Idiots and the Tyranny of Goals, Log-books and The Comrades Ultra Marathon.

“So let it be written, so let it be done!” 

: From the Film “The Ten Commandments”

I am tired of finishing Comrades with just a few seconds to spare.  Earlier this year, I finished the 12 hour race (43,200 seconds) with just 140 seconds to spare.  Not only does that become a stressful day but in addition, I have also to listen to the constant scolding from Neepa who wants me to run faster and keep up with her.  This is indeed, too much stress. 

I start Comrades in the H seeding (5 hour qualifiers).  On an average we lose 8 minutes to reach the start line which in-itself is a major handicap.  To the best of my knowledge, statistics show that 30% of the runners who start in the H seeding won’t make the final cut-off.

The way forward for me is obvious.  One does not need to be a brain surgeon to figure out that the best way to finish Comrades is to run fast...or faster!  I have known this fact for the last 4 years but each year, instead of focusing on speed and endurance training for Comrades, I get seduced into pursuing all sorts of other races around the world whose distance and timing aren’t the best stepping stones for a good Comrades day run.  Consequently I end up messing up my Comrades training. 

No more!!

This year, I have decided that I shall be seduced by only such races that help further my love affair with Comrades. 

The first step is to bring down my Marathon time and consequently improve my start seeding at Comrades.  I have decided to run a sub 4:20 marathon which would put me into the F seeding and drastically improve my chances of finishing the race (provided I do all the other requisite training).

So I have put a plan into motion!

I have decided to run the Amsterdam Marathon on the 21^st of October 2012 and run a personal best time of 4:19 (My PB is 4:39). 

As any good businessman or for that matter sportsman knows...the best way to start achieving your goal is to write it down and then monitor one’s progress towards it.  For runners, it means choosing a marathon training program and keeping a log book. So on Sunday evening (22^nd July) after having run 20k in the morning and with 13 weeks to go for Amsterdam, I sat and made my program and entered it into my log book.  The program covered all the days from the 23^rd of July to the 21^st of October 2012.

The first week starting Monday 23rd looked like so:

Date	Planned	Actual	Remarks
Monday 22	8k easy + Gym (legs)
Tuesday 23	Rest
Wednesday 24	125x8hill sprints
Thursday 25	12k easy + Gym
Friday 26	400x10 speed
Saturday 27	Rest
Sunday 28	22k easy

On Monday and Wednesday I managed to run as planned. (The Rest days have never been a problem). But when the alarm rang at 5:00am Thursday morning, I felt tired and fatigued.  I always listen to my body and so I switched off the alarm and slept until 8am. The 3 additional hours of sleep cured me and I woke up refreshed but with terrible guilt for having missed the 12k.  The log-book is a terrible tyrant!

My first work meeting was at 10:00 am and the second was scheduled for 12:00 pm.  As I drove towards the 2^nd meeting, I happened to pass the Borivali National Park (a wild life sanctuary in the heart of Mumbai) where I occasionally run on the weekends. 

I could not resist!  I called up my client and requested him to delay my meeting by 3 hours in the light of some urgent personal work which had come up.  He agreed.  I asked Khwaja to drive into the park.  I asked him to stand guard as I changed into my Gym clothes (I have learnt to keep my shoes and a pair of running clothes in my car at all times). 

And I was off...running...in the middle of a work day...in the middle of the week.  I cannot recollect a happier moment in the near past. 

I quickly said a ‘thank-you’ to the Universe which gave me such a wonderful opportunity to Run!

The forest was incredibly beautiful now that the monsoons had arrived. Everything was lush green and there were small ponds everywhere.  It seemed quite different from how it seems to me in the early mornings.  There were fewer people and it seemed quieter.  Quieter, because I had stepped into the forest straight from the madness of mid-day Mumbai traffic. 

There were a few young lovers, sitting around on the benches, hugging and kissing and soon to be joining the ranks of Mumbai’s malaria infected.  I hoped that my constant motion would keep the mosquitoes away. 

As I ran, I realized that it was not my slavish devotion to the log-book plan that made me run in the middle of the work day.  This was more like a “call of the wild” thing.  Having recovered from fatigue with the 3 extra hours of sleep, I simply wanted to have my daily fix! My Time, alone with myself!

I thought about my obsession with my Goal of a 4:19 Marathon! I thought of my obsession with the Comrades Marathon. Is there any other way in life to set one’s target?  And what if I miss? Is the target realistic? Is the target achievable?

Different people have been known to set their targets in different ways.

I love a story once told by Osho about a King who loved archery.  

