Rare. Isolated. November.

The reader in me nowadays pops his head up 'once in a super-blue-blood-moon' from what was 'once in a blue moon'. That's becoming quite an achievement. Nothing I have read over the years sticks in my brain, neither are the stuff I'm struggling to read these days. Soon, it'll be a rarity and a success if I read one good meaningful book a year. Bah! But in this comatose state, somewhere in a nook or a corner of my brain, there are a few passages, quotes, words of wisdom that manage to reverberate. Those are from the early years of reading, time when Nietzsche, Russell, Seneca were all gold to my eyes. Aside from the interesting fact that he ended up as one of the most important thinkers of 19th century for the kind of person he was, Nietzsche has been a treasure trove in the selective areas I have reached out to him for. (Now it's baffling to me that I read Nietzsche and Seneca simultaneously, that the former was all joy and pain and celebration and derogation and what-not of life, while the latter was all stoic. Seems I read just about anything fancy, like a dog keeping its mouth on everything (translate to Tamil with the right tone and you get what I'm talking about! Ha ha!)

In the wake of a long-drawn rainy day, last night was a string of incoherent moments. Two days of fever was letting go of its grip on me, the doctor's medication was doing its job. Still, for a decently strong dose, I couldn't sleep. I thought Ludovico Einaudi's 'Divenire', which has been a great peace-bringer to me on many occasions, would help calm my mind that was wavering among a million things. Lying on my back, looking up at the sky through my mind's eye, my fingers tried to imitate his movements on the piano, and the orchestra's on the violin. It felt real, so real that I could have actually been playing Divenire, Rose, Primavera, and all the other jewels of music in the album. Music is indeed so powerful if it sinks into your mind! Divenire was finished and yet sleep didn't come over me. It had been an entire hour of starting at the ceiling and playing piano and violin in the air! Oops. It was time for 'I Giorni'. That was finished too. Another hour. Oops again! But in those two hours, besides the piano and violin, Nietzsche's "hour hand of life" kept flashing in my mind repeatedly. 

Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea - all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life

Reading it for the first time so many years ago made a huge impact on me because of the profundity with which he laid out a truth - that how many of us end up being intervals and intermissions. It was something that stuck to me instantly and has never left me since. Yes, he was certainly wrong about 'speaking completely to the heart but once' part. Of course, they all do speak to us all the time. It's only that we have become so distracted and digressed in today's age that listening to them truly, even once, becomes a great deal. It's only that we have stopped listening to mother nature. But what a run I've had with all those moments of greatest significance - no dearth of love, springtime, melodies, mountains, moon, the sea. What more am I to be thankful for?

Beep! Midnight. November. 35 is just around the corner. The shock pushed me instantly into sleep. Goodnight.

How long till the next?

Now what?

This was the first thought that occurred to me last Sunday morning, the 100th day of running for the 2019 edition of the 100daysofrunning challenge. I had gone past my target of 512 kms on the 99th day. So, I ran the 100th day at peace. I could not comprehend my own thoughts on that day. Is it a good thing to complete a target comfortably and feel empty on the finish line, or is it a good thing to keep the target in sight till the end and feel the finishing touch right at the last moment? Actually, I could've done 550 if I wanted to. I had the days and I had fuel left in me. But 512 sounded fine enough. On retrospect, I could not help wondering that I have felt the same way almost always, all along my life. I'm a procrastinator.. big time! But I somehow manage to finish things on time, in the end. Things have worked just fine, as long as it is on time. What starts to occupy my mind thereafter is 'now what'.

I don't remember the exact moment when, many years ago, in a flash, I felt living up to 50 would be a decent enough life. It's a brief memory, but one that is very deeply ingrained. I vaguely remember my thoughts on half-life that I penned down at 25. I used to write a lot then. A lot of poetry (thank God I've taken out most of them from here), a lot of self-discovered philosophical scribblings. I read quite a bit too - some Russell, some Nietzsche, some Somerset Maugham, some fiction. All of this in the middle of my MBA, with a lot of time still left for family, my first nephew, friends and college life. Nine years later, I'm a changed man, only with the longings of what all I could have done in 9 long years since. There's been a constant hunger for leading a different life. But it's not an insatiable one. Every 30 days, the hunger is fed with salary, and there's a good week's sleep. Then the hunger returns the next week to remain for the further three, and then it's satiated again. This for the last 9 years. Man, what a life!

