Horses for courses

Running is my catharsis, it could also have been destiny some years back! I make my own equation with the track - run as long as I feel like, as fast as I like and as I like. As I go along, I make new equations - I started off with flat foot running given that I am a flat foot, running too fast initially only to discover (as is so commonly known) that I was out of my depth and breath after the first lap. Believe me, it was an effort to slow down and start off slow, going slower and slower to last the distance. One would imagine I was preparing for some event - even got some well-intentioned jibes from fellow morning joggers asking me the same! At 35? I would seriously have to be nuts (then again, people who know me will probably attest that I am!)
Admittedly, my thigh and calf muscles ached for the first few weeks and my heels hurt like hell when I wanted to walk. It took several days and weeks to adjust and figure out how to minimise the pain - landing on the ball of my heel and outside edge of the foot. I don't know if this is the correct technique, but by jolly rogers, it's worked for me. Then came sustaining myself over long distances - the whiteness of the distance on a winter morning could tire not just the eyes but also defeat the mind. In fact, everytime I tried to push myself beyond my known endurance levels of distance, I admit, the mind just gave way. It was frustrating.
Then suddenly, like the second wind, I crossed the barrier one day, the mind just willing the body to go on and on. It was exhilarating!
But the second wind was soon passe - and I soon found myself getting stuck at the two mile barrier. I don't know if it was the body which tired out or the mind, but I just threw in the towel everytime I exhausted my second wind. It was probably during one of these self-defeating times that ancient wisdom revealed itself - horse trotting. For anyone who's seen the horse carriages and tongawallahs in India will know that these horses have eye-flaps that prevent them from looking too far ahead. The thought behind that is that horses if they realised how much distance were they covering would tire sooner, and that's exactly what I followed. I started following my feet, looking down instead of straight ahead and just watchng my feet cover the ground one step at a time. I soon found that I could cover as much distance as I wanted without tiring or runnng out of breath - the only thing I used to run out of was time! What a fun!

Runners World

As a starting block, this is no great shakes - I run, therefore I am. I love running. No, not from the beginning - in fact, if anything, I used to shirk from running and would often find myself out of breath after jogging just a few hundred metres. No, my love for running developed some months back when tipping the scales at 90kg with a pot belly and a spondylitis threat and a life really going nowhere, I decided to don the track pants and running shoes and literally hit the dirt. Yes, I do feel better, even if I don't really look that much better! It's an addiction now and for a man who's pushing close to 40 (okay, there's still half a decade to catch up!), running gives me a craving start to my day - so much so that the day I skip it, I am just not happening.

I marked my progress - starting with brisk walking and then graduating to slow jogs, limited to half a mile, then a mile and so on. Today, I run as long as I feel like, sometimes pushing myself beyond my known boundaries. Yes, there are times when I have given up after setting new personal endurance levels but something on the track beckons you the next day - at times teasing, at times encouraging but mostly, just a silent companion.

For the first time, I probably realised the practical implication of the phrase 'to compete with oneself' - pushing myself to cover more and more ground in less and less time. It's strange though how the mind refuses to blank out - filling itself up with inane and mundane thoughts. Sometimes, troubled by happenings or events of the previous day, I have found myself sapped of all energy while just starting to run - focussing your energies on as simple a task as running at times appears more difficult than ever imagined.

Yes, running for me has also become an escape for the daily tribulations that life thrusts upon us - escaping into my world where the only thing that matters is pounding the track for as long as possible. Of late, running has taken precedence over my work - it excites me and consumes me and I find myself spending more and more time on the track. I enjoy it, and sometimes it scares me how much I am enslaved by it. Work is a chore - it wasn't always so! I love writing, words for me are toys to tinker around with which is why I became a journalist, giving shape to stories that would as informative as interesting. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy writing, but perhaps of my own accord rather than being thrust with some idea that I don't feel a connect with. Is it a midlife crisis that set in a wee bit early in my case or am I just craving for yet another change in my life - after chucking my well established career as a hotelier to become a scribe? As with other things in my life, I feel there are no answers - and I really envy people who find answers to their life's questions or can uncomplainingly accept what life gives them. Is it really that difficult, to get on with life on an as-is-where-is-basis or does that require some special talent which seems amiss in me? More questions! More, later...