How I ran my 100DaysofRunning

The first thing I need to do to keep this place alive is to stop planning and committing to write. 'Will come back for more', or 'watch out' have not helped. Not to mention the latest - which is now a year ago! - coming back with more on my running journal. Not surprisingly I still have not done my first full marathon. I won't be doing it this year. And personally, that's a disappointment for having boasted quite a bit about my running. I procrastinated hard training till the thought of hard training faded away! So much for bragging that I'm a runner.

That said, 2017 has indeed been better than 2016. And 100DaysofRunning is definitely the main reason. It's no big feat by any measure, still, for once I would like to take pride in what I accomplished. For it revealed not how much I can take, but how I can take it, and keep testing my limits. How much is nothing. 5 kms a day, on average, for 100 days in the runners' world would probably not be that much different from 'hey, I've got a job in IT' 20 years after the industry has come about, and especially after it's past its heydays! (Occupational hazard, you see!). That's all there is to the how much really. But the how was definitely more interesting and revealing than I had anticipated. For, the moment I push towards how much, the mind competes with just about anybody I can think of. But when it comes to the how, it competes with just who I was till then. At least, that is how I want to take everything. I would like to live as if I have no competitors except myself, want to be better than the man I was yesterday. And running does help in its own way, help change my life, help change one small perception or motivate to do one small positive thing at a time.

So, here goes the mildly adventurous story of an amateur runner's 100DaysofRunning:

The first 10 days were easy because of the adrenaline of having gotten started and counting the initial excitement in days. The next 10 were again easy because I did the first ten without a break. At this point, I was also at the 100 kms mark. Then, as it is a common belief that anything you do continuously for roughly 20 days becomes a habit, the next few days, till the 50th day, were more or less routine. I mostly struck the run off as a daily chore. The days when I missed the mornings, I ran in the night. Some days, I missed the planned night runs also, thus scrambling at around 11.30 PM or so, to run  the min 2 kms/day mandate. From 20 to 50, the daily kms started trickling down, but a couple of professional half-marathons helped fill the gap in the average. Actually, I took the liberty of cutting down on the 5km/day just because of this. (And that definitely would figure in as a disappointment to a true runner to whom consistency is everything!). But you have to listen to your body. Some days it just cannot move, and it will not. Those were the days of just meeting the minimum mandate of 2 kms/day. And thus went the first 50 days. The 50th day was, as expected, a psychological barrier, for I was literally at the 'half done' point of a job well begun.

The days from 60-80 were the most challenging. By then, the routine was fully set, a habit was more or less in place, and the 'motivation thrust' had completely died down. So why would I run? To make matters worse, my body just wouldn't budge. Those were the days of intense pain. Some days, my legs would just keep trembling for hours at a stretch. I still ran. I just ran. In fact, I ran with the 80th day as the finish line in mind, for I knew the last 20 days would again be a period of intense anticipation and excitement to get to the finish. It's like the last couple of miles to the finish line in a half marathon, where one would forget the 18 kms already done, but run these 2 kms as if one were chased by a pack of ravenous wolves. At least, that's how I have run all my finishing miles in every half marathon till date.

Come 80. It's just amazing how the mind can rewire and the heart refresh when the finish line is in sight. It's like coming a full circle. The mind has its own way of teaching patience, not to hurry or be overambitious to do 10 kms every remaining day. Stick to the basics. It's not a race. By this time I had built more than the target average of 5km/day. All I had to do was just keep to the minimum of 2km/day and I would make it past 500. Thus, 80-100 was a breeze.  I wrapped up the 100 days with 511 kms. So, there!

On the 100th day, I felt a mild sense of satisfaction and pride on how I had come to finish it. More than that, I felt peaceful. And peace was what I was after, because these 100 days happened right after a crisis. In fact, I wanted these 100 days to help me stabilize my mind and heart, to help me beat the crisis. Anger and rage were getting the best of me, and I HAD to run to keep the anger away, to beat it to pulp. Some days, I ran longer, proportionate to the intensity of anger I felt, to the point that on a few occasions, sheer exhaustion would beat the anger. I ran. And thus passed the 100 days.

I heartily thanked Mother Nature, the God Almighty, for taking me through all this. For, many days it would have been impossible to move if I had not felt the invisible hand that woke me up from bed, that patted on my shoulders to simmer my anger and put the shoes on, that lifted me up in the middle of the road, that high-five'd when I finished running on some testing days, or stood at the finish line on two of the professional half-marathons during the course of the 100 days. It was all worth it. It was worth every one of the 100 days.

All of this points to the simplest of truths when it concerns both the body and the mind. No pain, no gain. I took a long break, for more than a month, and now I'm back on the road again. So, here's to more running! (Oops. I shouldn't say that, rite?)

