Sports days and running

 

“How does this fat fucker run so fast?” Some fancy Bombay kid said referring to me in the summer of 2005.  I was spending the summer with my uncle’s family at TIFR in Mumbai, well, in the residential quarters of TIFR. It had everything to keep me entertained. They had their own tennis courts, football pitch, convenience store, a film screening hall and even a private beach front.

 

Many afternoons were spent just running around the campus. But when evening came it was time for football. I had been playing football in school during lunch breaks and during P.T. classes. So, I was reasonably certain that I was a below average footballer. But in Mumbai with my Hawaiian-pattern nylon shorts I turned out to be half-decent. Maybe it was the humidity in the air or maybe it was just these posh ‘scientists’ children’ who were just slow, but I was somehow able to keep pace with them. Every now and then I would make a tackle or run past them and take a shot at goal and thoughts about my speed or my weight would be vocalised.

 

Years later when asked how I do it, how I run fast, I would have to resort to a line from Kung Fu Panda 2, ‘How did you do it?’ ‘You know, you just keep your elbows up and keep the shoulders loose…’ But in all seriousness, I really don’t know how I ran fast. I guess it was luck. For most of my life I have felt like a panda, nice and huggable, which translates to fat. This is probably a result of my mom proudly trying to make a ‘Thakkidi mundan tharavu’ or simply a fat duck. In her family being plump was prized. Being skinny meant you were poor and hence didn’t have enough to eat. So I ate happily at home and then navigated the world being overweight.

 

On the sports fields, hockey coaches would instruct me in Kannada, ‘Extra warm up laps for you. We need to get the fat to melt.’ Those laps would be torture and when the coach was not looking I would quietly cut a few corners or tell them I finished the extra laps. Then in classes 9 and 10, I opted for the physical education elective because it meant I could stay on the field and have fun. What I had not accounted for was that for the course I had to do things like 60 push ups in 60 seconds and run various distances within the cut off timings. All this meant I had to get fit. 

 

Nothing motivates parents to ditch their traditional views like marks do, especially class 10 marks. As my athletic performance was now linked to my grades, my food intake was cut and I was hauled to Cubbon park every morning. Months of waking up unhappily and running resulted in me being surprisingly fit, fitter than I would ever be in my life. I was still overweight but I was able to run for much longer in hockey games too.

 

Being fitter also meant I was healthier and all too happy to take part in the sports day races in school. One of the races I took part in class 10 was the 1500 metre race. It was a gruelling seven and a half laps around the field, but I was up for the challenge. The added bonus of being in a lower height-weight category meant that the school’s running gods like Nixon and Akshay were not in the same race. The athletes in my category were more like me and so I stood a chance of doing well.

 

I remember the curved starting line of the 1500 metre race, beginning to run fast and taking the lead early, then it was all a blur till I came around the bend for the final one and a half laps. Lining the tracks were eager students, keen to see who would win the race and my classmate Anson Paul running among the spectators yelling at me, ‘Pull Pramod. Puuull!’ Seeing him do that somehow energised me. I sprinted the last 200 metres like a madman finishing the race in just over 5-minutes which was the record then. Nixon would smash the record then next day with a brilliant under 5-minute run. I would like to go back to school someday for the Old Boys’ 1500 metres race just to complete it, and while I am at it, relive memories of running that 1500 on the same track.

 

 

Since then I have participated in many middle distance races, knowing that I could sustain the pace for longer. I never won any of them, but I loved being part of the races. Slowly things started to go wrong with my academic life, fixing that and later the pressures of work meant I had no time for exercise. I slowly put on a lot of weight. By the time I got back to exercising sometime a couple of years ago, I was flirting with obesity. 

 

Losing weight has been a pain because I love eating and I seem to have surrounded myself with food lovers too. But putting on so much weight has also meant exercising is harder now. I feel like an old man every time I exercise, because I’m complaining about back and knee pain immediately after. The lack of exercise meant my sinuses kept acting up more often leaving me with a splitting headache and bad mood. This combination just makes me avoid exercising like it was the plague.

 

Since mid January this year, I formulated a new method. I began exercising for just 10-15 minutes everyday. I have not lost any weight with this approach, but at least I have not gained more weight.  I was feeling ever so slightly fitter. Last month, Nigel, my colleague, asked me if I would be interested in taking part in a 4x100 metre staff relay at our university. I was thrilled. Selfishly I thought of it as an excuse to get back on the field and run. But I told him the concern was that I hadn’t taken part in a sprint race in years. He politely said the bigger problem was finding four staff members from our school who would like to take part. (The university is composed of multiple schools and institutes. Ours was the School of Languages) 

 

As the day, sports day in the university, approached, I got more and more excited. But when the day arrived Nigel and I were the only two who were ready to run. Frenetic, pleading calls to Rajul and Vinay somehow proved to be successful. They agreed. The problem though was that on the day Rajul hadn’t worn shoes and Vinay had come in formals. Rajul decided to run the race without shoes, and Vinay managed to borrow track pants and a jersey with the name ‘Preeti’ behind it.  As we lined up near the starting point, staff from the other schools trash talked asking us sarcastically, ‘Oh, you are running, huh?’ I ignored them and focused on the fact that we were allotted lane one. Rajul would start, I would be the second sprinter, Vinay third and Nigel closing it. 

 

The race was over in an intense blurry minute. Rajul ran a brilliant opening 100 metres giving me the baton and an advantage. I took off. Trying to run as fast as I could, gritting my teeth and saying to myself, ‘Come on, come on. Faster!’ For the briefest of moments, I felt light, my weight didn’t matter. I felt like my body was just fine and that everything was all right. Fortunately, I overtook the others and approached the point to transfer the baton. Vinay who had previously never taken part in a relay was standing still waiting for the baton. I didn’t want to crash into him so I angrily yelled, ‘run, start running’, as I approached him and he began moving. I passed on the baton and he sprinted away transferring the lead to Nigel. I seemed to channel my inner Anson as Nigel raced to the finish line. I ran outside the track, screaming, ‘yes, yes, come on!’ He crossed the line in 59.95 and I jumped with joy. 

 

 

The other timed race put two teams ahead of us. But getting the bronze was enough for me. I overly celebrated like I won the gold. It was the first athletics medal I had won since class 10 and I was thrilled. Praise and congratulations poured in, and then came the questions from students and staff, “Sir, how did you run like that?”