Book: The Last Mile

Title: The Last Mile
Author: David Baldacci
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
Rating: 4/5

I realized I'm up for a very good read the moment I read the first few pages. And boy, I really liked this book. It starts with the character, Melvin Mars, who is counting his last few days in prison. He is in prison last 20 years and is about to be executed for murdering his parents. As he gets ready for his execution, new information and findings are brought to the notice and the course of the proceedings changes.
From then on the story takes you through a roller coaster ride. A real page-turner with well crafted characters make the book real interesting. Major part of the book grabs your full attention and the little cliche here and there, some predictable parts and illogical segments in the story can be ignored and forgiven for sure.
If you are looking for a fast paced thriller, I would strongly recommend you to grab a copy of The Last Mile.

Urban Stampede, Bengaluru 2016

Run category: 5K
Timing: 30 minutes

I'm pleased to inform that after a long gap of 4 years, I participated in a running competition today and it was indeed a satisfying experience if not a great one. Since I started practicing quite seriously since last month, I was looking for an opportunity to participate in any official runs. And just then one such chance knocked at my doors in the form of Urban Stampede. One of my friend approached me to join our corporate team for the team category of 5K run and I gleefully accepted.
This run was satisfying primarily because I met my set target of running 5K in 30 minutes. Well, I set this achievable target knowing that I had just one month practice and my previous best was around 35 minutes during my last years practice runs. Coincidentally, I ran 5K in exactly 30 minutes today :)

The organizers did quite a good job in getting a crowd, setting up the stage for the event, setting up relevant stalls and plays around the run arena. However, I wasn't too happy with the advance announcements of the exact start times and details. There were 10k, 5k and 3k runs arranged today and the exact sequence and timings were announced only just few minutes prior to the start. Moreover, there was this big confusion of having the corporate run as a relay or a tandem run. The website also was ambiguous about this important piece of information. In all previous editions of Urban Stampede, the corporate run was a relay run of 5K with 4 team members, so people assumed it to be the same, including my team. To everybody's surprise, it was a tandem run.

In a hurry our team assembled on time and started off almost at the same time. To worsen the situation, I along with my team mate, got confused whether we got this right and in the process had to stop in between to verify. Lost a minute in this confusion :( Then we ran quite smoothly after this and completed the run. The loop of 5K was good enough except at the end where there was gravel stretch of 100 m or so. I finished the race with in a burst of fast 100 meters only to realize that I could have afforded to run at this high speed quite early.

Nonetheless a satisfying run. I need to keep up the momentum by regular runs and competing in any official timed runs once in two months or so.