Now I'm caught in a conundrum between the young and the old. 34 is what? Young or old? At my workplace, I see both ends of the spectrum. In the industry I'm in, 25 is a good start for a management graduate from a prestigious B-school, with no student loans, to call her/himself a consultant (now whatever the hell that means.. many in my encounter have been just dumb! We haven't needed a lot of consulting from our own consultants!). And I see the potential they could reach in 10 years, only if they were sincere and ambitious enough (which is what their prestigious B-school is supposed to teach them!). On the other end, I see 45-somethings, the few friendly and open types, lament about what they could do if they were 34 and had 10 more years to be where they are now, without their many EMIs, of course!

You see, my problem is not wanting to be 25 now again or let the years pass by to when I'm 45, satiated by salary till then, and then start longing for 35! The point is to find a way out of the mess now. I could get out, any moment. Someday soon I would. My problem is passion. I don't have just one, but many, and so I don't have one! A man passionate about many things is not passionate about one thing! Or can he be? Too many passions arise from too much freedom. For the most part, I have been responsible with most of my freedom, and that's taken me on a proper and safe journey with many fellow travellers. But it's not adventurous! It's the little extra freedom that provides for eccentricities that are adventurous and are hard to resist. That's what goes on in my head all the time - which of these eccentric passions to choose and which adventure to take. And if I end up with one, how long it will be before the next one raises its head? Shouldn't life be either one great adventure or many little ones, instead of just proper and safe?

Run... come what may

Come what may...

This is the idea behind 100 days of running (HDOR) -  a challenge I've taken up for the 2nd time in 3 years. To me, more than fitness, it's a means to improve consistency, in running and gradually in other habits too. I used to be a person who got bored easily with routine - whether it was work or personal things. In a way, picking up running as my sport has helped me deal with routine in a sportive and a little bit more interesting way. As soon as I crossed the habitual milestone (the time after which an activity becomes a habit and the anxiety of having to stick to a daily plan for it vanishes) in anything I did, the habit gets set and so does the routine.

What I have come to realize, not just in running but generally in any activity, is that a lack of surprise stimulus (just coined this term, for lack of a better sounding and interesting word) turns a habit into boredom rapidly. Thereafter, it is sheer routine, and more routine, as a force of habit (like work!). And so, after 35+ days, HDOR was becoming uninteresting. After all, what could be so much fun about running 3 kms everyday? But something in me kept me going with this routine, awaiting a surprise stimulus, or even a miracle, that would make all the running worth its while. It didn't come, no stimulus or miracle.

Just before HDOR kicked off, our bunch of running friends decided to sign up for the SHHM, a half marathon up and down the Satara hill in Maharashtra, in August. This would be the first time for most of us, so you can imagine the enthusiasm and all. Our bunch of runners signed up with a coach to train for the run. I preferred to train alone and excused myself, only because there were days of rest built into the training, and I didn't want it to interfere with HDOR. To me, HDOR meant running all the 100 days, even though HDOR itself counts rest days in the 100 days, which I had not read earlier (you see, the relaxations in the rules do matter!). So, in retrospect, my resolve to run all 100 days is the first surprise stimulus I had given myself, unaware of it then.