My running journal

From the start of the year, I feel I have come quite a long way in my running journey than I had hoped to. Not letting that pride get to my head, here I go, with more on my running year-to-date.

Year-to-date, I have completed five half-marathons – all organized professional runs – and tens of 10Km and 5Km runs – a few professional ones, but most of them my morning runs. I feel good, but I also feel I have barely scratched the surface when it comes to long distance running. Till I picked up running as a serious ‘thing’ casually on one fine day in 2014, I did not know I had it in me. I can’t even call this ‘long-distance running’ yet, as I haven’t even done one full marathon till now. Maybe I might do one this year.

I have always been a restless, do-it-fast, sprinter of sorts – both in running/sports and in life. But somehow, that ‘one fine day’ changed it all. I don’t even remember now or didn’t even care then to note down which day that was, probably because I might have felt it would not amount to much when I would look back on that day from the lens of today. But I clearly remember the flurry of emotions, agonies and pains I endured in the initial days, even for a 30 min 5Km run. It has been two full years. What a journey it has been! 

Going forward, I plan to maintain my runner’s journal here, capturing each and every one of my runs. Now and then, I have felt like doing so, but kept pushing it off, thinking why do I need to capture it. How is my running going to matter at all? But the last five days of brutal pain I’m going through made me sit up today and want to capture my running journey in detail, so that whenever I feel down, I can relive some of my precious moments of running, and pick myself up from that again. Another noteworthy thing that has prompted me to plan to write about it going forward, is the book ‘What I talk about when I talk about running’ by Haruki Murakami, in which I’m thoroughly enjoying every bit of the author-runner’s journey. Who knows, years from now, some day, I might come back to enjoy my own journey! That is the feeling.

The stillness of an ever-changing life

Sometimes life is best not explained or understood. It helps just to agree that it is made of opposites most often. One of the opposites is the stillness life has even as it constantly changes. Such moments dawn on me unexpected, like a photographed instant from the past. Not long ago - is 7 years long? - I remember myself sitting at the same spot on the beach, in awe of the union of all the Elements, wondering at the meaning of life as I had imagined it then, and soothing music from The Shawshank Redemption to help the mood. And here I am doing the very same thing as if I'm looking at a photograph of it! And how I wish moments like this stopped life right there!

Voices

For all the voices we hear around us all the time, the trouble is not so much as to decide whether to speak for or against, but, often, to decide whether to really hear the voices or pretend not to and keep quiet, the latter choice preferable more often than not. Sometimes, shutting up is a lot better than speaking up! 

And I'll do it all over again!

My limited presence here is no indication that I've been busy, terribly or otherwise. I didn't write. I just didn't write. That's it. Maybe I waited for the 'right time' or maybe I waited indefinitely for the 'right thoughts'. And, man, am I glad at last to be here and write again! Funnily enough, none of the 'more running, more writing, more books, more music' happened for me to be away so long. (Yes, I did run a bit, but nowhere close to what I had planned or hoped for. Let me see if I can pick it up the rest of the year). I still haven't gotten out of my habit of 'losing the thoughts' before I arrest them here. Clearly a lack of concentration and shortened attention spans! But I will overcome those.

I am a human being. A normal human being, molded, toughened, shaped and formed by all the super forces that are above my potential to master - Love, Kindness, Mother Nature's benevolence and mercy, to name a few. But the ways to get to be a superhuman are not scarce. In fact, there are not 'many ways'. There is one, just one truth told in many ways. Often, it's so easy to get lost in the concept of the 'false-real' - that my life is the greatest show and I'm born to rule. In the 'grand scheme of things', I'm nothing. Just a speck in the universe, the vast vast universe that is made up of just too many specks like myself. But, this misconception is only because of the wrong notion that I'm distinct from the 'grand scheme'. This is where the wisdom of superhumans helps. The advaitins like Aadishankara or the stoic masters like Seneca. The omnipresent power and wisdom of those who have already 'been there, done that', and passed that wisdom too. By their grace and the force of my will, I'm able to reinforce the lessons from them myself when I face odds in any situation. I just need to hold on to them and not let them go.

ब्रह्म सत्यं जगन्मिथ्या 

जीवो ब्रह्मैव नापरः

"Brahman (all-pervasive absolute consciousness) is the truth, the world is unreal.          The individual soul is no different from Brahman" - Aadishankara 

Clearly, there are still many moments of 'rocking the boat', but my masters show the way. And, the lessons from self-awareness surely do help too. As much as I have felt proud of my volition to define my paths and stick to them, there are obviously 'powers that be' that keep testing my limits. Somehow I'm holding on and standing my ground. I will stand my ground. And I'll do it all over again!

Cheers.