“Once, a King was passing through a small village.  The King loved archery; and was himself was a master archer.  All around the village he saw that on all the trees someone had drawn a bull’s-eye and had then shot an arrow exactly in the centre.  This archer had shot the bullseye every single time.   The King could not believe that in that small village there lived someone who was certainly a greater archer than himself.  The King himself was pretty good but even he was not always one hundred percent accurate. Once in a while he missed the target.  But here in this small village on the trees he saw circles and exactly in the middle an arrow.  Hundreds of circles on hundreds of trees and every single shot a bullseye.

The King said, “This is fantastic... even the best archer cannot manage this.  It seems so perfect.  I want to meet the man.” So he called the people and asked, “Who is the archer?”

They all laughed. They said, “Forget about him. He is the village idiot.”

The King said, “You don’t understand, You bring this man to me. His archery is perfect.  I have never seen so many arrows shot perfectly in the centre of the target”

The villagers said, “Your Highness, this man is the village idiot.  You don’t understand his archery. First he shoots the arrow and then he makes a circle around it. Naturally, he is perfect, always perfect.  And we have often tried to explain to him, ‘This is not the right way. First you should make the circle on the tree and then shoot.  In that way, one can miss.  This is the simple way, you never miss.”

As I ran through the forest, I thought about my ambitious target of a 4:19 marathon. Was this the best way to chase my target?

When I finished my run, I realized that I had run 14.5k instead of 12k.

And as far as my target was concerned, I knew that my arrow was already shot. 4:19 was a done deal! All I had to do now was to draw the circle around the target. All I had to do was train hard and show-up on the start line.

And I am no Village idiot...perhaps just an International one! 

Amit Sheth

International Ambassador: Comrades Ultra Marathon: The Ultimate Human Race.

     

My Iron Lady, The Comrades Ultra Marathon & Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT)

My Iron Lady, The Comrades Ultra Marathon & Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT)

I was recently reading a dissertation titled: Shakespeare’s Women: The Weaker Vessel or Stronger Sex? In this dissertation I came upon an interesting homily.  A homily is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture. In many Churches, a homily is usually given during Mass. Many people consider it synonymous with a sermon.

I read the following : “St Peter gives his precept saying: you husbands deal with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as unto them that are heirs also of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered (1 Peter 3). … For the woman is a weak creature, not endued with like strength and constancy of mind, therefore they be the sooner disquieted, and they be the more prone to all weak affections and dispositions of the mind, more than men be, and lighter they be, and more vain in their fancies and opinions.”             

(An Homily of the State of Matrimony, 1562, from Aughterson, 1995, 23.) http://www.ukdissertations.com/dissertations/english-literature/shakespeares-women.php

I have also read some abstracts from the Indian scriptures of Manu, which dominated the Hindu mind for thousands of years.  They were filled with similar garbage.  He too was convinced that women were inferior to men and needed to be dependent, first on their parents, then on their husbands and later on in life on their husbands and their children. 

It seems obvious that these guys were suffering from massive emotional and mental problems; besides they didn’t get to meet some of the women I know.

Road to Comrades 2012: A story of Heartbreaks, Plantar Fasciitis and Backaches.

The road to Comrades starts, in all earnest, for Neepa and me with the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon.  We ran that race in January 2012 as sub 5 pacers and then planned a second marathon in February. 

On the 6^th of February 2012, Neepa and I had planned a 12k run in the Borivalli National Park.  It is an out and back run. We first run a rolling 5k and then climb a 1k hill and then return to the start.   

We started running together around 5:30 am. At 5k, we reached the bottom of the hill and as I started running up, Neepa just fell back and started walking.  I continued running up and reached the top of the hill and then waited for her.  Almost 4 minutes elapsed before I saw her walking up.  When asked what had happened, she used our mutual running jargon and replied, “I just lost it”.  It meant that she had suddenly tired out.  She explained that she just lost her breath.  But then, she turned around and started running back down.  I passed her quickly and reached the bottom of the hill and again had to wait for her.  When she reached down she said that she was unwell, that something was not right, that breathing had become a problem and that her heart for racing. 

The National Park at this early hour in the morning is a car free zone.  Our car was parked about 5k away, outside the main entrance gate.  Neepa said that she will run/walk towards the gate and asked me to run ahead and complete my training run.  I told her that I was going nowhere leaving her alone.  As we walked slowly, we discussed that it was now time to do another ‘physical’ with our cardiologist.  It had been a little over a year since we had done a stress test.  After a few minutes of walking she started running again and I followed.  She kept telling me to run ahead but I refused.  With about 4 k to go, she said she was again feeling very uneasy.  I told her that she should just sit on a bench and that I will go and get the car in.  I sprinted towards the park gate.  I ran up to my car parked outside the gates and by this time the park was opened to cars. I paid the entry tax and drove towards Neepa.  By the time I got to her, she had walked another km.  She got into the car and said, “Let me drive behind you while you finish your run”.  I told her, “Let’s just go and get a cardiogram done right now”. 

