#7: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
A journey of hope, despair and drama on two feet
Issue 7 | 28th January, 2023 | 14 minutes reading time
Hey, and welcome to a very different issue of Multitudes. This is a personal story; no prizes for guessing what it’s about. For reasons that will become obvious, I’ve been thinking about my relationship with running recently and wanted to tell the story of this somewhat fraught dynamic. It’s got highs and lows and a little drama and a lot of despair. It’s also a little longer than usual, but I hope that doesn’t dissuade you.
As we neared the finish line, I saw him in front of me. I had little hope of catching up; by that point, my breath was rapid but my legs were sluggish. I’d resigned myself to my fate.
And then, the storybook miracle. A heaven-sent second wind spurred me on. My legs galloped as we rounded the final curve. The gap shortened. He was taking it easy. He - and everyone else - didn’t expect me to catch up. But, powered by my galloping legs, I stumbled past him. He didn’t have the time to wipe the confused look off his face and chase after me. I crossed the finish line with an adrenaline-dopamine-serotonin-powered smirk, overjoyed that I’d come…second to last in this 600-metre race.
600 metres. Not coming last in that was the crowning glory of my non-existent athletic career. I could hang up my boots at the ripe age of 14, basking in the knowledge someone was a tad slower than me.
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Clearly, I wasn’t fond of running. I played cricket at school, but at a time when physical fitness was peripheral to the game’s concerns. Those of us who showed up for practice jogged a little as a formality, as if to prove that we were indeed part of a sporting endeavour - just not a serious one. When it came to actually playing the game, I cut the figure of a very round child chasing after a very round ball.
I don’t think I’d ever run more than a kilometre till I was 18. I certainly never enjoyed it. A friend regularly ran 10k “for fun”, I thought him clinically insane.
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At the age of 18, I decided I wanted to be healthier. I was very overweight, felt odd aches and pains everywhere, and suffered from body image issues inflicted by years of minor bullying.
Don’t ask me why, but, as much as I hated it, I thought I had to run to make this happen. It felt like the price of admission to the Club of Healthy People.
I begrudgingly started. I doubt I moved faster than I walked in the beginning, but I certainly swung my arms and legs a lot more.
During my four years of college, I only found time to jog (waddle?) during summer breaks. Far from ideal, given that daytime temperatures in Delhi breached 42°C. So a friend and I worked out at night instead. We’d run a bit, try a bunch of callisthenics, finish up at 11, and have dinner at midnight. This was our routine all summer long.
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The concept of long distances still escaped me - I don’t think I crossed 3km at any point.
A chance encounter in 2017 changed this. In an Ooty hostel, I got talking with a guy who was here to practice hill runs. He’d been running for years and was now prepping for an 80km race through the mountains of Ladakh.
Once again, certifiably insane. But also, strangely inspiring.
We talked a lot, especially on a long walk along the train tracks from Lovedale to Connoor. We spoke about books and travel and much more, but what stuck with me was how he spoke of running.
It seeped into every part of his life. His days were planned around long runs and his career around long races. He didn’t do it for glory or records. He did it because he wanted to run, living by the same attitude Murakami professed to in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (from where I borrowed this title):
“People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But I don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree.”
Somewhere along that walk, this became something I aspired to. Reading Born to Run, the runner’s Bible by Christopher McDougall, pushed this urge into hyperdrive. The book was revelation. I sped through its pages and then wanted to speed down roads. I was convinced by the outlandish feats it documented of humans powered by nothing but willpower and mild insanity. If McDougall said that humans were biologically engineered to run, then run I would. It mattered diddly-squat whether I enjoyed it - which I still didn’t.
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The gap between intention and action didn’t miraculously disappear. I wasn’t suddenly completing marathons and I lacked the consistency to call myself a runner. It was always about delayed gratification. I knew I’d feel good after I ran so I drowned out my body’s protests with podcasts and music, taking one step at a time.
Progress was slow, but it was there to see. From a 3k personal best I moved to 4 and then 5k. In March that year I did 7, on the slopes of a hillside no less.
In Feb 2019 came the next of my small achievements. I signed up for my first ever 10k, despite fearing distances in double-digits. It meant running for about an hour, which seemed like an eternity. Yet, on a winter morning with the temperature at 6°C and an AQI of 200, I set out with a few thousand others to do just that.
I finished with a time of approximately 54:30 and, for the first time, felt a sense of progress. I’d somehow gone from being a round child stumbling through 600 metres to a less-round less-child finishing a 10k at a decent pace.
