Sindhu Srivastava – iCan Athlete Spotlight – 9/6/12
Towards May-end a coworker sent out an email about a 16 week iCan training program for IMT Des Moines Marathon. I had always wanted to run long distance but have never been a runner and could never muster up the courage to actually do it. The most interesting aspects of the training program were: 1. Professional coaching by Coach Loran; and 2. Participants were required to read the book “The Go-Giver” by Bob Burg. Both were to be provided by Coach Loran for free! This seemed as good an opportunity as any to take up the challenge to finally run a marathon. Of course, there was another catch: aspiring participants needed to fill-up a form explaining why they wanted to be part of the
iCan challenge. Since training for marathon is not an easy undertaking, I was expecting that my wife would not be too happy about my participation in this challenge. I talked to her about it; she turned out to be quite supportive and enhusiastic about it. This
solidified my intent to participate. I promptly filled out the form and sent it in. Lo-and-behold, a few days later I received an email informing me that I had been selected for Coach Loran’s training program. Perfect.
Coach Loran is a true go-giver. The first thing that struck me was that he commenced the training program at his home – inviting complete strangers. It became quite obvious at the outset that Coach Loran had very strong support from his family as well as his associates and well-wishers. His training program is both gruelling and fun. I have already run personal distance records week after week during the weekend group runs – including a half-marathon three weeks ago. We are now past the halfway mark in the training program, and I am grappling with bad hamstring tendonitis. Last three weeks have not been very kind to training for marathon. When I met Coach Loran last week for one-on-one meeting, he told me how last year his doctor had told him that he won’t be running much again (due to a foot that had fractured several times over). Needless to say, Coach Loran did not heed his doctor’s advice, he is back to running again. I have drawn tremendous amount of inspiration from his story, and I am determined to continue with training for marathon. In fact, during one of my personal distance records, Coach Loran ran the last half with me, pacing me and giving me confidence that I could do it faster than I had imagined. He showed me how to overcome mental block during longer runs. You see, Coach Loran is training the iCan team not only for marathon but also motivating to be a go-giver!
This picture was taken before one of our iCan team Saturday long runs.