Within a few minutes, Neepa started hyperventilating.  She shouted that we must get out of there and to a hospital. She started gasping for air. The noise coming out of her throat made me think that no air was going in.    

I raced the car towards the entrance and then onto the highway.  The closest hospital was about 20 minutes away (Nanavati or Ambani).  Neepa was sitting slumped against the window and gasping more and more loudly for each breath.  It seemed that no air was going in.  I drove as fast as I could on a Mumbai road.  I called one of my brothers-in-law, Dr. Amrish, who is a pathologist and told him what was happening.  Neepa’s side of the family (paternal and maternal) has a history of heart attacks and I was sure she was having a cardiac attack. I noticed that even as she gasped for air, she kept talking and thinking coherently. She said she wanted to go only to the Hinduja hospital which was a bit further away. Her decision probably had to do with the fact that  my nephew, Purujeet, a young doctor is currently working in the Casualty department of the Hinduja Hospital and that my other brother-in-law, Dr. Jnanesh, is a heart and lung transplant surgeon also attached to Hinduja hospital. 

I drove as fast as I could.  The family converged towards the hospital in their own cars.  All the time, Neepa gasped desperately for air and told me that her heart was pounding and racing and that she was feeling dizzy and near fainting.   I thought I was going to lose her.  I couldn’t believe that this was happening.

We zoomed into the entrance of the hospital, towards the casualty dept. My brother-in-law had phoned in and they were expecting us.  Neepa was put into a stretcher and they rushed her in. 

She moaned and gasped and I stood looking helplessly. They tore off her running vest and wired her up.  The monitor showed 200 heart beats a minute.  I walked outside and dialled my father-in-law who was at that time 4 hours drive away from Mumbai.  I told him that Neepa was having a cardiac event and that he should start towards the hospital.

A few minutes later they gave Neepa a shot of Adenosine. And then within a few seconds her heart beats returned to normal. She suffered excruciating pain in those few seconds when her heart “rebooted”. The family arrived and although nobody said a word, I knew that they were blaming running as a cause for all this. 

As I stood near Neepa’s bed, she smiled and said, “I am totally ok now.  I can run back home.  Let us get out of here.”

Of course, the doctors of my family were not going to let her move out of there until they did every possible test on her. 

4 hours later as we sat in the car we reflected on what we had been told at the hospital. Neepa had suffered from an attack of SVT.  It was an attack caused when her heart’s electrical system did not work right, causing it to beat very fast. 

Neepa and I had been scared out of our wits.  We had both thought that she was suffering from a heart attack.  The cardiologist on duty at the emergency had told us that her running days were over and that from now she had to be on some pills for the rest of her life. 

Although we drove home in silence, I knew that those words weighed heavily on her mind as they did on mine.  We were losing a part of our daily life which brings us so much joy.

We reached home and went to sleep.  We were physically and mentally wiped out.

We woke up in the evening, had dinner and went back to sleep.  The next morning when I woke up at 5:00 am, Neepa was already on the internet and Googling: “SVT and Running”, “SVT and Sports”.

 

By 7am she had concluded that she intended to continue running.

Over the next week we met with several cardiologists who specialize in treating SVT.  The best cardiologists in Mumbai informed us that the SVT attack was not caused by running or because we were running a difficult race like Comrades.  We were told that a SVT attack may or may not occur at anytime, to any person. It could occur while one was running or it could occur while one was at home lying in bed and watching TV. 

We were informed that SVT can be treated by either a cardiac ablation procedure or by drugs or as by some people who just learn to live with it and do nothing.  There were certain simple procedures like coughing, gagging, or putting ice-cold water on ones face or rubbing one’s eyes (called vagal procedures) or taking calaptin tablets SOS which can be used to deal with the attack in its early stages.  We also learnt that an SVT attack is not life threatening.        

Neepa refused to undertake a surgical procedure based on one SVT attack or go on life-long medication based on one SVT attack.  She concluded that she will continue running and just watch what happens.  She felt that she now knew what to expect and how to react in case she got another attack while she ran.  

Of the many possible causes of SVT, one of the major possible cause is caffeine or energy drinks/supplements (like caffeine strips) with a high caffeine content and Neepa usually drank 4-5 cups of strong black coffee each day.  She decided to give up coffee. She concluded that she will run with the calaptin tablets in her pocket and that she intended to run Comrades in 2012.

Three days later we stepped out again for a 5k, ten days later she ran a 42k.  I was away running the 3 Cranes Challenge in Africa and so she ran the 42 k without me.  We had decided that she would run a route in the vicinity of the Hinduja Hospital (with Neepa’s brother-in-law Sanjay Dalal and sister Mona running alongside her and my faithful friend Khwaja driving the car as her support team).

