Musings

Marathon Musings

My great love for running started a decade back. What started as means to lose weight became a passion and then finally is now placed comfortably like a ‘Habit’!. From a start which was akin to clueless (somewhat Headless Chicken) runs to running 26.2 Miles at a stretch, it has been quite a memorable journey. Not surprisingly, this has become a core aspect of my personality and like most amateur runners, I too continue to bore people with Running stories, so here I go again??

Very Often I have been asked on my thoughts on the impact of the Marathons I have run on my life- Personally and Professionally, and I cant help but believe there have only been positives ( and since I am penning this, you have every right to believe that I am biased ??)

While I can’t judge my professional success or the lack of it, I can’t deny that I can sense a strong impact of running on my thinking and the way I go about life in general!! The top ones that come to my mind are-

Regime- Boring, tiring but a Necessity- Training for a Marathon for an amateur like me required me to not just put in those hours on the road but have a very structured plan which works up to your goal for the day. It meant following a strict regime day in and day out and finding ways to come back on track every time you deviated. To top it all, this regime lasts for months and not just weeks which means you have to be mentally strong to deal with multiple setbacks you will face along the way and yet continue to push yourself to the next level each day!

And I talk about the Correlation because I could have written the exact same paragraph above to describe a professional journey or a project!

The Focus on ‘Self’-Unless you are a competitive runner, I think there is no better a sport than ?Running ?that teaches you the need and the benefit of focusing on yourself, a focus which pushes you to be a better version of yourselves while reminding you every now and then that the only competition that matters is you and you only! They say you hit the ‘Wall’ at the 33rd km ( Did you know that many runners quit after having run almost 33 kms in a Marathon?).

The Wall is for real and its like a lesson in itself where your mind doesn’t allow you to think of anything else but just forcing you to focus on one step at a time while you try to get back into a familiar rhythm of your strides and breaths as you attempt to cover the final few kms.

This thinking starts to then trickle down to everything else around you and your approach in life in general. You tend to start eliminating your insecurities, become more assured of your thoughts and in the process puts you on a journey towards developing a Fearless Attitude, the attitude that brings out the best in you , the only attitude that matters!

I think , ever since I have started running ,that’s exactly the attitude I have consistently tried to adopt professionally and while I am not sure of how that has turned out for my bosses, it definitely has made me happier ??.

( My sincere apologies to all my bosses who have had to manage me during this phase and also to all who will probably end up managing me ??-Sudhir Rehgarh, Rohit Jaiswal, Aditya Shome, Ipsit Chakrabarti, Shadab Umar Khan, Andrew Leakey , Denis Beaufils, Kalpesh Parmar )

PS- I ran a 16 km this morning while not feeling upto it, so please understand the genesis of the Profoundness above ??

And for those interested in the picture- that’s me running ( actually posing here??- another running benefit) the Ladakh Marathon at 12000 Ft amidst the Himalayas ( Might as well Flaunt it when you are proud of it ??)