Finally…. I completed 1o Kms of running today!! Non-Stop during the weekly Sunday run!! My previous best till a week back was 6 kms at a stretch. Then on Thursday last week(22 August), I hit a new high.. 8 km. Three days later, here I am, scaling another peak of 10 km. Exhilarating!!! Never dreamed that I could run 10 kms.
Till December last year, I had no intention of running. I was content with the occasional visit to the Gym. But at some point, I realised that my weight was not reducing and I was not feeling physically fit. And I also asked myself – what is the point of having nice biceps if I am not fit and I am accumulating fat in my body? That is when I decided to abandon the smelly gyms in favour of the fresh air of the outdoors. Fortunately for me, the beach was nearby.
The Marina beach in Chennai is 4 km long, and has some interesting buildings on one side(the other side being the sea – Bay of Bengal). Since I run in the mornings, I get to see the sun rising slowly on the horizon. The breeze is also quite cool during that part of the day and provides an added incentive to run on the beach.
In December 2012, I read about the Wipro Chennai Marathon which took place inside the scenic IIT Madras campus(Incidentally, I spent a year inside the campus as a Masters student). Around the same time, I also started seeing the tagged pictures of one of my friends from the Wipro Marathon and Auroville Marathon. That gave the inspiration to start running.
In January 2013, I decided to do a 10k in the Wipro Chennai Marathon 2013 and started preparing. I had 11 months time to prepare and set myself a very easy target – run 1 extra km per month.
The first month was difficult. I couldn’t complete even 1 km without really panting and knees hurting. Gradually it became easier to run longer distances but I was lagging behind my self-imposed targets. By end of June 2013, I was still at 4 km per session as against the target of 6 km. One of my friends suggested that I join the Chennai Runners group of which she was part of, but I did not like road running and also running in a group. I liked the solitude when running.
Then came the announcement of the Wipro Chennai Marathon 2013 in July and this time, I decided that I need some additional motivation. I joined Chennai Runners’ Alwarpet running group, and I indeed got that additional motivation and more importantly, valuable guidance to run long distances. Earlier, I used to run daily, but with little improvement. But now, with just 3 days per week of running, I am able to run more. Within 2 months of joining Chennai Runners, I have scaled the 10 k peak.
But this is only one side of the story. Even though I covered the distance, the time I took for completing 10k was 1 Hour and 25 Minutes, which is extremely slow for regular runners. Most seasoned runners would have completed 20 km in this time.
But hey, I am running my own race and not others’. Why bother? Since this is my own race, my next aim is to reduce the time taken to run the 10 k from 1 Hour 25 Minutes to less than 60 minutes. And I have 3 more months to do that before the Marathon.
Chennai Marathon, here I come!!
(Image credit : Chennai Runners)
PS: While on the subject of Marathon, here is an inspiring TED talk on a the impact of Marathon in the war torn country, Lebanon.