Over the next 3 months we kept running, always making sure that we carried the SOS tablets in our pouches.  There was not a single day when I ran with her without being worried about SVT.  We never spoke about it but the thought and fear was always there with us. Sometimes I would want to remind her to carry her tablets but would hesitate bring up the dreaded topic. 

She kept training for Comrades and then we went off to the United States in May for a month long vacation.  During that time, we ran a brutally hard 50k Ultra in the Nevada desert in 100 F heat.  She breezed through it.  We then ran a really hard Marathon in Pittsburg.  The SVT problem did not leave my mind for a minute during those races.

For 27 days in the United States we, like all tourists, walked and walked as we should to show that wonderful country to our children.  We walked for perhaps an average of 6 to 7 hours a day.  And for the first time in her life, Neepa picked up an injury from walking too much: Planter Fasciitis !!

With less than a month to go for Comrades, she started aggressively undergoing physiotherapy and kept icing her foot.  

Normally she never does such stuff for herself and to watch her religiously go to the physio and ice her foot meant that it was really bad.  I kept getting more and more worried.

The day before we left for Africa, we did our last Yoga session. Neepa strained her back during the session.  I could feel a cloud of gloom descend on us. All the pre-race signals were ominous.  

3^rd June 2012  : 89 km, Comrades Ultra Marathon

As we left India, my dad called Neepa inside his room and told her, “Look after Amit, bring him into the finish.”

The start line of Comrades touches the deepest part of a runner’s heart! It sends a chill down a runner’s spine and inspires him/her to greatness, no matter how many times he/she has already been there. 

This was Neepa’s 3^rd start and my 4^th.  She will always enjoy the honour and distinction of being the first woman of Indian Nationality to have run Comrades.  She had run her first “down run” in 11 hours 50 minutes and her first “up run” in 11 hours and 56 minutes.   

Starting in the H pen we reached the start line after 8 minutes and 20 seconds.  Our watches showed that we had run/walked 800 meters to reach the start line.  Less than 1 km from the start we hit a small hill and a few seconds later, Neepa fell back! I felt sick in my stomach when I realized that she was not next to me.  After a few minutes I stopped running and waited for her.  She caught up and I asked her what had happened?  She explained that she had walked the hill.  And so, on and on we went, very often she would fall a bit behind and I would wait for her to catch up. 

Every time I asked her how she was feeling, she replied, “Fine”.  Now from long experience, I know that Neepa believes that when she says ‘Fine’, she soon starts feeling ‘Fine’ even if she is feeling terrible at that time.  So I kept wondering if her ‘fine’ was a real ‘fine’ or a self-hypnosis ‘fine’.

But by 40 k, the bottom of Inchanga (a massive hill), she started getting faster.  She wanted to run up Inchanga and I had to hold her back. Then she wanted to run down Inchanga and I followed her down.  She then wanted to run up from Drummond (half way) up to the top of Botha’s hill (the hardest part of the route).  I told her she was crazy and that I would be finished if I ran up Botha’s (45k to 52k, I normally have to walk up 70% of Botha’s).  She said that she wanted to finish in 11 hours 45 minutes and was easily possible.  I told her that my legs were very sore.  She told me that her planter was killing her since 15k and she felt so much pain that she wondered if the foot would fall off and that she was trying hard not to cry but she said that she had decided in her mind to run and that her body would follow her.

My mind, on the other hand, was following my body which was slowly getting more and more tired.

With 18km to go, I was incredibly fatigued.  We had 2 hours 34 minutes to run the 18k but my quads were killing me.  I could not run.  Neepa asked me if I was cramping and I said, “No”.  “Ok then”, she said, “It’s just pain.  Just run through it.  I am running through this planter pain. I feel like my foot is about to fall off. But I can run and so can you. Just Run!”

The truth is that I have never run through pain. I always stay in a certain comfort zone and what she was asking me was to run beyond that zone.  It was new territory. I had never travelled through it.

With 13k to go it was fast becoming crunch time.  Enough time to finish if I ran, but not if I was walking.  And I was walking. 

Neepa screamed, “If you Love me, Run”.  I ran..for the next 6k.. and then my love ran out...I started walking again...

With 7k to go we had only 57 minutes and 21 seconds left.  It was now or never. I realized that unless I win the battle with my mind at this point, I might as well stop giving motivational talks to people.

Our friend Peter, who was seconding us, came and gave me a drink.

