Here’s a view from the Charminar, built in 1591 and still a major landmark in old Hyderabad. We had the opportunity to visit Charminar and the Golkonda Fort, an incredible fortress on the outskirts of the city, the day before we started our clinic.

Sekyen and I made it to Hyderabad, India this past weekend on our first stop in this remarkable country. I am leading a tennis and fitness clinic at the NVK Sports Complex with 20 wonderful students ranging in ages from 11-21. It is indeed a pleasure to be working with these young, upcoming star athletes. It feels like I am coming home in many ways after all my years being based in Chennai.

I am sharing with these athletes many of the new movements of my “Body Protection” program that we will be shooting the video for in October on our return to the US. I wish I had learned this program when I was a young aspiring athlete in order to keep strong, fast, and injury-free with proper technique and explosive exercises.

We will finish in Hyderabad this weekend and travel to another week-long fitness clinic in Chennai. After Chennai, we will be traveling to Agra (via Delhi) for race #4 at the Taj Mahal on August 30th. Then, we make our way into Jordan for the big finish of the www.OneMileRunner.com 2011 tour “5 Wonders Under 25 Minutes” in the majestic city of Petra.

After race #3 in San Francisco, we traveled to Salt Lake for a day then onto Jackson Hole, WY to visit a friend of ours, Jo Ann DeMartini, who is spending the summer at the base of the magnificent Teton Mountains. We enjoyed a few days seeing the area and meeting up with friends from Sarsota. Here is a photo after our dinner at the Blue Lion (L to R – Sekyen, Vicky, Jo Ann, and Kevin). Vicky and Kevin are getting married in Jackson Hole this weekend.

Sekyen and I had a great time training in the high altitude and clean, crisp air of Jackson Hole. Our morning runs were followed by some wonderful hikes at Yellowstone National Park and Jenny Lake. Here is a view from Jo Ann’s backyard:

We then traveled to the east coast to Cape Elizabeth, ME to visit my elder brother’s family and train on the roads of Maine up and down the course of the upcoming 10K race (that was part of my tour in 2009), The Beach to Beacon. It is a beautiful time of year to visit the shores of Maine. I stopped into my youngest brother’s place for a couple of days in Massachusetts on my return to Sarasota. Now I am packing for the long trip to India and then onto the conclusion of “The 5 Wonders Under 25 Minutes” in Petra, Jordan.

The purity of the Jackson Hole and Cape Elizabeth air quality will be in stark contrast to our upcoming race #4 in one of the world’s worst cities for air quality – New Delhi, India. We leave on Sunday to race at the Taj Mahal located a few hours south of New Delhi in Agra, India. The Taj Mahal is on the New Wonders of the World list and should make for a challenging “adventure mile.” I hope my lungs are ready for the shock.

Running “adventure miles” in our 2011 event brings us to The Golden Gate Bridge for race #3.
It was a brutal day of weather on the Golden Gate Bridge as the rain and wind made it difficult to run fast. It was more of a “go” then “slow” type of race as I had spots where I could open up the speed followed by spots where I had to shuffle or scrape my feet on the ground in order to just stand up on the course (you can check this out in the video as I had to go around the first tower 180 degrees shuffling my feet so I would not fall).

When I came off the bridge and tried to turn for the last 300 yards to the finish line, I slipped badly and fell backwards. I am glad that I did my balance reaches in the warm-up as I put my hand behind me and slid on the rain soaked surface for a few feet before I pushed with my right hand and lifted my body back up to standing position. My butt did not hit the ground, but it was close (laughing spectators said I looked a like Apolo Ohno, the speed skater). My timer and protector behind me on the bicycle said afterwards that he would have also crashed into me as well if I had fully landed on the ground. So I finally finished the race in 5:04.72 standing upright with no injuries. It might have been my slowest mile race of the year, but it was also the most fun. I had a blast.

I travel to Jackson Hole for a few days visiting friends, then Detroit for a night, then to Maine to train before returning to Florida for 5 days before we take the long trip to India (via Dubai) to race #4 in Agra, India at the Taj Mahal.

We flew from London to NY, to Washington DC, and then finally into Atlanta for the Peachtree Road Race expo. It was a packed expo (a larger hall is needed) as The Peachtree Road Race is the largest 10K race in the country with 60,000 participants.

I spent those few days training in downtown Atlanta sprinting the hills of the city. I was there on behalf of my graduated compression sock sponsor, Sigvaris www.athleticrecoverysock.com, who has their factory just south of Atanta. It was fun to share the message about the socks and hear back from Peachtree participants how well the product worked for them in the race.

I have been working out this week in Florida. We travel to San Francisco on the 13th and race on the 16th. We will be having two cameras on the bridge to capture the race, so we will make sure to have that video up for you at https://blog.OneMileRunner.com by the 18th.

Hope everyone had a great July 4th holiday!