I generally intend to focus more on strength training and so I decided to keep my running limited for this edition. At around the 35th day, which was my habitual milestone for HDOR, I wasn't strength-training much. So I thought I'd at least run better and longer this year. And so, regardless of how it was to be done, I set 512 kms as the target for 2019's HDOR (I did 511.5 kms in 2017). Around the same time, it struck me that I had been running just about 3-4 kms a day, and would end up way short of 512 Kms if I continued to run with that lackadaisical attitude. I shouldn't be running a hundred days for the sake of it. I should be running for the love of it. So, renewed targets. 6 kms every day at the least for the remaining 60+ days. As part of the prep for SHHM, our guys planned to do 15 kms once every week on flat roads or 10 kms on a nearby hill, only shorter and smaller than Satara but did the trick of simulation training. We did this mostly on Saturdays, and sometimes on Sundays. That took care of the daily average needed to be maintained. So I still had the luxury to run just about 4 kms during some weekdays. This routine took care of the next 7-8 weeks. Another 50 days covered, you see. Also, I made my personal best running month in June - 153 kms.

July is a good time for runners in Chennai. That's when the city starts to turn around from hottest to hotter. A few short showers show up, thanks to the Southwest monsoon for some mercy (July rains in Chennai are still in deficit every year, not as much rains as the monsoon should be bringing). But that is enough for a nature-loving, outdoorsy runner to look up to the rest of the year. So, naturally for me, it was a good feeling about the remaining days of HDOR.

Day 80 - I skipped the morning run as I had an errand to take care of early in the morning before shooting off to work. By evening, the skies had grown dark and there was clear signs of rain. Sure enough, it started to drizzle on and off at around 8 PM. I had just gotten back home and was anxious if I'd miss a day so close towards the end. By 930PM it hadn't slowed down. But something told me to hit the beach to run and I started off.

God is in the rains as much as in the absence of rains, in lighting and in thunder

नमो वर्ष्याय च अवर्ष्याय च;

नमो मेघ्याय च विध्युथ्याय च; 

नमो वात्याय च रेष्मियाय च  -

(Namo varshyaaya cha avarshyaaya cha; namo meghyaaya cha vidhyuthyaaya cha; namo vaathyaaya cha reshmiyaaya cha;) 

Salutations to him [Lord Rudra] who is in rain water and who is also in places where it does not rain; Salutations to him who is in the clouds and who is also in lightning; Salutations to him who is in the form of rainy storm and to him who is in the form of dry hoarse wind -

Sri Rudram)

 At 10PM, the beach was empty. Not a soul around, save a few dogs, the inhabitants and rulers of that stretch. That night, it all happened. By far, it was the loudest and brightest night I had ever come across in my life, really. The sky roared and shone and poured so much that it was a real physical pain to my eyes to see the asphalt from which the lightning reflected immensely, to my ears to be open to the loudest bangs, and to my head to bear the brunt of the heavy shower. For a few moments, I was even afraid, to put the thing in perspective! It was half an hour of earth shattering grandeur that would put any doubtful mind to rest of the presence of a Power Above. I have never been more thankful for being able to run and witness a spectacle like that.

I came home an elated man that He had intended me to experience running that night, in ways like never before. If that isn't "run... come what may", nothing will ever be. Who knows, you may end up with a miracle as your legs tire and stop, but your beating heart doesn't slow down!

A runner's guilt

There could have been a better title for this post. Still I'm intentionally keeping it this way, for the directional intent of where this is coming from. But it is not all negative. Go on.

As I write, I have never been in a more welcoming environment than where I am now. It's a still, cool evening. The sky is an awesome pale blue, with white patches of paper clouds here and there. A jet is tearing through the sky, leaving a trail of white fog that is cutting the sky into two. Way below that, and just above my head, all kinds of birds are heading home, the sound of pleasure in their chirps. So I'd like to think. My favorites are the cuckoo couple - the red-bead-eyed black male and the white-grey spotted female, and the innumerable companies of parrots that glide past my terrace everyday right about this time. It's a kind of serene calm now even amidst the constant chirps. So that's the setting now in which I'm retrospecting. 

I seem to be in a perennial writer's block when I try to think of a new idea or frame a new social concept or philosophy to write about. Those days just seem to be gone for a while now. I'm trying to operate on that mode of thought and feeling. If I could, I would instill a pace-maker to that part of the heart that works on these areas to beat normally! That is, if there ever is such a part in the heart like the different parts of the brain (as if I'm using those effectively!!). 