2016 Professional Running - Run One

Today was a special day. One that brought me one more step closer to realizing my potential. I kicked off the first professional run for the year with The Wipro Chennai Marathon's Half marathon, one that is also my first half marathon. The end of the 21.1 Kms felt a lot less painful that I had anticipated. And that now looks like the beginning of an era of professional running I plan to compete in.

Here's to more running!

Cheers!

Happy 2016

Surprise! I hope I'm not back just too late for you to remember that this blog and I exist! Here's wishing everyone a very happy new year. May God bless you all with prosperity, happiness and peace.

I know I have missed the usual rhetoric of a New Year's eve post to say 'here's to a better year ahead'. But some things do happen for a reason. It takes a best friend to believe that you are good at something when you feel you are not. So.. Dei Senthil - here I go. Thanks for watching out and letting me know that I have missed the new year's eve post, that made me realize I have hardly written anything in a long time. As a token of our friendsh... well, I don't think there can ever be a token of it. It's just us, the inseparables. I dedicate all my posts of 2016 to you. Hope you enjoy some of them at least!

2015 was a year of enlightenment in many ways. For one, I had to leave home to find home back at home again! And that's only mildly putting it! But more positively, it was also a year of spiritual resurrection, one that made me feel the resurgence of a strong belief in the ways of Mother Nature. I had to change to realize that I cannot, and need not, change. Constancy was indeed an inspiration that turned the second half of 2015 for the better. Funny, indeed, are the ways of life!

Now, to work on my self-awareness is a big task I've set for myself for 2016. We'll have loads to talk about it. As for the other to-do's: more running, more writing, more books, more music. Let's see where the year takes us.

Once again, happy new year! May there be peace.

Self-awareness - first lessons

Of late, I realized that I have often been selfish, at times self-centered, and sometimes self-obsessed. Thinking of why and how this happens and why I feel the way I do, I'm not surprised to find that my expectations from myself on all these occasions are narrow and short-lived, and my ways and means of meeting/exceeding them are 'instant-gratifying'. Neither such expectations nor such ways and means are virtuous paths to peace. This knowledge is my most recent discovery from my self-appraisal. All self-appraisals are generally self-fulfilling prophecies - I was right - and one ends up feeling proud at the end of this mirage of achievement. But, pride is the first enemy to humility. That is about as enlightened as I feel now! And pride does come before the fall! I'm not proud now. I only need to think and be thankful for how good a life it has been for me. I now know what humility I owe the Gods/ Mother Nature/ Invisible Hand or whatever you want to call it, having fallen now and getting up. (We will come to this later)

But the problem here isn't with humility or pride, though I wish it were that simple. Then it's a simple matter of do's and don't's. Do be humble, don't be proud. Isn't it? It is not even about fortune or luck - fortunate that one is in a position to feel proud, or lucky that one hasn't been pushed to the limits of humiliation and made to learn humility from it. The broader problem is about the whining mortals caught between these two extremes. Broadly, I come across only two kinds of people -- the self-gratifying, narcissistic, pleasure-seeking, fun-loving and ultimately wasteful life-a-holics who think their life is the greatest show on the planet; and the patient, all-bearing, self-sacrificing, thankful-to-God-ly, silent gazers into a wise life beyond the apparent survival. In short, the 'proud instant-gratifiers' and the 'saints'. The ratio could be something like a million to one. (Are there still any saints around?) So, let's simply say that there is just one type for now, the former. I hope to find, some day, the people of the other type.

I do not want to see the world made up of only these two types. There would be a few more types, and I could find them if I want to, but I cannot take those paths right now. (again, we will come to this later). I do not identify myself with either of the above two categories. But I find I often straddle dangerously close to the boundaries of both, sometimes at such high frequencies that I feel I'm literally rocking the boat from side to side in a dangerous tide in the sea of people on either extremes. It could topple any minute, but regardless of which side it falls on, it is only going to go under. It is a period of intense excitement, thrill and anxiety, all simultaneously, and in that order. Excited that I'm on a rocking boat in a turbulent sea, thrilled that it could topple any minute, and anxious of what would happen if it did topple and where would I end up.

And then...the moment dawns on me. I stop rocking the boat, and the sea calms too. It is a moment of realization that I need to rise above these mere mortals not only because I can foresee the vanity of their short-lived, self-centered, instant-gratifying, material lives, but also because it is easier to set myself apart from them based on my ideals, than fit in with them based on theirs. I'm learning to be self-aware!

