SCMM 2011: first half marathon

My experience of running my fist half marathon.

I participated and completed the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2011 in the Half Marathon category.

I had kept my participation as secretive as possible due to self doubt.

It wasn't an easy job by any means to pull a near 90+kg body over 21 km and it become even more difficult after getting a blister, the size of the moon, mid-way through the race. 

Quiting never crossed my mind though, thanks to Lance Armstrong's* following motivational verse:

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever."

I did complete the run.

Also the song that kept me going was Livestrong by Wideawake on loop.

At the end, all that mattered was that I finished this feat in a little under 04 and half hours.

Though not competitive by any means, it was a personal feat.

* - Lance Armstrong had not come out with his infamous cheating revelations till that point & was an idol.

TIL #2: Indic language classification

Taxonomy is a dear subject to me. So also is study of language families and classification. Up until now I found it very cumbersome to link what I had read so far. Recently though with the help of @drawio and online sources I was able to do a small classification.


The task I undertook is very minimal and only covers some branches of the vast language families in question.







 P.S.: This is not the complete classification.

TIL #1: Western Art Music

#TIL is a very popular hash tag on twitter short for "Today I Learnt".

On the same lines I have decided to write short blog entries on various topics of interest to me that I have learnt something on.

The first one I am writing about is the different eras of Western Art Music or Western classical music. The content has been sourced online.

Era	Approximate Timelines	Characteristic	Notable Musicians
Ancient	Pre 1100 CE
Medieval	1100 CE - 1400 CE	Church music comprising of chants. Mostly written in Latin.
Renaissance	1400 CE - 1600 CE	Music written in the musicians mother tongue "madrigal". Instrument music and voice wouldn't overlap.	Gabrieli, Lasso, Byrd, Palestrina, des Pres
Baroque	1600 CE - 1750 CE	Opera music. Instrument and voice combined.	Johan Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Corelli, Monteverdi
Classical	1700 CE - 1800 CE	Modern Ensembles. Development of Symphonies. Defined in structures and phrases. Some of the structures were used up to 200 years later.	Mozart, Haydn
Romantic	1800 CE - 1900 CE	Orchestra. Programmatic music as part of story telling.	Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Strauss, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Faure, Sibelius
20th and 21st century	1900 CE - present	Many different styles. Serialism, American post-war, Modernism, Neo-classicalism, Minimalism, Post-modernism	Too many to list.

Before this short study I had heard only Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin - discovered almost accidentally. You would remember the Titan advertisement music (Mozart) or the MS Windows sample mp3 file (Beethoven). Chopin was a pop culture pickup from Dexter - Detective Frank Lundy.

I have been latching onto whatever little art works I get from any of the above era and compiling them. From what I have heard so far, I can only say it's going to be a splendid journey ahead. Keep listening. :)