back to the grind

And thus the journey began once again. The very next day I reached Bombay for the third semester, I was back at the gym...trying to grind out a robust enough run. What I had not factored in was how difficult it would be to start all over again! The momentum was gone, some of the flab was back and I was back to square one. I started slumming it at the treadmill and found out that my body was getting into oxygen debt quicker than I anticipated it would be. I realized that I can’t be hasty and that it would take some time to get close to the kind of fitness and form that I had achieved even three months back. I managed to make it to the gym almost everyday – now that I was in the hostel, this was not difficult – and clocked about 3 – 4 kms everyday to notch up about 25 kms every week. I managed to do this for about three consecutive weeks.

breakthrough!

I started making rapid strides and as the results gradually begun to show, my motivation levels began soaring. I could see the excess weight gradually slipping away and I generally felt better and fitter. Soon I was clocking on an average of 4 – 6 kms on the treadmill and at the end of each session I would be dripping sweat from my garb! Since scheduling the gym session on a daily basis was a bit of a hassle what with classes and all, I made sure that I ran at least every alternate day. By the managed end of my second semester at the institute, I had to shed a mighty 16 kgs!!!

The end of my summer internship was followed by the happy interlude of my marriage taking place. I must say that Sujatha has been a big pillar of support to this endeavour of mine by just not scoffing at it! She follows my schedule with interest and keeps reminding me to apply everything under the sun to keep the nagging aches and pains at bay. The receptions meant that my running shoes were put on the backburner for a good fortnight or so, but given the hectic travelling that I had to do – from Delhi to Calcutta to Vizag to Calcutta then honeymoon at Digha, back to Calcutta to Vizag and finally to Bombay (phew!) – prevented any additional baggage from clambering now, apart from the wife of course, by virtue of my changed status (bad joke!) Once I was back in Bombay, I realized that in order to prevent my running effort from going off the rails, I had to start right away...

getting into the groove

And that was it...belying my own expectations, I soon got into a great rhythm and started making rapid strides. I also followed a punishing diet...not sure how much of it was actually healthy; I made it a habit of skipping lunch (that itself was not much of a sacrifice though since the dining hall grub didn’t take a lot of persuasion to desist from) I also tried to ensure that my daily visit to the gym was not the only workout that I was getting. After I was done with my classes and assignments for the day, I would trek back home...a walk all of nearly 3.5 kms. The fact that this helped me save my auto fare too was no small consideration...

I registered for the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon sometime in July. Did not have the guts to register for the full 42 km distance as in my mind, the distance rose like a Goliath and threatened to smash my self-confidence into smithereens, so I played safe by registering for the 21 km half-marathon. I had managed to fritter away most of the gains made at the beginning of the year by some reckless drinking while completing my summer internship in Delhi; with the searing cowbelt heat providing the perfect excuse, I made it a habit to start gulping beer around the middle of the week and rounding it off in style by the weekend, while lounging around and catching some cricketing action on television. I tried to sustain the momentum by running regularly; Delhi is perhaps the best city if you’re a running enthusiast with sidewalks wider than most of the roads in Mumbai, but the summer heat was just too much for any meaningful running to be carried out. The result of all this was that the spare tire was back in place and my running form had been hit out the ballpark!

baby steps

And so it started. I dusted off my running shoes and hit the road (or the belt to be precise!) Initially I was careful not to overdo it as the memory of the abdominal pain after a strenuous workout was still fresh in my mind. As expected the initial runs were no more than six-seven hundred metres as I would run out of breath easily and the temptation to break stride and settle into a leisurely walk was just too great. Soon I realized that the trick was to run slow gradually work up a speed. This ensures that one manages to stay within the ‘aerobic’ zone long enough to reap the benefits of a sustained run.

I thought that from this post onwards, I’d just keep moving the clock ahead to the present day to chronicle how I’m faring with my current running regimen. I must say that since the time I had realized that my BMI had gone for a toss (about three years back while in Vizag) I had always planned to eventually beat my recalcitrant body back to shape! So once I managed to shed quite an amount of flab by the end of March, there was a voice inside my head telling me to not stop and go on. I had always been fascinated by sports; the achievements of men on the field of play always seem to have a sense of purity about them. I liked to believe that my stamina is not too bad and that once I get into a rhythm I can really sweat it out. Thus, once I slowly but surely started to get back into shape, the idea of someday competing in a marathon was definitely a great motivational tool. Initially I would pooh pooh it as I never thought would be able to achieve the kind of superhuman fitness that I believed would be required to undertake such an endeavour, but slowly the tide was turning...

belt or concrete?