And so, the simplest thing to get me writing is to do with running. I love running, so I have no block or problem writing about it. Tomorrow would mark the first time in 24 months that I would have run 150 kms in a month. This is the second full month in the '100 Days of Running' challenge for 2019. (I ran 125 kms in May). The last time I clocked 150+ was June 2017 during that year's 100DoR. My mind went back to the circumstances of that year's challenge. It was a run-rage that I took on, in some serious testing times of my personal life. And today I reflect on how much things have changed since. Back then, the running used to cure me of negativism. Now, it keeps me composed and contained from too much positivism. In both cases, it has just helped me stay on track. And this is the guilt that has captured me now. Why is my running becoming a refuge or a neutralizer to just keep me normal? Why is my running keeping me normal and not elevating me as a person? How could I love something that is just normal? Or is it because my running cures and contains me that is making me love it more? Or to simply state - Why am I not running for the love of it, if I truly did love it?

I'm only reminded of Haruki Murakami's golden words that still keep me going about running - "I'm not a great runner, but I'm definitely a strong runner". No one could state it simpler and more powerfully than this, to keep someone like me running. By God's grace, I have never been left wanting for strength, at least when it comes to running since I picked it up as the sport for me four years ago. That strength will be enough to overcome the guilt and embrace love, my love for running. And that strength is enough to keep this lone wolf going! 

The great and the invincible

Every time a man realizes his mistake, and people forgive him for that and take him in again, he becomes great by way of imparting his knowledge to them of how not to commit that mistake again. His experience is their teacher, and in that, he becomes their teacher! But, every time a man realizes his mistake, and people don't forgive him for that nor take him in again, and still he goes about imparting that knowledge to the very unforgiving lot, he becomes invincible. For, in the former, his greatness is a result of the debt paid more than full to the others' forgiveness, but in the latter, his invincibility is a result of a debt that does not exist but is still paid to even the unforgiving.

Now, isn't that a justification good enough to keep committing new mistakes?!

A stoic's hope

I have long pondered over what hope means for a stoic. It has been a persistent question in my mind - 'Does a stoic hope?', 'Can a stoic hope?', 'Why can't a stoic hope?' and so on.

Let me start by putting forth the context of hope in the founding fathers' principles. Seneca has theoretically dismissed hope as a principle to follow:

They (hope and fear) are bound up with one another, unconnected as they may seem. Fear keeps pace with hope. Both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future.

There cannot be a more categorical dismissal of the admission of hope in a stoic's mind. With that set, is there a possible answer to my questions?

On the one hand, if a stoic does hope, he is violating a founding principle of living in and with the present. A man with hope cannot be a stoic. Or rather, A man cannot wish to have hope and claim to be a stoic. But, does the mere thought or wish of hoping for something just displace the fundamental tenet of accepting whatever fate has to throw at him? Does the mere presence of hope in his life puts him in a disadvantaged position from learning the ability to withstand whatever things, good or bad, life throws at him, with equanimity? Why can one not hope and be equanimous and dispassionate at the same time?

On the other hand, can a stoic hope? Is that a right he can exercise to bring a new dimension to the future, if even the concept of future holds ground for a stoic! Can he claim to have simple hopes, and yet be a stoic?

What if we turned to a more contemporary approach to hope? In today's hyper-stretched world - mostly materialistic, self-fulfilling, individualistic, and tense - hope may come to mean something as simple as an anticipatory feeling of simple contentment or peace that is achievable with minimal upset of the balance of the mind, yet the current state of which is anxiety or eagerness. Will this count as hope or will this count as a journey to learning to withstand the whiplashes of fate?

And most of all, what about the hope to learn to be a stoic?

There has to be an answer... someday!

Home stretch

"How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life" - Marcus Aurelius

This is as close to reality as I can feel at the moment. Life has come some sort of a near-full circle. I have done almost all the 'been-there-done-that' things that can possibly be counted as the 'usual scheme of things'. I see the home stretch now. I have done things that I'm not proud of. There's a good dose of regret that has gone in. But, as I now remember all of them, I feel nothing. I feel immune to the vagaries of life. I bid good riddance to the years that have passed in my mistakes and my neglect of some principles that I have conveniently forgotten in those years! I see them all indifferently and bid goodbye. The next few months will erase some more things of my scribbled slate.