Inspiration - Part 2

It is against my own wish to start a thought on a negative note, especially and specifically one with such a title. But this note should serve as a caution to ward off the biggest irony I'm currently facing about myself. I read Part 1 and wondered, to my shock and dismay, where that 'I' is now! It is close to a matter of shame to think that I can get lost of myself (not 'in' myself) in such a short time. I had changed, for the worse. But there is a consolation (unique to me) that it has been four years since that note (wow!), because four years to you can well be forty years to me, and that I have stayed on to look back four years and wonder at that now makes me feel both happy and sad. And it does not also fail to kindle something in me again. The last sentence in Part 1 - If i feel like writing a Part II to this, I sure will update - is the motive and the reason I'm here. To surprise myself. This post can be outright nonsensical or profoundly silly, for it is a contradiction to a widely held dictum that change is always a necessity and an inspiration, but this is a train of thought I felt should come out now.

Constancy as an inspiration: I have been dormant for too long, much to my dismay again, letting my uncontrollable flow of thoughts still uncontrolled, letting my attention sway too much into the trivialities, letting my guard off the 'higher sense' of life and be lured sometimes into the material and the transitory. My brother posited a truth simply - the more things change, the more they remain the same. It is inevitable to undergo change every moment, and yet we find ourselves mostly unmoved in the larger scheme of things. Once in a while, change throws me off balance and I feel it is reasonable to lose my footing for a while. But the wind does slow down, and I have to pull myself up. In that sense, I think I was wrong about my wind of change letting me shed some of my old unwanted self back home and start afresh a few things. The change has only made the permanence even more obvious. (Bro, you are a genius). I am what I was, and I will be what I am. If I'm to let myself get engulfed by my own misconception that I'm supposed to change, I lose myself. I'm not going to let that happen.

I recently stumbled upon one of JK's quotes - it is no measure of health to be be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Somehow, the way I am now suddenly worried me if that is the health I was unconsciously heading into. Can I really shed some of my old self 'back home' in light of the new society? I do not think so. I do not need to change. My inspirations are still constant, non-material, and unlimited by space or time. I'm only held stable because of this realization, and because Mother Nature never stops calling out to me.

And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep

Here's to more of the best of times ahead.

Rajaji

Here I come, 30!

There are many cliches on age, but two stand out - 'Age - it's just a number' and 'We're always the same age inside'. Funny we get to take these (and all other cliche's) either so casually or so seriously that, on either side, there are deeper thoughts we miss to see in such apparent cliches! Since these cannot be generalized and one has to look for them oneself, I'm not stretching the point any more on what they ought to be. But here are mine. I'm no stranger to cliches myself. I have both given and taken tonnes of those. And this time too I can't help giving myself quite a strong dose of some cliches. Let's stick with a few on life that tie back to age.

Life has been good. Life has been gracious. Mother Nature has been patient and forgiving and merciful. As time has gone by, I now see another probable wind of change in the horizon for me. As much as I'd like myself to be grounded firmly on a few driving principles of my good and gracious life - stoicism, gratitude, contentment to name a few - there always come moments that tempt me to bend a bit here and there, and wish for things to be such and such, and want things to happen. Ah, if only controlling desires were that easy. And now how I wish the probable wind to turn real! And so, as I keep wishing and not-wishing, I wonder what I have done with that good and gracious life that has happened to me, if not something that I shaped here and there, least of all something that is 'chiseled by my own hands'! (ah, here's another cliche!). Well, I'm not a self-made man!

There's not a better 'circumstantially appropriate' time to look back on one's life than one's birthday. With my 30th a couple of days away, I'm doing the 'looking back' and wondering what have I done to call my life my life? What have I worked out on all the 29 years of existence (maybe the last two or three consciously living and not existing**, after crossing the chasm of identity crisis. Finally, I think I'm getting to existentialism!) to call something an achievement by my own standards? 

Education? Yes. 

Job? Yes. 

Meaningful work? 'Meaningful in what sense' is something that is still on the works! Let's stick with maybe

Societal belonging (outside of family & best friends)? Questionable, bordering on a No. Damn the society!

Love? Hell Yes, both loving and being loved, (although I guess I'm poor at the former compared to the latter!) 

Friendship? Yes, some exemplary. 

Philosophy? Maybe. Getting there!

Passion? Well.. maybe one or two. A few years ago, this would've been a resounding Yes. Now I'm wondering what my passion is! Sometimes I think I know (the probable wind of change may be one, should it turn real. Let's see), and at other times I wonder what they are. So, let's stick with maybe. 

There it is. A smorgasbord of  Yes-No-Maybe that captures my 29 years in 10 lines! Funny that some vital ones are Maybe's bordering on No's. Danger signs!

30 is a psychologically important time for me (don't ask why). I have a meaningful wish this time to firm up some of the above, starting now. I need more 'Yes'es. Here I come, 30!

** - Ok I promise I won't bring the existing vs. living conundrum again. This is the last time. Henceforth I swear to use existing interchangeably with living, so as to clear the air around my existential angst on surviving vs. living. Deal!)