She pleaded with me again. “Run for the kids”...I ran...but with 5k to go, I hit the cat-eye in the middle of the road and fell flat on my face, landing on my chin.  Both my palms started bleeding, so did both my knees and both my elbows.  But the pain I felt in my right calf made all the other pain seem irrelevant.  It felt as though the ligaments in my calf had just been ripped apart.  I knew it was all over.  I was close to tears.  Neepa who was a 100 meters ahead of me, sprinted back.  The spectators reached me first and lifted me up.  I wondered if I could possibly take another step.  I tried, I could.  A dozen spectators broke into applause.  I stated to walk. 

Neepa poured water on my hands to wash off the blood.  She reminded me that she had also fallen in 2010.

She asked, “Are you ok?” “Yes,” I answered, “Let’s go then”, she said, “let’s get this done and over with.”

“Neepa, I can’t run anymore,” I said, “You go ahead and finish. I will keep walking.”

“I am not finishing without you. We both need to finish”.

“I don’t want to finish,” I said, “My legs are tired”.

“It’s not about your body, it’s about your mind.” she said.  

At this she stopped walking and stood behind me.  “You run and we both finish or we both don’t finish.”

I searched my mind for a few choice bad words, but what came to mind was the story of Roma.  Plutarch writes that after Troy fell, some of its people escaped, found sailing vessels, were driven by storms upon the coast of Tuscany, and came to anchor in the river Tiber.  The men and women went ashore and wondered if they should explore the land.  The greatest and most intelligent of the Trojan women was Roma. She figured that the men would never settle down and will keep roaming and wandering over the seas unless they were forced to stay on the land. So she proposed to the other women that they should burn the ships and consequently they would be forced to settle down. And that is what they did.  Having no way left to return to the sea, the men were forced to settle down in the country. They prospered and then they named the city in her honor: “Rome”!

By standing behind me and refusing to run, Neepa had burned my Ship.  

I had no option left.  I would have been happy for her to finish and go home with her medal but now there was no option but to run.

And run we did!  I ran the last kms under 6:30/km.  I realized that the pain in my quads did not stop me from running fast. The bleeding palms, knees and elbows were just a mild irritant. I realized that I had pushed back my pain threshold. I had achieved a new personal break-through inside my mind.  

We ran into the stadium and Neepa took the Indian Tri-Colour from our brother and host Dr Sid Reddy. And so once again, just as in 2010, we ran into the finish, holding the Tri-colour....

The men of Troy were really upset when they found out that their wives had burnt their ships.  They felt that they were now forced to settle in an unknown land.  As they walked towards their women filled with wrath, the women decided to salute their kinsmen and husbands with kisses as a way of supplicating them and to appease their wrath.  From that day on, it became customary for the women to salute their men with a kiss.

Consequently, I feel that Neepa too, owes me a kiss just like the men of Troy did from their wives who had burnt their ships. (Although I got a finishers medal due to Neepa just as they got a whole new country due to their wives).

So Tonight is the Night!!

I shall request my wife, to appease me with a kiss and then...we shall go a step further...we shall do much more...we shall sit with our log books and plot our way to the start line of Comrades 2013...........

 Some Explanatory Notes:

(A) In ‘The History of the Peloponnesian Wars’, Thucydides declares that, the best woman is she about whom there is the least talk among persons outside regarding either censure or commendation, feeling that the name of good women, like her person, ought to shut up indoors and never go out.

I disagree totally. The best women lead men with their examples and those examples should be made public.

Neepa agreed to make public a personal health issue as she felt that, just as she had googled ‘svt and sports’ and taken inspiration from athletes with SVT who participated in the Tour de France, triathlons and ultra-marathons, perhaps, some runner someday will take heart from the fact that she could keep up with her running after her episode.

(B) Neepa was given a go-ahead to run Comrades by two of the best Cardiologists in the city.

(C) Since that episode in Feb 2012, Neepa has not suffered any more events.

(D) She now drinks just one cup of coffee with her breakfast.

(E) Shakespeare’s Women: The Weaker Vessel or Stronger Sex? In real life, let there be no doubt about who is the stronger sex! 

The Three Cranes Challenge

The Three Cranes Challenge:

A 3 day run (32k/42k/32k) in the Howick Forest in South  Africa

The first time I heard about “The Three Cranes”, I was in England, the year was 1989 and I happened to be reading Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses. (Note to readers: I left the book in England)

In this fictional tale, Rushdie writes that there was a time when Jahilia (Mecca) was prosperous as a stop on the Caravan route through the desert.  Later when sea routes became safer to transport men and materials, the importance of Jahilia declined.  Consequently the people in power at Jahilia imported lots of Gods and idols into the city so as to promote it as a religious centre and maintain its financial viability. 

