Four years back, on a cold January morning, I was shivering with cold and anticipation at the starting line of the SCMM half-marathon. Landing up there had been a leap of faith longer than any I had taken in the past. Two months before, I hadn’t been able to run for even 20 minutes at a stretch. I hadn’t done a single run longer than 8k. I had no idea if I would be able to last the distance or not. All I had was a determination to do my best, and hope the best was good enough. Two hours and thirty-four minutes later, I crossed the finish line. I’d covered 21.097 kilometres. I was entitled to call myself a half-marathoner. Things could only get better. Right?

Wrong! In the coming months, I became a much more consistent runner. Ran longer distances. Ran more often. Followed training schedules. Read up on running. But try as I would, year after year, race after race, however close I came, I could never better the time it took me to finish that first half-marathon. Breaching that 150 minute barrier became almost an obsession with me, and deep down I was convinced that no matter how hard I tried, it would remain a sonic barrier in search of a Chuck Yeager and an X-1.

On the second Sunday of December, while I waited with 600 others for the Goa River Half Marathon to start, there was only one number that filled my entire conscious being- one hundred and fifty minutes. I had never trained harder, or felt stronger. If I could not do it now, I might never be able to do so. I’d decided that I was going to give it my all, and if I still couldn’t do it, I would accept defeat with as much grace as I could muster. The race was flagged off, and I let my feet setting into a pace faster than one I would have thought I was capable of sustaining. By the two kilometre mark, the crowd had thinned out- I was no longer lapping people, and people were no longer lapping me. I was on target, and feeling good. Maybe I would beat that barrier after all?

Before I knew it, we came to the hill that everyone had warned us about, and like the good Bombay runner that I am, I leant forward and crested it. “You were going really strong”, said one of the men who I’d overtaken on the uphill when he passed me on the downhill. “Naturally”, I said, “Bombay runners train on hills all the time.” But hubris struck when we reached the second hill- I tried maintaining my race pace while going uphill, and exhausted myself completely. By the time I reached the turn-around point, I-could-not-go-on.

Quitting was never an option, so I forced myself to keep moving as I munched a chocolate bar and drunk the last of my water. At the 12 kilometer mark, I forced myself to start running again. “Nothing to it”, I kept telling myself, “all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and you will eventually get to the finish line.” Every step was excruciating. Every aid-station became an excuse to stop running, if only for a few seconds. The hills seemed to have become steeper, the route longer. The landmarks that I had patiently memorised in the morning took forever coming, and by the time I reached the flyover, I had reached a stage where nothing made sense anymore. All I knew was that I was somewhere close to the finish line, and the harder I ran, the sooner the torture would end.

I flew over the finish mat, and slumped the moment I heard the timing chip ping. I was spent. All I wanted to do was crawl into a burrow and sleep. After throwing up, of course.

“What was your timing?”, someone asked as I stumbled across the finishing arch. Timing? What was that? Oh yes that was what had driven me during the first half of the race, when the world was mine to command. I realized I had paused my stopwatch without even glancing at it. I peered at the dial, trying to sense of the numbers. “2:18”, I replied. “Sixteen minutes off my previous PB.”

I staggered to the shamiana and collapsed onto the mat. I should have been elated that I had finally broken the 2:30 barrier. But all I had was a strange sense of emptiness. Was this all running was about? I had set a goal, worked towards it, achieved it. There should have been accomplishment. Instead, there was Nothing.

I know I passed through one of the prettiest parts of the country, but I hadn’t even taken in the view. I had been vaguely aware of the live bands and the pretty cheerleaders, but my feet hadn’t even picked up their rhythm. Forget everything else, I hadn’t even smiled my thanks to the volunteers handing out drinks, or acknowledged the cheers of the people lining the route.

I hadn’t enjoyed myself. I hadn’t had fun.

Is this why I run?

Swimming lazy laps of the pool a couple of hours later, I could still feel the emptiness fill every cubic inch of my being. I made no effort to control the tears that flowed freely down my cheeks. What had gone wrong? There was a time when I had loved running. When at the end of even my worst runs, I smiled in anticipation of the next one. Why now this feeling of Emptiness?

The last few months of training regularly had made me a much stronger runner than I had ever though I could be. I could now almost effortlessly run distances which even a few months back, I would have thought close to impossible for me. Just a few hours earlier, I had finally bettered a timing that had lasted nearly 4 years. I had completed a race that I might normally have been compelled to abandon at the halfway mark.

And yet, none of it had given me any sense of satisfaction. Since running no longer seemed to make me happy, was it time to hang up my running shoes?

For an entire day, I brooded about it. Even before I’d matured as a runner, running had come to be something significant for me. Running was my “me-time”; that time when I could escape all the roles I was expected to play and revel in being myself. Running helped me cope with grief, and running was what I turned to when I needed to sort things out in my mind. Running was the time when I could be by myself, and think about everything, or nothing. Running was my drug. Had those months of regular training made me lose touch with why I had chosen to become a Runner?

Forty-six hours after I’d sunk to the ground after the Goa River Half Marathon, I went for a run on the beach. No stopwatch. No running shoes. Not even a vague idea of how far I was going to run. I started tentatively, but within seconds of my feet striking the rough sand, I could feel the smile traveling up from the sole of my feet to my face. I could see the sun making a tentative appearance through the coconut trees; I could hear the waves crashing on the shore; I could smell the salty air; I could feel every grain of sand between my toes. My body knew exactly what to do- feet, legs, hands, body, breath, everything came together effortlessly- running was something we were born to do. I was in the moment, a part of a magical scene. I was One with the Universe- insignificant, yet omnipresent.

The sun rose in the sky; the beach changed from rough sand, to broken shells, to fine sand, and rough again. I could have gone on forever, but I turned back. I had found my answer. This is why I Run. Because Running puts me in touch with my elemental self. Because Running lets me be the Person I truly Am.

Races come and go. Personal bests and podium finishes remain something to strive for. But let that not distract us for realizing why we run. Because we are Runners!

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Photo credit- both photographs of the Goa River Half Marathon taken by P. Venkatraman, and reproduced with his permission.