Week 0. Prologue

Q: Can I actually run a marathon today?
A: Absolutely positively unequivocally not!

Why a marathon? Well, why not? The first time I entertained thoughts of running a marathon was sometime late last year. I was out of shape but had reached a point where I was doing 20-25 minutes on a treadmill at 6mph without feeling like dying. 'Whats the problem?' I said to my brother, who's quite fit. 'Just put on running shoes, practice a few miles on the road, and run'. He couldn't stop laughing.

There is no way I can run a marathon today. There is no way I can do the required training alone. I might put in a few days, maybe a week, before the monotony sets in. Then its 'Umm lets sleep in today and do the miles tomorrow' and its all over.

Then as luck would have it, I met an old friend Medha at a birthday party in January. I hadn't seen her for a while and thought she looked quite trim and much fitter than I had last seen her about a year ago. But before I could say anything she proudly beamed 'I ran in the marathon last year'.

'So what?', I teased, 'Even I can run the marathon, its finishing it that's a major pain'. 'No', she answered, 'Not only did I finish the Silicon Valley marathon, I ran 18 miles of the Chicago marathon that was abandoned due to the heat'. Now I was flabbergasted. The marathon and all its training seemed impossible to me, and here was a person who had done it by training for just one year. 'How the @#%^ did you..' I started to say, but before I could say anything she started to tell me about the team ASHA program.

I wont go into too many details of the team ASHA program, you can find more information here. In short, Asha is a zero-profit, zero-overhead charitable organization, focusing on raising funds to provide education for under-privileged children in India. The team ASHA marathon program provides you all the necessary training required to run marathon, while expecting the marathon runner to raise a certain amount for ASHA in order to actually run the marathon. And have a lot of fun the process. 'Seems like a win-win to me', I thought. Here are some qualified people who will actually train me, every weekend for six months and then some weekdays too, with personal attention, without the standard 60$/hr fee. In fact, its 100% voluntary. 'Great' I thought, 'I'm in'!!