Rushdie writes that when Prophet Muhammad first began preaching the concept of ‘One God’, the people of Jahilia were not receptive to him and made life difficult for him and his very limited followers.  Abu Simbel was a crafty businessman/leader in the city.  He used to earn massive amounts of income from the 3 temples in the city which were dedicated to the 3 Goddesses: Al-Lat, Al-Uzza and Manat.  Abu Simbel foresaw that the concept of ‘One God’ could threaten his financial well being and so he made a deal with the Prophet.  He tempted Muhammad to accept just the three Goddesses as “worthy of worship”. 

The Prophet consulted Gibreel and returned, citing a set of verses declaring that, “Lat, Uzza and Manat – are the exalted birds...the three Cranes...whose intercession is approved”.

Rushdie writes that the people were delighted and greatly pleased that Muhammad had spoken about their Gods in splendid fashion. 

However later, Muhammad re-consulted Gibreel and retracted the Verses and disavowed the three Cranes.  The Prophet said that his earlier verses were a product not of God but of Satan. (Hence the verses were called...the Satanic Verses).

This fictional Story of the Three Cranes: Lat, Uzza and Manat got Salman Rushdie massive criticism, because to a Muslim, Islam is not just a religion which provides hope and consolation but also a way of life, a body of law, and an all-embracing cultural framework and that for an author to satirize it (if Satan was able to put some of his words into the Holy Koran this one time then perhaps there could be more such verses which somehow slipped in) was intolerable to some. 

In 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie.  The Three Cranes had got Rushdie into very serious trouble.

Anyway, that was the first time that I heard the phrase, “The Three Cranes”. 

The second time I heard about them was from my friend in Africa, Rory Stein. Rory asked me to come and run a race called the three cranes challenge. 

My first instinctive thought on hearing the name, ‘The three cranes’, was that it spelled trouble!  However fools rush where angels fear to tread. And I decided to run the 3 cranes Challenge. Rory explained that this was a race dedicated to conserving the 3 species of cranes in South Africa which are close to extinction.

 

Race Days: February 24, 25, 26 (2012)

the start and finish line

A race village was set up in the middle of the Howick forest and each runner was given an individual tent to sleep in.   The runner had to go out each day and run a different route through pristine forest trails and grasslands.

I arrived at the base camp on Thursday 23^rd evening with my South African friend Naresh Nana and was overwhelmed at the natural beauty of the surrounding forest.  We chose our tents and I particularly wanted a tent very close to the woods and as far away from the loos as possible, since I thought that a tent closer to the loo would cause constant disturbance at night.  It was a decision which had some unintended consequences.



my tent at the edge of the forest

A massive tent was set up where they were to brief us each night about the next day’s run and also where breakfast, lunch and dinner was to be served.  During dinner that night I noticed that the 200 odd runners assembled were a unique lot.  I had trained very hard for this race for about 3 months. I had run once a week on the beach dragging a heavy tire behind me. I had trained myself for this multi-day race by running high mileage on Saturdays and Sundays. But I had never run on a real trail as there are no real trails near Mumbai. This group of 200 odd trail runners however seemed very very fit.  At most races, I see as mixture of body types, there are some thin runners and there are some heavy runners but it was different here.  Almost every male runner here looked to me like Tarzan and every woman runner was built like Jane. Everybody looked incredibly fit and strong and I started wondering what kind of event I was in for?

Dinner was served and unfortunately that first night, for no apparent reason, I could not enjoy the meal served there. I ate sparingly. 

Day 1, Friday, 32k:



start line, day 1

At 6 am we were all assembled and ready to start the event.  Everybody was wearing camelbaks because it was compulsory to carry 2-3 litres of water.  I also noticed that many runners were carrying walking sticks but I did not take mine thinking that it was only necessary for the 2^nd day.  I also did not carry my sunglasses as I had been advised that it was not a good idea to wear them inside the forest as it caused problems with depth perception.  Within the first few km I realized that not taking the stick was a serious mistake.  Over the next three days there were so many up-hills which were so steep that all you had to do in certain sections was to extend your hand outward and your fingers could touch the ground in front of you.  For a runner of my limited ability, a walking stick was indispensible.  Besides, every up-hill is normally followed by a down-hill which was sometimes worse and needed a walking stick even more.

