Have wife, will carry

Chanced upon this wonderful race which is due to be held this weekend.

Unfortunately for my husband, I am otherwise busy and will be unavailable to be carried. But let that not stop you, I say! Go forth and get carried away.

I don’t know why I chose this picture (courtesy jupiter images) as, in the unlikely event that of me being carried across the finish line, neither me nor my husband is likely to look this happy.

Brain mush

I never thought I’d say this. I miss running. I miss the the buzz that comes with having run for about 45 minutes. I miss the groaning unwarmed ankles at the start of the run. I miss the racing pulse as I come around to a stop at our front door after the run. Heck, I even miss the fact that I sometimes embarrass myself by singing aloud along with whatever’s playing on the matchbox.

Clearly I have been incarcerated at home for too long due to the snow and my brain’s turning to mush. Why else would I be missing running?

Run Free

A comment from my brother Guevara on one of my posts got me thinking. In the comment, my brother remembers a stray remark that was directed at me years ago when we did a charity run as a family in Madras. Funny, he should remember it and not me. Probably because in the intervening years I’ve encountered thousands of such remarks. Mostly lusty and almost always referring to my breasts. Of course, this does not include occasions when I have been groped, pinched and intimidated. All because I was jogging on the streets of Madras. Minding my own bloody business.

One of the things I love about living in the UK is how free I feel when I run. I do not fear any kind of harrassment. There is no lurking sense of danger around the corner. I do not have to worry if my bouncing boobs would catch the fancy of a stranger and send him into a tizzy of excitement which would cause him (involuntarily, of course!) to make a dash for the them. I feel absolutely at ease wearing fitted running gear while I’m out training. I don’t ever get the sense that I’m being ogled at or being sized up by perverts.

It’s a joy to be out running. To be able to breathe free. And I want to seize every moment and fill my lungs with the air of freedom.

Marathon des Sables மாமா

A couple of Sundays ago during my weekly 6-miler, I chanced upon a man cycling in the distance. He was carrying a rucksack which said ‘Marathon des Sables’. Now, from what I know that is supposed to be one of the toughest races on the planet. It’s a 150-mile course through the Saharas which you complete over a 6-day period while carrying all your supplies for the race (except for water and tent equipment). I was curious to know more and so I ran up to the gentleman (he was cycling quite slowly) and asked him (rather cheekily) if he’d run the race or if he was only carrying the rucksack.

Turned out that he had indeed taken part in the Marathon des Sables some 10 years ago and was a regular at many other running events around the world. We got chatting and he told me the importance of investing in good shoes and even suggested a shop where I should go for my next pair of running shoes and where, if I mentioned his name, I might even get a discount. And just as I was about to wave him goodbye, I asked him how old he was. Oh, I’m old, he muttered, I turned 73 in August.

I ran into Tom again at the school gates this week where he’d come to drop his grand-daughter off. And we resumed our conversation about running. I told him about my 8-miler last weekend and he told me about his training schedule for next year’s London Marathon. He’s invited me to join  him for one of his runs. And I plan to go along next Friday. Though I have made it quite clear that I won’t be heading to the Sahara any time soon.

How it all started

I was 17 at that time. I’d just joined college and had signed up for NCC. We were asked to turn up at 7.30 the following Saturday morning and we did. We lined up as we were told to and that is when it began. My NCC senior walked up and down the files inspecting her recruits and commenting on each one of us. She came up to me, stopped, looked up and down at me and said, ‘short, dark, overweight and knock-kneed. You can forget about going anywhere in NCC’. Later that day we were asked to run around the college campus three times. As we plodded along, I realised that many of the other newbies were falling by the way side with exhaustion. While the s,d,o and k-ked me kept going. I didn’t realise it then, but I know now that in that first morning my senior had unwittingly turned herself into a punching bag. That I would want to knock down time and again for several years to come.