The Day I Ran

I used to run when I was very young. I had even scored a silver medal in a zonal championship in Delhi. But then things happened. I grew up. I had to study and I gained more weight. It must seem strange to any fifty-five year old that a teenager could have left anything because of the burden of circumstances, but in today’s world in which pressures come from all directions, it happens. But then we all know at the back of our mind that pressures have to be handled and that was why I started running again. Some would say it was bad timing, because I was in class X and the Board exams were around the corner. But I think that if I would have waited longer, maybe I would never have started running again and perhaps I would have had to face my worst nightmare of becoming fat at twenty.

I lost in a few races in school. As usual, I had to bear a lot of jokes and taunts. I even cried in the bathroom for five minutes. But when I came back home, I went downstairs and ran around my building twenty times. The only regret I had was that I now had no chance to prove that I could run.

I was wrong. The truth is that sometimes there is a second chance, and for me it came in the form of the Navi Mumbai marathon held on 24th January, 2010. I had missed the previous marathon and I was hell bent upon going this time. I hadn’t prepared much because I had a score of 9.5/20 in Geography and I was spending most of my time solving sample papers. But the truth was that I wasn’t studying through 24 hours anyways, which meant that I did have time and that I could prepare.
I was late for the marathon. I had a pair of shoes which had torn soles, but I wore them because I had forgotten to tell my parents to buy new ones and also because my personal belief is that old things are softer to touch. I thought I was doing a big thing. I was finally getting to prove that I could do it. I was going to run almost five kilometers, which some of my people thought would be impossible because I am a girl and because I have the wrong body type. And I was doing all this even though I had 150 pages of Geography notes to study as soon as I got back home.
Once again, I was wrong. I was surprised to see that at least 1/3 of the participants were female. Many of them did not seem to have any experience but they were still doing it. There were people who were running for a cause, whether it be delayed justice or the need to save the earth. They weren’t just running for themselves. I was further proven wrong when I saw the 2km event for senior citizens. One of the first ones to cross the finish line in that even was an elderly woman who seemed fitter than I do! And as soon as all the senior citizens finished the race, they started dancing merrily. There are some people who think they can’t do a lot of things because they were born girls and others who think that once they are old, they have nothing to run towards. They are wrong. There can be a finish line to cross even if you are seventy only if you want it to be there. I decided that this was how I wanted to age- with my wrinkly feet covered in running shoes.

When my event began, I was happy to see how many people just wanted to start running. They took off at full speed. Some of them stumbled, but they got up and got back to work. My own father, who is fifty-five years old was ahead of me by the time we crossed the one kilometer line. I thanked God. At least I had good genes. Even I left many people behind, mostly men and boys. My old, torn shoes started giving me trouble in the end when the balls of my feet seemed like they were brushing against the rough surface of the road. Due to a knee injury I had suffered while doing step ups a month ago, my legs ached terribly. I had to walk but I didn’t stop. Actually, I didn’t see anybody stop.

When I saw the finish line, I ran faster than should have been possible because I really wanted to get ahead of all the people who were level with me. Of course, my father, who has some stiff joints and is over four times my age, had finished the race ten minutes before me, done his stretching exercises and was already back on his feet. Some people took pictures of me. My first marathon was over. I had gone from Fortune Hotel to Vashi Station and back.

The only thing which disappointed me was that I was given water in disposable plastic cups, hundreds of which had already littered the roadside, under a tree which had a placard saying ‘Say No To Plastics’ because this marathon was a run against global warming. Oh, well. You gain some, you lose some.
I don’t know much about my future. I don’t know what my score in the Board Exams will be. I don’t know if we can control global warming. I don’t even know what time I will wake up tomorrow morning. But I do know that I will be in the Navi Mumbai Marathon next year.