On day 1, I ran large parts of the trail with my new friends Francis and Petra and we exchanged lots of running stories.  As the day progressed, it became hotter and hotter. The temperatures kept climbing and the sun shone brightly in the cloudless African sky.  The sunlight at clearings on the top of the hills was so bright that my eyes started to hurt.  One of the consequences of having Lasik surgery done to my eyes has been that they have become very sensitive to bright light.  And so, slowly over the next 6 hours, I started developing an intense headache.  Many of the runners were wearing glasses with photo-chromatic lenses so that they adjusted automatically to the intense sunlight. 

with petra and francis

But no matter how I felt, I enjoyed the immense beauty of the forest and the hills.  The forest was so pristine that I felt that humans had not visited here for thousands of years.  Running through grasslands was an incredible experience.  Each footstep would cause a small number of insects to jump out of the grass and initially I was totally scared of running on a path where I could not see the floor of the forest.  I was worried about snakes, insects, stones, holes and uneven footfalls in the trail but over the three days I simply learned to run on the faith that the road below my foot will hold.

some wet area

some rocky areas

We finished the run at 12:00 pm which was incidentally the daily lunch time.  By then my headache had increased so much that I could not eat anything.  In fact, over the next 6 hours I puked 3 times and consequently also missed a fabulous dinner.  I went to sleep on an empty stomach.

I woke up at night suddenly at 12 am and my headache was gone.  I was hungry but then it was 12am.  I stepped out of my little tent to pee.  I was so tired and the loo seemed incredibly far. So, I walked towards the edge of the forest which was very close to my tent.  I turned on my headlamp as I unzipped my trousers.  I looked around the tent site.  It was pitch dark.  Everyone was fast asleep inside their tents.  However when I looked at the floor of the forest away from the camp-site, I saw a million small shiny insect eyes looking at me.  They looked shades of blue and red in the reflected light of my headlamp.

This forest was full of insects! Duh!! I panicked. I half finished my business and ran back inside the relative safety of my tent.  I rued my decision to have chosen a tent so far from the loo.  I knew that there was no way I was going to step out of that tent again during that night or any other night.  (Over the next two nights my constant companion was an empty two litre coke bottle which was generously filled during the night and emptied early in the morning)

 

Day 2, Saturday, 42k:

The first 10km on day 2 were straight up a mountainside almost impossible for someone like me to run.  At 2km, I already felt as tired as I normally feel at the end of a marathon.  Normally we carbo-load for 3 to 4 days before a marathon, but here I was, having run a 6 hours 32 k the day before and having had no proper meal since Thursday night. 

So I simply used my walking stick and trekked on. At the top of the hill, I met Francis and we started running together.  We ran really well until about the 23k mark when I ran out of steam and told her to carry on. The heat that day was unbearable and I remembered the heat on the Mumbai Marathon Sea link a few years ago.  This was 5 times worse.  I started getting dehydrated.  I swallowed an energy gel and it tasted funny.  A thought crossed my mind that perhaps it had got spoiled as it sat roasting inside the tent the previous day. 

By 35k I was suffering...dehydrated and with the stomach totally gone FUBAR (An army term which means: Fxxxxd Beyond All Recognition).  Although I knew that I was dehydrating fast and heating up on an incredibly hot cloudless day, I could not drink any water because of my stomach.

Yet for long hours on that day, as I ran alone, I enjoyed the pleasures of solitude. There was no civilization in sight. This was nature at its best. The hills, valleys, forests and grasslands offered sights which I shall forever fondly recollect. 

With 8k to go I reached the last aid station which was situated on top of a treeless hill.  Paul from the medical team was there and one look at me and he knew that I was suffering.  I told him that I was feeling very hot and dehydrated.  I told him that I knew I need to drink but that I couldn’t.  Paul calculated the amount of water he had left at the aid station. There were very few runners behind me, so he took two large buckets of ice cold water and poured them on my head.  It brought my core temperature down.  He then told me that the forest cover was only 2 km away and that the temperature would drop once I was inside the forest cover.  I reached the forest and then it was only 6 km to go.  Two new friends and fellow runners, Zelda and Tinus decided from that point to stay with me and help get me into the finish.

We had been told that last 6 km of day 2 had a ‘sting in the tale’.  This was an understatement.  The last 6 km of day 2 were put into the route to get some sort of sadistic pleasure from a runner’s suffering.  In-fact I remember thinking that these last 6 km were ideal for someone training to go climb Mt Everest.  There were 3 climbs of 1km each followed by 3 descents. In-between these were stream crossings.   The inclines were so steep that I had to use one hand to hold onto tree branches or roots while using the walking stick in the other hand to balance myself and yet I slipped several times while I went up and then down.  When I reached the streams, I had no leg-eye coordination left to delicately walk over the stones protruding out of the water and so I simply waded through the streams. 

With 2 km to go, Paul from the medical team (using his mountain bike and a back road) once again showed up on the trail and asked me how I felt.  I told him that I felt terrible, that I was hot and dehydrated and my stomach was “fubar”. But I added that since it was just 2km to go that I would finish.  He asked me if I was certain and I said, “Yes”. 

But as I climbed the last one km hill of the day, I thought about what I was doing on that hill on that particular day.  I thought of a poem by Ghalib that I had once read,

“This heart of mine

Wayward and wild

Enemy of peace

Condemning me

To endless wandering”

I went on the think, “What is wrong with me? Why am I here? Must I run every race I hear or read about? Why am I not sitting peacefully back home in India?”