Thats it! I had finally worked out a schedule to get back into shape. I figured if I could squeeze in even three gym sessions in a week to use the treadmill, it would be a huge improvement over my current plan. I initially explored the option of doing it in the morning before classes. That still meant I needed to solve the problem of disposing off the sweaty gym garb, getting a shower and dressing for class. The sheer enormity of the load that I would have had to lug around threw a spanner in the works. The other option was to get to the gym at the crack of dawn, finish the session and rush back home for the shower and the change, followed by the quick dash back to the campus for breakfast followed by lectures. This however did not look as rosy from the financial point of view...I may well be on my road to fitness but the autowallahs of Deonar would be laughing all the way to the bank!

I decided to play safe (financially I mean!) and start frequenting the gym sometime in the evening, after classes. That would also mean preventing my system from the jarring experience of waking up at an insane hour and subjecting my body to an experience which it has been alien to for nearly a decade now. I would just have to stuff my already bulging backpack (containing my laptop and texts) with gym garb and hump it along all day long. At that point I hoped I could just sustain my motivation long enough...

man at work

After a while I kind of started getting used to the routine of going out for a spot of jogging after the day’s classes and assignments were over. However, it was difficult to gather any kind of momentum as I could barely maintain a streak and thus would feel that I was not achieving anything. I sought some advise from people whom I knew had a spot of knowledge about running and working out and was told to take it easy by alternating walking and running every five minutes. Walking was fine, but running even three minutes at a stretch seemed to tear my lungs out...

I was beginning to think that trying to resume running by doing it outdoors was perhaps proving to be my bane. My legs, which had by now collected a generous amount of adipose tissue, was now ill-equipped to handle the stresses and strains of running on a rough, hard, uneven surface. Resuming after such a long layoff meant it was difficult to concentrate and minor things like a bus looming up from behind or a flock of goats grazing ahead would easily put me off. I realized I had to head for the gym and try and use the treadmill for the even surface it provides...as to how I would manage the timings with the campus being more than 4 kilometres of and what with the hectic schedules and all was another tricky matter...

the sputtering start!

I finally had it in around December of last year. I was running out of excuses without doing some actual running and still didn’t have anything to show for it. I had all the usual challenges that you may have or had before you kicked it – access to a safe running environment, time etc – but I think the biggest hurdle is that of inertia. That’s right, the same law of motion applies to humans as well. If you’re out of shape and willing to correct the unhappy situation, you’ll just have to grit your teeth and push yourself out everyday early in the morning. The pain of that can be enormous, but as the cliché goes – there’s no gain....

And so I started, initially it was the adjoining roads around the building where I shared an apartment. I quickly realized that it was not just about munching away at the miles and feeling the calories melt away, it was also about dodging marauding buses and sidestepping shit piles. I was surprised at how easily and quickly I was running out of breath and that my shins and knees felt that someone had poured concrete in them. The temptation to give up was just too great.....

thinking back...

Happily enough, I was not exactly a couch potato when I was a kid. I used to play a spot of cricket and although nothing to set the pitch on fire, the running drills and the physical workouts were enough to lay the foundations for a fit body which, even if a little rusty after more than a decade of inaction, could be coaxed into action after the resumption of a physically demanding schedule. Thus you can take heart if you indulged in a bit of ‘action’, even if it was eons back.

Last year, when I decided to take a break from work to complete my master’s, I wasn’t exactly ship shape. In fact far from it, I was tipping the scales at over three digits! Suddenly I was conscious of this ugly fact and badly wanted to do something about it. The first attempt to break inertia was painful to say the least as I suffered from a bad bout of ‘abdominal stitch’. That ensured that I stayed away from the treadmill for a while...and any suggestion to ‘hit the open road’ would have met with such an expression of incredulity from yours truly that would have rivalled an effort from any thespian that you can think of. The road to redemption, at that point in time was still as far away as one could imagine...

initial thoughts

Getting off the blocks is perhaps the biggest challenge, you may have made the dire promise to yourself the umpteenth time, burnt some good cash to invest in a snazzy set of uberlite vest and shorts to ‘guilttrip yourself into running and imagined your less than flattering figure to acquire some menacing rip in the not-too-distant-future, but pushing off is harder than you can imagine…

However, once you get those old pistons pumping and you put a few hundred yards behind you…things begin to look up infinitely…especially if were into some kind of physical activity in the past. The breathing is labored, your shins ache as the dreaded lactic acid buildup rears its ugly head and there is a knot in the pit of your stomach…but to counter that, you realize that a heady feeling is slowly welling up…from somewhere in the deep recesses of your being…a part where your mind and body both combine to propel you forward…that is what addiction to running is all about, although it may just be easier to let the moment pass, let the eyelids settle back and log one more hour of shuteye!