And then, maybe it'll be time to start afresh. In the grand scheme of the new things to come, I'll learn not to be ridiculous or surprised at what life will turn out to be. The 2nd inning may then well steer clear of  the turbulence that has somewhat rocked the first.

Here's to more!

How I ran the Bangalore Ultramarathon 2017

I'm writing this exactly a month after I ran the Bangalore Ultramarathon 2017.

Grossly under-prepared is certainly an understatement! The thrill of over-running - my foot! Remember I had a plan on how to complete the 50kms? It was a flawed plan, and I had prepared it way worse than I thought. So I won't tell you what it was! But I somehow managed to finish the 50kms, in 7:30 hrs. For someone who can now do a Half-marathon on tar roads in humid weather in about 2:15 hours on average, taking 3 hours for the first 25kms was disturbing, to say the least, especially in a bamboo forest trail on a pleasant early morning. And you can imagine the next 25! Maybe I bordered on a mix of over-confidence and lethargy. I had expected to be slow, but not this much. The finish was definitely Mother Nature's grace!

So, here is the series of silly events leading to an oh-so-stellar finish! (Sometimes I enjoy ridiculing myself just too much!)

1. Traveling from Chennai to Bangalore on a 2nd class sitting coach in a day train, just on the evening before the run, and so reaching my guest house way later than I should have. Brilliant first step!
2. Lack of sleep - This was the most pronounced part of my over-confidence. 4 hours sleep before a 50Kms run. What was I thinking??
3. Not carrying a sweater - it's 4 AM on a November morning and I had to travel 40kms by van to get to the forest, and wait in the 'Start' area for about an hour. Come on, man!

And that's how eventful the start of the run was! But once it started, it was an altogether different game. On second thoughts, 3 hrs for the first 25 kms was not bad. I had not expected to set a target finish time for this run; just a decent finish. And beyond the 25 kms, it's a new world for me, for I had not run longer distances before that. So I decided to take the first 25 really slow, to keep my legs fit enough for the next 25. That way, maybe 3 hrs was not that bad.

The second half: The most surprising part to me in the second half was that how many runners ahead of me kept running without a break for some food. I stopped right at the food counter at the end of the first 25kms, gorged down 2 idlis and 1 vada, even before changing my socks. Took about 30 mins in all to recoup. But these people ahead of me were surprising, to be able to go on for 50kms with a glass of water or Enerzal, a slice or two of orange or banana! Oops! Must have been real runners! I'm in wrong company!

Lack of sleep was starting to show up, as soon as I hit the 35th km. A stinging headache gripped me, and I thought that was it. The worst thing that can happen to a runner halfway through a marathon is the slightest thought of giving up. The thought is a vice that instantly grips the mind and the heart. 'So, what's the point' is how it proliferates. Beyond a point, it's not the legs that run. It's the mind and the heart together. You tend to forget that legs exist. You don't know what to do to finish. The way I had figured it out when it came to a struggle - 'forget running. If I can't run a step more, I better walk. If I can't walk, I better crawl to the finish'. But now I was at the 40th km and I was done for! I had come to a point when I felt I can't even crawl. I wanted to give up. I so wanted to!

And then came the music! No vice can stand the power of music that melts a heart, that inspires, that re-energizes a draining soul, that does what not! It's not the body that then takes you forward. It's a Higher Calling. You don't need legs to run. You don't even need the mind and heart to do it together, for you don't know where they are either. It's a spirit that flies now, unbound from the tangles of every worldly thing there is, unbound from the flesh that couldn't contain it any longer. It's inexplicable, the power of music to drive a soul to reach for anything, big or small! I just kept going and somehow got to the finish line. 4 hrs from the 26th to the 50th km. It was finally over.

