Don't Give Up

I did sign up with Team Asha (a voluntary non profit organization that helps to fund specific educational projects in India) in April 2008 to train myself to run my first marathon. I have never been an athlete but still wanted to run for a selfish reason to be fit. However, as luck would have been I got injured and was out of training almost the entire season till mid October.

I had two choices when I got injured :

1. Get over the injury and forget about any future runs
2. Continue a rehabilitation program by keeping the injured area immobile and get back to training and running

I chose the second option and I am really glad that I chose the second option. At times during my rehabilitation program, doing other exercises to keep myself fit for future runs were really a challenge and required lot of internal discpilne and self motivation. However, with the help of my Physical Therapist (David) I could keep myself focussed to return back and start running again

So here I was running the relay part of California International Marathon (CIM) from Folsom to Sacramento with my three fellow runners on a cold Dec 7th early morning. Balaji (works in Oracle) was the first to start and he ran close to 6 miles before passing on his ankle chip (think of this as stick used during normal relay runs) to Vijay (works in Cisco) who ran almost closed to 8 miles before passing on his ankle chip to me. I was the third runner in the relay and I had to run 8 miles before handing the ankle chip to the final runner.

All along while I was running on the road to Sacramanto, I was thinking of my desire and willingness to keep trying to comeback even after the injury that I faced during the start of the season. Running for those 8 miles was a bliss even while the temperature was closed to 40 degress. I didn't even realized when I ran those 8 miles before I see some of my team mates cheering for me at my finishing line. I handed my ankle chip to Grewalji, a aveteran of almost 60 marathons to complete the last leg of the 26.2 miles marathon track. Grewalji finsihed the final leg in style just flying at around 6 mins./mile pace. Our team timing was 5:08 hrs. to complete the course.

Looking back at my injury, I am happy to comeback after my injury while keeping my faith in my training and finally be able to run (though only 8 miles). You need to visit me to see my medal and hope this help inspires others to stay focussed on what you want to achieve.

My next target is to run in an official half marathon and that is 13.1 miles. I am trying to stay fit to achieve my next goal.

Recession Proofing

This time of the year when people should be happy about the upcoming vacation during the year end; people are fearful of losing their jobs. You get to find pink slips moving all around you and people losing their jobs in hundreds of thousands.

While I admit that we don't have any influence on these decisions that are primarily getting driven by macro and micro conditions, we stll can work on things that we can control. Here are some suggestions that come to my mind

1. You need to cut unnecessary cost or expense. This will directly contribute in saving toward's your organization's bottomline

2. Take a stock of your daily activities and find time to network. Build and expand on your relations. This will help when the time turns for good

3. Take some internal projects that benefits your company and complete it during your non busy time or even during off hours.

4. Meet your team and try to understand their individual struggle. A word of empathy will go a long way in the employee coming back to you even he gets his marching order in the first place.

I am sure the above will help avoid as much as possible any pink slip coming your way.

Cheers!!!