The Ultra Experience - An innocent drink that led to a life altering experience

I took sometime (read: 10 months) to write this out. We spoke about the eventful night yesterday which changed the way I look at everything in life. Its a bit long but I have tried to make it as exciting as possible.

The Ultramarathon experience

A week before the 100k run

At work, I get a text. It reads “Lets do drinks and put one smoke machan? Come over to my place”. Sender: MK

“Okay done..where? Come over to my place”

“Machan why don’t you come here. There is some food here as well”

“hmmm..okay. Next time my place though”

Since, I got my run out of my way in the morning and had nothing more worthwhile to do; I decided to go over to MK’s. For some strange reason, we were doing this quite often and it turned out to be fun every time. We spoke about living by ourselves in Bangalore, life in general, future goals, music, alcohol, women and pretty much everything. I stopped an auto, negotiated and went over to XXXXX’s house. Unshaven, a long kurta over some torn jeans were not clothes you would go out to a nice place.

This was supposed to be a in-house drinking session.

We pop a beer and play some light trance. There is barely any conversation since we were waiting for the alcohol to loosen our tongues. Two beers down. MK announces that some of his friends are meeting up at Take 5 and asks me to go. After two beers, I could care less about the way I was looking and was more focused on good music and some great beer. I decided to go.

We met S there. Very rarely feel enamored by someone if you are seasoned. I totally fell in love. We spoke a lot, sipped our alcohol, and she looked gorgeous. She was wearing blue jeans and a black top and let her hair down. Absolute goddess!!

S's Story

I met S for the first time in Chennai through P. At that time, I was dating someone. We did not speak much at all since my girlfriend was around. She just seemed like someone who is extremely easy to hang out with. She represented being popular, humorous, fun, friendly, well-mannered, no nasty sarcasm and everything else that was pleasant.

The night progressed. We met a few more people. Beer, snacks, music, more beer, more snacks. We went back to where it began and then people decided to call it a night. I cannot really remember that much. S offered to drop me home. When it was just the two of us in the car, I started blabbering. I told her how beautiful she was, how much I liked her and all that. She took the compliments gracefully, gave me a hug bid farewell. I passed out on my bed.

When I woke up next morning, the beard was over-grown. I felt nasty about telling a girl how much I like her when I was drunk. She was friends with my best friends and there were huge stakes involved. I called MK and apologized and he said he did not have a problem. However, something was not right. I was not training hard enough last year. I was slipping.

It occurred to me that Santosh and Rajat were planning on doing a 24 hour run. A 100 km or a full night run would help me sweat out my guilt. It would be my passport to fitness for the year if I could manage a 100km with them.

I wrote to S apologizing. Since I did not have her number, I could not call her. No reply on Sunday.

I wrote to Santosh, telling him that I would like to do a 100 km run with them. He called Rajat and asked for doc’s approval. Doc approved. Being crazy for doc is the only way to live your life.

Doc’s and Santosh’s story

Doc ran 7 marathons back to back in 7 days and all of them were completed below 3:45 minutes. He does Run October Run where he runs half marathons on every day of the month to motivate people to come out and run. Running is his first love.

Santosh is an ultramarathoner and is extremely organized, scientific about his runs. He is like the Buddha of running – calm, patient and makes extremely well thought of and rational decisions.

Doc and Santosh obliged to let me run with them.

It was Monday evening. No reply from S. Now I needed the 100km even more to get over how horrible I was feeling.

I decided to do a few short runs that week and worked out in the gym.

Tuesday and Wednesday – No reply yet. I continued to feel miserable.

A few more workouts in the gym.

I get an email on Thursday. She says “It Oh my goodness - I JUST checked my mail so I'm really, really sorry its taken 2 whole days for the "it really alright" mail! Seriously, its reeally alright :).” She mentioned that she barely checks her gmail account. I just wanted to drop out from the run and ask her out. But by then I was dreaming about the 100k and could see the finish. From feeling miserable, I started to feel more relaxed. Now I knew there was no stopping and it would be a breeze

The run itself

I chilled out all Saturday morning. My boss was highly impressed and did not want me to come to work. We drove to Our Native Village where the run is organized every year.

Just before we started running, some folks came to me and told me that “You cannot do it. After the 60k, it will be extremely difficult”. At that point, I remembered the movie “Pursuit of Happiness” where Will Smith says “Don’t ever let somebody tell you that you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you got to protect it. If people can’t do something they tell you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period. “. Doc and Santosh then encouraged me by saying “Now you got to do it”. It just had to be done for the sake of respect.

I was a little nervous and kept silent listening to Doc’s stories during the run. That is the way I like to run. I don’t like to talk much but I like to listen to good stories. It is important to conserve all your energy. We ran through the night and after 4 loops, we hit 50k. The confidence levels increased. After that I don’t remember much. I started to hallucinate. At the 75k mark, doc gave me a tablet to kill the pain in my leg. I don’t know what it was called but it worked. The pain I felt on my left leg disappeared. It was a great feeling at the finish when Preeti gave me an amazing sports massage. I walked up to the bar and got myself a beer.

Post Run

After every race, I take half a day’s rest for every kilometer I run. Thus, I had to take a 50 day break for the distance. However, I got greedy. I started running a week later. It was important to train for a 3:30 finish at Auroville.

The training went well until January. The midnight half marathon which was a part of my training was completed in 1:43 minutes. On a long run in January, I pulled my groin. The pain was excruciating and I thought I would faint. I countered dengue in February and lost the core that I had developed over the past few years. Every time I ran, I felt the stitches on my abdomens and it would just not disappear.

Running was getting less enjoyable.

Few days after the dengue, I started to run. I found a track close to home where I would run. Every time I would run 400 meters, I would throw up. The endurance had to be built all over again. This could have been because of low resistance levels after the run. The low resistance levels could be because of the fact that I did not train for the 100 k. I just decided to run it and I would not advise this to anyone.

There was a 10k coming up and it would be a good start. After 2 months of relatively hard training, the 10k was completed in 44 minutes. A great start but the groin injury and stitches kept coming back regularly.

Key learnings

Running any distance (100 meters to 100k) requires training. Put your shoes on and train. The emotions and how you feel will surely help you finish but could lead to injuries.

People ask me about my 100k experience. Honestly, I don’t know how I did it. The company surely helped and without both of them and the support crew, I could not have pulled through. Was it a good experience? I don’t know. I don’t know if I will do it again without training. It has reduced my enthusiasm for running – a tiny little bit.

I had to start learning how to run again. It was like hitting permanent wall, which was really difficult to break through. It seemed impossible. But with a little help and surrounding yourself with motivated people, anyone can walk through even the toughest walls in the world

My groin and core are not as strong as they used to be before. I run a maximum of a half marathon these days and am working towards a fast marathon in 2010.

This year a few people are doing the 100k distance. Fortunately, all of the people I know are training hard for it and that is the only way to do it.

I left a part of me on the ultra marathon course and I don’t think I can run like that ever again.

S and I are very good friends now. I call her whenever I feel like a hug. MK did the 10k with me. He finished in 55 minutes. Doc did 106 kms. Santosh conquered the unofficial record of running the longest distance run by any Indian runner in 24 hours – 156km. (It did become a bit controversial. Santosh’s name was not on the list. The run went unofficial since there was no “formal” 24 hour run organized. Rajat appropriately was wearing a t-shirt at the end saying, "Screw it, Just do it")