Post the finish, a woman came up to me and said with a thumbs-up: 'good one'. She must have been in her mid-thirties. 'I was running a little bit behind you for a long time, but saw you fly away suddenly from the 45th km!'. It was then that I realized the music had done its job!

The thrill of over-running

Last week I signed up for the Bangalore Ultra Marathon 2017 in the 50Kms category. It's exactly two weeks away. The 11th of Nov, 2017. This will be my first time in this event. 'I'm grossly under-prepared' is putting it very mildly. Actually, I haven't prepared at all. But the event has been on my mind for two years now and I couldn't wait to be prepared for it. I'll just be waiting forever then I guess! I know for sure it's going to be a gruelling thing. So I don't even bother to prepare for that, except in my mind. I'm still only training physically and mentally for TWCM. The simple reason being: TWCM is a target I want to take on. The Ultra is an experience I want to feel. For the most part of my running these three years, I haven't prepared for any experience. Experience is what happens when I'm not prepared for it. (My first two half-marathons are a testament to that). I only try to learn from it afterwards as much as I can. And that is exactly why I signed up for the Ultra, because I want to know what it will take to be prepared for it the next time. But I hope to be just able to finish it this first time. No timing targets. So, this time it's going to be a purely mental game, with little support from my body. I'm already telling my legs to brace for impact.

But, I have a simple plan on what might help me finish it this first time. I'll come back to write about it if it works. For now, it's only a decent sketch in my mind. If it works, it'll also mean I might have a workable training method for how to prepare for a Half-marathon vs Full-marathon vs Ultra-marathon that might help going forward.

By the way, did I tell you I have not run a Full-marathon till date?! Now that is certainly overdoing! But I can't wait for the thrill of running the Ultra, or over-running it!

Thoughts on motivation to keep running - continued

The last week has been pretty decent for training, a mix of both progress and pain. I did a training run of 14 kms in 01:35 hrs. Seems pretty ok, and on track for a sub 2hr target in TWCM, provided I don’t stop training the next 4 weeks. I hope not to. There’s just 5 weeks to the event. But a part of this somewhat tough training (by my standards: at least one 15km, one 10km, and one 5 km runs in a week, aside from the regular walking/cycling stuff) is taking its toll in pieces in my right knee. And worse, the last two days it’s been flowing down to the shinbone (the long front bone section between the knee and the ankle). I don’t think it’s an issue with my technique, for my left leg is as good as ever. So I guess it must be from the right knee-down.

Once I severely injured myself, twisting my right knee and tearing a ligament around it, during the Oxfam Trailwalker 2015 in Avallon, France, in June 2015. I need to write about this. It’s a post long due! Long story short: it’s a 100Km trek in the valleys and dense forests in under 30 hrs straight. (Btw, I cross the finish line at 06:20 mins in the link above! ;-)). I know 2+ years is way too long a time for anything to heal, so the problem now is definitely not because of that. But, tell you what? It’s some sort of a mental connection I have made up and that has stuck to me ever since that day: my right knee is not alright since Oxfam. In a way, I like to keep it that way, because it reminds me of two things: 1) what the tough conditions of a real run/trek mean and 2) the cardinal truth of long distance running/trekking/whatever you put your body through – pain is inevitable. So I’d rather stick to what I have now defined for myself and accepted as a small personal motivation factor – there’s something wrong with my right knee for a while, and I’m ok living with it. But that won’t stop me from running. 

So, the point: associating with an impactful (and preferably painful, for pain is what keeps it going) event is a good way to keep oneself focused on the training. 

Back to the training. What I also realized when the knee hurt too much this week is that I have long stopped training with weights. Stamina is not a problem now, but strength is. Maybe because my muscles are not strong enough for 30 kms in a week, so my body is letting my bones bear the brunt. And those are two entirely different things, stamina and strength, especially for a long distance runner. This may or may not be factually correct (who cares?), but it is definitely true for me. It was a simple thing that I had happily chosen to neglect in the past two months’ break. I need to pick up the weights again. And I’ve got to make my muscles learn that more pain is on the way.