Consistency still eluded me, though. I started every year with a target of 520k - 10k a week. While easy in any individual week, I never sustained it over a year. A one day break inevitably turned into a one week break and then a one month break. Before I knew it a small pause that started in March ended only in November.
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Fast forward to 2022 and familiar patterns were playing out. The 520km target was set and forgotten by mid-Feb.
Around October is when, for the first time, things really changed. After the burnout from my last job, I wanted to take care of myself. All the white pop-culture pundits of good health - Rich Roll, Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman, etc. - had convinced me to give this a shot. This not only meant running regularly, but also strength training, healthy eating, and proper sleep. And so I committed to a better version of myself, devoting my time, energy, and money.
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This didn’t last, but, for the first time, a lack of motivation wasn’t to blame. In my first strength training session at CultFit, poor form left me with a dull ache in my lower back. I assumed it was dormant muscles voicing their protest and shrugged it off. A dance fitness session the next morning made this dull pain throb a little more, but I still didn’t think too much of it.
That was at 10 AM. By 2 in the afternoon, I couldn’t move.
In the span of four hours, my lower half turned into a single, solid brick, incapable of any movement. Pain radiated up my spine and down my legs. The tiniest motion had me gasping. If hell existed, surely such agony was a staple part of suffering there.
I stood up thrice in 24 hours to use the bathroom, hunched over, grabbing everything I could for support. I lay on my stomach, turning my head sideways to shovel food into it at meal times. Were it not for the kindness of friends, I don’t know how I’d get through that week.
I had, as I later discovered, a bulged disk in my spine that was pressing on my sciatic nerve. Surprisingly, and fortunately, the recovery was almost as drastic as the collapse into pain. In ten days, I could walk and sit. Physically, I was getting back to my old self. Mentally, though, something changed.
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Lying in bed that week, I was frustrated and angry. I was trying to do the right thing. The hard thing. Every fibre of my being was crying out to push itself, to be tired at the end of a workout, to be better. I was rebelling against the convenience of a world designed for sedentary living. Yet, for all my good intentions, all I got was severe pain, huge physiotherapy bills, and a prescription to lie in bed.
This frustration also brought clarity. This isn’t how I wanted to spend my life. I’d taken for granted the ability to move, to walk, to run. I assumed that I’d always be able to be active. This obviously wasn’t true. In theory, I knew that a healthy body was a privilege. Now, this privilege stared me in the face, forcing me to cherish it.
Those days were filled with inordinate amounts of screen time. Since I couldn’t run myself, I chose to live vicariously through those who broadcast their running on YouTube. Hellah Sidibe, Kofuzi, and Casey Neistat became steady company. Seeing them glide along streets, knocking down mile after mile, smiling through it all, sparked something in me.
Casey’s videos, more than anything else, got my feet tingling and my soul roaring. Unlike Hellah and Kofuzi, he wasn’t a professional runner. He was just a guy who laced up his shoes every morning and ran to keep his sanity intact. The best part - he’d been running despite an accident that shattered part of his leg, and after doctors told him he’d never be able to run again. He came back from that - what was I worried about? He brought me hope when all I saw was frustration and anger.
Two videos, the ones above and below, nearly brought me to tears. Together, they were less than 5 minutes long, but they changed me. A switch flipped, a bulb went off, whatever. Instinctively, I knew I didn’t need to worry about motivating myself to run anymore. It wasn’t a choice. I felt like a runner, so I would run.
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As October turned to November, I started moving again. Short walks became long walks which turned into short runs and then long runs. Even during a month of travel, which earlier would have been an excuse to stop, I stuck with it. My baseline had become a 30-minute/6k run, double what it had been any time before.
This recovery coincided with the end of 2022. I’m a sucker for new years and new beginnings, so I spent these days oscillating between reflecting on the year gone by and planning for the one ahead.
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In 2021, every bit of life was up in the air - I switched jobs and cities, had my only long-term relationship end, saw my reading and writing habits fall off a cliff, had people close to me die, lost the desire to care for my health, and suffered from insomnia, severe anxiety and mild depression.
2022, thankfully, was kinder. The pieces of life slowly came together. I’d switched jobs again, this time winding up in a place and with people that cared for my sanity. I started cooking more, walking longer, and sleeping better. I travelled and travelled and travelled (I was out of Bangalore for 5/12 months last year), and was exhausted by the travel and travel and travel. I started reading and (occasionally) writing. I was getting more sunshine and exercise. And yes, I was bedridden for a while, but that helped straighten my priorities.
