MaraThorn

Men were born to run. Actually chase. I am being very gender specific here. We are good at it. We chase skirts, sarees, remarkably, all of feminine couture that humanity has conjured thus far. It seems we need a sense of purpose. Put us in a shopping mall in an effort to buy something that has not yet been spelt out clearly and we are lost. We tire in a short time, headaches spring up out of nowhere, feet ache and the body simply sends signals that are so apparent it can get the owner in trouble. Put us on a golf course and we can spend all day walking around trying to put tiny balls into eighteen tiny pockets on a vast lush green pasture.

Nonetheless, I digress. I am not delving deep into generalizations. Back to the point of the post, if there is one. Men were born to run. Someone needed to have knocked that into my head early. My gym philosophy has been blogged about before. Treadmills are difficult creatures to tread. By virtue of excuses that no one really asked for, I would escape the boredom of stepping in the same place repeated number of times. But the sense of purpose finally appeared. I am training for Beat The Bridge. I’ll be participating for the 5 mile run. The beating the bridge part is interesting. There is a draw bridge 20 minutes from the start of the race. You have to finish that distance within twenty minutes or else the bridge is drawn and you are out of the race. That’s the first challenge. The second is completing the other three miles.

My wife and I started training for this a month back. Given that my running was limited to 0.6 miles (0.2 walk+0.6 run+0.2 walk) before, it was fun to build up in small increments. Of course, the presence of a more committed spouse serves as good motivation. Last Saturday, I managed to run 5 miles at a stretch. It was a thrilling achievement. The lazy bones in my body tell me, once is enough, let’s try it again on the day of the race in May J Of course, that’s not a great idea. Turns out peaking so soon is not a great idea either. You should apparently build up to that distance.

Nonetheless, this is a great idea for anyone looking to induce a degree of regularity in their gyming and like me, look for a really good reason to maintain that rhythm, you should look to something like this. Of course, there’s the marathon or MaraThorn as I would like to call it. It’s an insurmountable length. A big challenge. A couple of friends are training for the half marathon, a mere matter of 13 miles while some others will run the full 26 mile stretch. As my paining knees (yes, something wrong with my technique) and generally exhausted body feel after five miles, the other eight or twenty-one seem a stretch. Not that I am planning on running either of the two. But hey, a month back, had someone told me I’d be running five miles, all eight kilometers (or close) within fifty minutes, I’d have told him to go take a hike. Or a run.