I don’t know if it would be okay to take both Mag. Glycinate and ZMA together due to the magnesium content.

Yesterday, my diet was absolute shit too—I ended up eating some Chinese food in the afternoon, and the night was just some chaat (I love myself some dahi papadi chaat). Also, yesterday was severely lacking in fiber, although maybe protein was okay, if not optimal.

Today’s workout is a long run—17.7K in total. I plan to do the easy pace at around 7-6:45 min/K. I’ll join MCR at Kanteerava. The plan is to run from my home to Kanteerava, taking the longer route. That’s usually 12K, and I’ll run the rest there.

I napped in the afternoon yesterday.

Post-run thoughts

I ran 18.2K. I was running with my water bottle, and that caused a significant distraction. I need to get a hydration vest soon, I think. I reached Kanteerava and did 2 more K at an easy pace, and then 3K at a faster pace. I could not reach the prescribed goal pace of 5'40" for the fast pace segment. But I was able to keep up with 6 min/K for the 3K.

I also bought some running gels and hydration tablets from Fast&Up stalls at the stadium.

Post the run, at the box I did some deadlifts, and was able to hit a PR of 160kg for 1 rep max.