For 2023, I was committing to stability and routine. I would read and exercise and work and write and sleep and cook and do it all over again everyday, like comfortable clockwork.
I gave myself a challenge to end the year - running 55 kilometres in December, so I could hit 200 for 2022. It was an arbitrary, and relatively small, goal. But after everything I’d been through, it felt like the boost I needed to kickstart 2023.
So, post-injury, I started running again. I’d listen to podcasts, music, or, for the first time, nothing. I gave myself questions to ponder, letting thoughts run through my head as I ran down roads. I was smiling while I ran, not after. So far, running always felt more mentally taxing than physically. But now, my mind was in sync with my body; it stopped protesting the next kilometre, it didn’t want to stop short of my target, it didn’t force me to obsessively check my Fitbit. I felt good.
And I was on course for 200. By the 28th of December, I was 49km through my 55k target, the most I’d run in a month for a long time. On that day, I set out for a 6k to hit 200 and was about to finish Amit Varma’s 7-hour-long conversation with Nikhil Taneja (highly recommended) while doing so. I smiled down sunny, tree-lined lanes, feeling happy, hopeful and fulfilled. Just for that moment, the world felt perfect.
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That moment didn’t last. I never made it to 200.
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I first thought of writing this just before that run on the 28th. I’d already crafted its ending - I’d hit the 200k goal and do a 15k run (a personal best) to boot. I’d speed towards 2023 and all my aspirations for it, carried by the momentum of my increasingly energetic legs.
45 minutes after that idea, the ending changed. Just after the halfway mark on that “perfect” 6k run, my lower back seized up. It was a disturbingly familiar pain, a ghost from October returned to haunt me. The momentum of my increasingly energetic legs slammed against the brick wall that was my dysfunctional spine.
I stopped running immediately, ambling home with a single thought in mind - “Please God, not again.”
But, again it was. I reached home, got into bed, and stayed there for the better part of two weeks.
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My last goal for 2022 fell apart and, at that moment, took away all hope I had for 2023. In the span of a week, I went from humble bragging about a personal best 10k time to saying, “I could walk a little today with the help of a crutch.”
These words had no business coming out of a 27-year-old body, but they were. I felt betrayed by the universe, punishing me once again for wanting to be healthy. I’d done what every self-help book had told me to. I’d built habits, been consistent and really wanted to be better. But, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t. Instead, I was forced back into bed and left to contemplate the prospect of spinal surgery.
It felt like a cruel, pathetic joke. T H I S W A S N OT F A I R.
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With hindsight, such drama may not have been warranted. At that moment, though, it felt very real. Beyond the anger of the moment, I was terrified that my body was fragile. I couldn’t trust it - a wrong step anywhere could land me back in bed. So far, I’d been walking distance from home when it happened. What if the next time it struck I was alone on holiday in a strange place? The world I could safely navigate had suddenly got a lot smaller.
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That gloomy fog lifted, eventually. My doctor deemed surgery unnecessary. Aided by a steroid shot in my back, in three weeks I was functioning like someone with a (mostly) normal spine.
My doctor has promised me I can be back to my best in about two years. This feels like an eternity but, well, three years of COVID passed in the blink of an eye. I’m sure these will as well. And whether or not it’s going as planned, 2023’s come along and settled into a comfortable rhythm of its own.
And because I’m a sucker for cliches and meaning-making, I have to concede that these bouts of bedridden-ness have taught me a lot. In October I realised that I was allergic to sedentary living. December taught me that I couldn’t be pig-headed when trying to be active. Simple lessons but, if they had to be learned, I’m glad I’m learning them at 27.
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My doctor also wants me to run again, eventually. I don’t know how to feel about that. After everything that’s happened, running is no longer the shining object of my obsession it was two month ago. It exists hazily in my periphery, bearing the aura of a poisoned chalice. It has so much to give but, maybe, even more to take away. It’s a game of Russian Roulette, dishing out either serotonin or pain. For now, I’m too terrified to pull the trigger.
Eventually, I suppose. It’s better than never. For right now, that’s good enough.
If you’ve made it till the end, thank you. I’m sorry if I rambled but, as my mum said, I needed to get this off my chest soul. I’ll be back with more trivia next month.
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Take care of yourself, and especially your back.
Shantanu