Marathon Charity

 

My Marathon Charity Donation

My name is Nitesh Pant, and my birthplace is in remote village called Hungi, Palpa district in Nepal. I have been running since my elementary school days and have been participating in lots of races. I still hold record, set back in 2003, in Kathmandu University for cross country race over there. 

After moving to US in 2007, I did stopped running for about a decade or so. Now I have started running again, doing multiple 5k to 10k or even half marathon in a year. This year, in 2024, I am planning to do Chicago Marathon, which is on Oct 13th, 2024. This will be my first full marathon and I want it to make memorable. 

I am trying to raise fund for the community kids where I grew up. I want to provide a set of running gears to atleast 100 students who are in High School around Hungi Palpa region. The list of high schools (and can grow as the fund grows) are

1. Shree Jana Kalyan Madhyamik Vidhalaya, Hungi Palpa 

2. Mahendra Darsan Madhyamik Vidhyalaya

Each gear will consists of a track suit and a running shoes. This will cost around nepali Rs 4000.00 (equivalent to $31 per set). I have already talked with principals of both of those schools and they are happy that I can be of some help for the kids. My goal is to raise fund of atleast $5000.00 so that I can support these kids as well as some more for this year. 

I will publish each and every students name who received the gear, as well as all the balance sheet required to purchase the material on this blog as I go along. There will be full transparency for the fund as well as the donation will go to students who are in need. 

You can always support via gofundme. https://www.gofundme.com/f/marathon-running-for-shoes-nitesh-and-krishnas-fundraiser

Bare Foot Running in Nepal

 

Bare Foot Running in Nepal

From news outlets in Nepal

https://english.onlinekhabar.com/bardiya-express-16-barefoot-athlete-debuts-national-games-runs-neck-n-neck-olympian.html

https://thehimalayantimes.com/sports/barefoot-sima-kumari-chaudhary-earns-finals-berth-womens-800-metres-race

above are just some of the news highlighted because that happened during national selection. There are so many kids in Nepal, who dont have proper gear and do run every day. I grew up in community called Hungi (Palpa district), where lot of kids in high school do their sports activity in bare boot with regular clothes. They even don't have bare necessities like a shoes, running tracksuit etc to play sports. 

First big run

 

First big run

Finally after few weeks of Physical therapy, I felt that my Achilles Tendinitis is not as painful as last month. So, I had been doing short runs of 30 mins or so whenever I did not had that pain. I heard about this Busse woods running club, who runs Busse woods every weekend. So I wanted to try them up since January. Finally got chance to run with them. I joined them on March 2nd and went for run. With my training, I had to do more than 11 miles this day, so I was planning to challenge myself for the run.  For the first 2 miles, I was just trying myself to be on zone 2 and talk with the people who were on same pace for zone 2. I was able to talk with them as well as running with them. As the miles started increasing, I found some of the people were returning back around 4 mile marker. I wanted to do the loop for Busse Woods, so I started running. I met Jay from the same group, and he was running decent pace (9 min/mile) pace. After catching up with him and talking about the race as well as the pace, I wanted to check my body if I can do little faster. I started running on 8.30min/mile pace, and Jay was already far back. I run on that pace almost for 30/40 min. I still was not feeling tired, and I think my heart rate was still on zone 2 (before 160). I was really proud of myself to run for almost an hour and still my HR to be below 160. When you run Marathon, you really need to make sure that most of the time your heart rate is on Zone 2. This will give you endurance to run the marathon on decent pace and complete it. If your heart rate goes to Zone 3, you will feel tired and your pace will decrease as the time goes on. 

I was able to complete my 12 mile in less than 1 hour 40 min. I was proud to hit that mark. My plan is to run my next half marathon (on May 5) in less than 1 hour 35 min. Since this was my first outing running outdoor, I feel that I can certainly hit that 1 hour 35 min mark on my half marathon on May 5.

What about the pain from Achilles Tendinitis ? For the last 1 mile, pain on my ankles and knees started to come back, and I was afraid if I have to stop running again for couple of weeks. But those were more sours from running that long, rather than my problem with Achilles Tendinitis. Having a good running shoes with support for your Achilles really helps. Thank you Saucony for providing these quality shoes.