Sorry for the delay in writing the blog after our race, but we just arrived back into the United States after a few days in London with our nephews, Darius and Braedon, who came on the trip to England with us. We had a great time sharing the major sights of London with them like The Tower of London, The London Eye, and Buckingham Palace. Here is a photo (Darius, me, Braedon) after the race at Stonehenge:

We all flew into England on the June 23rd after flying through the night on the 22nd from Atlanta. We rented a car from Heathrow and made the trip to the southwest of London. Our hotel was too far away the first night (and the driving through the small towns of England were a real challenge with the many roundabouts and tight roads), so we took a hotel closer to Stonehenge the next day.

Stonehenge is a archaeological marvel that is 5,000 years old. We checked out this Medieval Wonder of the World on Friday and wheeled out the selected course nearby. We woke up at 4am on Saturday to begin the race at 5:45am. It was raining and made the course a bit slippery, but I ran a solid race posting a time of 4 minutes, 43 seconds, and 11 hundredths.

Braedon who is not only talented, but also creative put together the Stonehenge video. You can hear Braedon and Darius’ teenage voices yelling during the race. Check out the short video below about race #2 at Stonehenge:

I will be at the Peachtree Road Race Expo on July 2nd and July 3rd on behalf of my sponsor Sigvaris. Please come by the Sigvaris booth this weekend if you are in Atlanta and try on a pair graduated compression socks!

After overcoming a bit of a cold this past week from my high altitude racing at the Grand Canyon, I had a good weekend of training with speed work at the track yesterday and a long 8 mile recovery run on the beach today. We are planning a 1/2 mile time trial on a nearby road this Saturday the 18th, then we board a plane to Atlanta for a few days of training before the rest of our traveling team arrives on Tuesday. Travel to London on Wednesday night arriving Thursday morning, then race on Saturday the 25th.

We had the pleasure to have Shiv Chanderpaul, one of the top batsmen in the world of cricket, training with me in Florida last week. Please check out the link to the story in; Guyana Times Sport about his work with me:

https://65.175.77.34/guyanatimes/epapermain.aspx?edorsup=Main&queryed=9&querypage=23&boxid=192159468&parentid=25411&eddate=06/07/2011

Directly following my race at The Grand Canyon, we boarded a plane to meet Shiv back in Sarasota. With my new training program, “Body Protection,” focusing on injury prevention while gaining the strength and power to excel at your sport, Shiv flew back to Guyana on Tuesday ready to resume his international play.

After our race at Stonehenge, we fly back to Atlanta for the Peachtree Road Race Expo held on July 2nd and 3rd. I am there on behalf of my compression sock sponsor, Sigvaris (www.athleticrecoverysock.com). I look forward to meeting the participants of this very popular 10K road race at the Sigvaris booth.

Our 2011 event at www.OneMileRunner.com, “5 Wonders Under 25 Minutes,” began on Sunday May 29th. Sekyen and I flew to Phoenix on Thursday to meet the One Mile Runner team. We then traveled about 4.5 hours to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We had a sunset photo shoot planned after I took an easy run in the high altitude. On the run around the Canyon roads, I could feel the difference in my breathing at 6700 feet. During our photo shoot, we enjoyed a beautiful, pleasant night of weather. If you have never been to the Grand Canyon, when it gets dark – it really gets dark and makes it difficult to walk around (last buses come around at 8:30pm).

We finished the photo shoot at sunrise on Saturday and we could feel the weather begin to change as the winds were increasing. After getting up at 4am for the photo shoot, a good nap was in order to prepare for the race tomorrow. We relaxed Saturday afternoon watching the Grand Canyon IMAX film, playing cards, and getting final instructions from Charlie Olbrias from The Last Mile Racing Management Company as we had one of his summer interns with us on this trip. A “high wind advisory” was put into effect for the rest of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. So we had another challenge at The Canyon from Mother Nature besides the high altitude. The One Mile Runner team met again in the evening before going over everyone’s responsibilities at sunrise on Sunday.

Sunday we all awoke at 4am and drove to the south rim and took a bus out to our finish line at Hermit’s Rest (the western most point on the south rim). The race begins at Pima Point and goes to Hermit’s Rest. The course is uphill at the beginning and downhill near the end before a nice flat finish. The race started at 6:30am at about 50 degrees. I finished the mile course in 4 minutes, 54 seconds, and 7/100ths of a second (4:54.07). We had two cameras videotaping the race on this holiday weekend, so please enjoy the short video of the race:

I wanted to thank the wonderful team all weekend. They did a superb job under difficult conditions! Our second race is scheduled on June 25th “across the pond” at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.

We are set to travel to Phoenix on Thursday where we meet the rest of the www.OneMileRunner.com team. Then we drive up to Flagstaff, then onto the Grand Canyon. It is an exciting time as we launch our 4th event in 4 years.

“5 Wonders Under 25 Minutes” will again take us around the world to locations that will indeed be a challenge and an adventure. The series of “adventure miles” will begin this coming Sunday at the Grand Canyon. The mix of 6000 feet of altitude and dry conditions will be very different than my sea level and moist Florida training conditions.

We will be having two cameras rolling this weekend. We will indeed post a video of the race next week for you to check out. I will also be blogging multiple times each week right through our final race in Petra, Jordan in mid-September. We look forward to sharing what works and what does not during this event. And we look forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a question or a comment.