The runners curse

Run like walls don’t exist

Run like walls don’t exist

When the wind blows, some people build walls, others build windmills

— Chinese Proverb

Intense focus, doing one thing, and being extremely skilled at it were never my strong points. According to the Vedantic concept of karma, which is the belief that the actions in this life determine what happens to us in the future, we’ve had an infinite number of prior births. I seem to have inherited my butterfly mind from my previous births. If we believe in Karma, then I am a natural serial butterfly. Many lives have honed my butterfly skills of flitting from topic to topic and project to project. I have now become a specialist in this and even call my life stage a portfolio career, where I dabble in many things, extracting joy from the innards of diverse projects.

But it wasn't always like this. I remember my father and mother nudging me to focus on doing well in life. Anything apart from a deep focus on my studies was looked down upon. Some very early sports skills were encouraged, but never at the cost of focusing on my studies. I finished my education, like it was a bad chapter in a fast-moving novel, with precious little to celebrate but exited with a focus the size of an elephant in musth rampaging through grassland. I was focused on doing well in my career. Whatever “well” meant for the outside world. I began my long march to the beat of “external drummers”, people who I looked up to & wanted to follow. My internal drummers popped up just in time to bring an edge to my personality, like tadka on slow-cooked dal. The edge created a furious ambition to be the best in everything I did.

Running was one such pursuit that called me, one project that I took on 15 years ago, and it reminded me of a lifelong love. It was easy to bring focus there; the targets were defined. To begin with, it was not so difficult; it was just about being able to deal with the demons that long distances evoked in me.

Could I ever run 5 km, then possibly 15 km? Would I ever be able to do the famed half marathon at 21 km, and then, of course, the limit to my imagination, the 42 km full marathon? When would that happen? Inflicting pain on myself was relatively easy; I had done it for a long time through the meaningless portals of our education system. I was trained to be a masochist through my experience learning inane subjects by rote. So long distances challenged me, but there was enough history of being in love with pain that allowed me to rein in my demons and cover all those targets.

Of course, running long distances was not easy; running is equal parts inspiration & pain. And of course, you have the famed walls, the barriers that seemed to spring up every few kilometers, telling runners that they should stop, were popping up constantly for me. The physiology behind these walls is clear: your body’s glycogen stores become depleted, so you don’t have the fuel to continue running. During my early running years, my external drummer caused me to run faster than I could. We become ripe to hit a wall exactly when we are chasing our personal best, that unique runner mental game” that chases us in our running journey, constantly pushing our pace and obstinately forcing us to compare ourselves with others. The Wall is the point where our body has exhausted the available carbohydrates and is switching to burning fat. 

These runner walls are evil; they have the knack of coming up just when you feel terrible. How does it feel when you “hit a wall” during your marathon? How does a concrete wall feel? It smacks you hard. You feel like you have come to a dead halt; your legs have turned to rubber, and a part of your mind is telling you that you are about to suffer a cardiac arrest. Every step is torture, and you cannot even imagine the race having a finish line. You feel like an imposter with a bib, almost an “Un-athlete”.

When runners hit a wall, they slow down suddenly and grind to a halt. I could run long distances only because of my coach and my training group. They helped me take the correct nutrition steps to deal with the wall, have a gel, pace myself better, and so on. And yet, the single largest reason that helped me overcome these walls was my “distractable mind," the ability to call out all my butterfly learnings from past lives and distract myself till the wall disappeared. I had long conversations with these walls, many moments of capitulation followed by the steely resolve that helped me go the distance. These were not moments of intense focus; instead, distraction was my way of dealing with these giant mental barriers that kept coming my way. So my butterfly mind was also my edge; it allowed me to use my imagination to undo the wall and replace it with a figment of my imagination, sometimes a rock concert, sometimes the face of an almost forgotten girlfriend, and defeat the wall.

And so here I was, around the 18th km in the Mumbai marathon; it was a good day, almost perfect. It had been a lovely run this morning—the chill in the air, the steadiness of my breath, an intake of cold air hitting my nostrils. It was one of those days in January when the air has a slight nip; it happens rarely, and when it does, the planets are aligned for a runner to get his personal best. I was going strong, and I reached Hajiali Junction feeling good. As I turned toward the old Cadbury building, suddenly it hit me. I could see a wall of gargantuan proportions coming up in front of me. It seemed like someone had attached a vacuum pump and drained out all my energy. All my trainer’s exhortations to keep my arms up and near my chest were forgotten, and I was beginning to fade out. Suddenly, a youngster came alongside and smiled. I grimaced in return through a busted body; he must have been in his late 20s and was firing on all cylinders. Sometimes you meet runners who want to chat. I mostly didn’t want to talk, and here I was almost dead. Meanwhile, the youngster looked at me and said, "Sir, can I run with you? At your pace, I may make my sub-2 target." The sub-2-hour half marathon is like trophy timing for most amateur runners. Here I was beaten black and blue by this run, and this youngster seemed to believe that I could lead him on to glory. My butterfly mind started imagining a glorious 1:58-minute run, and through the magic of his statement, I managed to buck my wall. The youngster stayed with me for another 15 minutes; by then, I had overcome my wall, and he had seen a faster runner to attach himself to. For the record, I didn’t make it a sub-2 run that year, but I finished strong, and for me, that was sweet!

And so my life and running continued, on to marathons in Amsterdam and New York. The wall was always an intimate companion. My training helped, smarter nutrition made it easier, and yet when the wall arrived, it was my butterfly mind with its creativity that managed to win the day for me.

There is an interesting line in Plato's Apology that says that the unexamined life is not worth living. “In The Examined Run,"  philosopher and runner Sabrina B. Little asks whether running can be a vehicle for developing our character. So I wonder what role these “walls” have played in my career as a leader and an entrepreneur. I am sure they have made me more creative when I face walls in these other pursuits. My butterfly mind has added an edge to how I deal with walls in all parts of my life.

And while I continue to get older based on the “linear view” of time, I am reminded in the book “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall, that runners believe something else. Runners are convinced that “You don't stop running because you get old, you get old because you stop running.”