The experts say that we must race not more than 2 races per year. But for the experts there is a difference between running and racing.  They can run marathons every few weeks because they have more than one gear in their system. So they run many marathons but race only one or two marathons in a year. When they run a race, they keep some strength held in balance in their system.

But for me on the other hand, there is no difference between running and racing.  I reach the empty point in my tank to simply finish the race and hence I realized that I should not be running so many marathons.

However, I kept struggling along and went on to finish the last two Km.  The last 6 km took me 3:20 hours. And the 42 km for day 2, had taken me a total of 9 hours and 20 minutes. (I normally comfortably pace the sub 5 bus in Mumbai)

 

running into finish with Tinus and Zelda



Lunch time was over when I reached the finish line at 3:30 pm.  I headed straight to the Medical tent and was delighted that they started me on IV.  Paul from medical team came to meet me and told me that with two km to go, I had answered his questions correctly and coherently for if I had not done so, he would have pulled me off the course and started an IV right there in the forest. 

As they started the first IV drip, I thought of a short story, ‘A Perfect day for Bananafish’, written by J.D. Salinger.   

It tells the story of a WWII soldier, Seymour, who has just returned from the war and is in a depressive and suicidal state of mind.  He is at a beach in Florida and sunning himself.  A little girl, Sybil comes to play with him and Seymour tells her that today is a perfect day to see Bananafish.  So he gets her onto a float and wades out into the sea.  He explains to her that there are Bananafish in the sea who are very greedy.  He tells her that on the bottom of the sea are small caves which are filled with bananas.  The bananafish love to eat bananas and so they enter the caves and start eating them.  The problem is that they don’t simply eat one banana and come out of the small cave but end up eating all the bananas.  Consequently they become so fat that they get banana fever and get stuck inside the small cave and die.

As the second IV drip started, I wondered whether I had become such a banana fish.  I had become so greedy that I simply wanted to run every single marathon in the world.  Not only was that not enough, I now wanted to run multiday events.  What was wrong with me?

By the time I finished the 2^nd bottle of IV, it was now already close to 6 pm.  I had missed lunch and the 32k run on day 3 was to start at 4:00am. I had now not eaten the Thursday night dinner, the Friday lunch and the Friday dinner and now the Saturday lunch. 

But the two IV bottles had done their job, I was a new man.  My nausea had disappeared, I peed crystal clear water, my body temperature had dropped to normal and I was famished. 

At dinner that evening, I ate like a man possessed.  By the time I went to bed, with my companion, the 2 litre empty coke bottle, it was 9:30 pm and Day 3 was to start at 4:00am.  The only thought on my mind was that I needed to wake up early and eat. However there was not going to be a proper hot breakfast on day 3, just some muffins, tea and sandwiches.  

2:30 am , day 3



Day 3, Sunday, 32 km

The first 10k were again straight up a mountainside, but thankfully the darkness of 4 am kept the ascent hidden.  At the top of the mountain I saw a wonderful sight: An Aid station where they were serving fresh hot omelettes in a bun.  I don’t remember any other time since birth that I so enjoyed a breakfast.



spot the runners about to enter the forest



The day’s run went brilliantly! I enjoyed the hills, the valleys, the forests and the grasslands.  I was so happy to be there. I ran as if I had just started day 1.  I felt strong and fresh and free.  Once again, I enjoyed every moment of the run in solitude and said a prayer of thanks for the opportunity to have enjoyed these memorable days, the wonderful race management and the making of new friends.



With 2k to go into the finish, I dug out the Indian Flag which I had packed into my camelbak.  I then tied it onto the walking stick I was carrying and ran into the finish carrying the flag high on my shoulder.  The runner’s who had already finished the days run, (almost all) came out of the large tent where they were having breakfast and clapped for me. 

As I ran into the finish, I knew that I would be back in 2013 to run this fantastic race again.  I also wondered if I too was a bananafish who did not know when to stop.  Am I running too much? For now, on April 22, I plan to run a 50k race in the Nevada desert and then on May 6^th a 42 km in Pittsburg and then on the 3^rd of June the 89km Comrades Marathon. 

Will I, like the bananafish die of an overdose?

I have given it some thought since that day and have come to a conclusion.  And my conclusion is this: No matter what we do, sooner or later, we all die.  Like the bananafish, I choose to die with a satiated satisfied stomach as opposed to a stomach starved of food. Running is the food which sustains me. I would much rather overdose on running than die having wished I had run more. 

I am a Bananafish! Bring it on!

a little bit of India

Run for your life

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/03/the-ottoman-empires-life-death-race/