Sunday's Run, Learnings and God

The run on Sunday taught me a lot. We spoke about how much fun it is to walk the line while we have complete control and knowledge that we are not on the “other side”. A runner mentioned how important it is to be contended with what you have. Ambition and success can be aspired for only till you do not have to give up your daily run. That is a runners limitation.

A runner mentioned about how he missed two months of action because of his mom's kemotherapy.One of the few reasons I can accept not running for two months.

God sometimes wants you to stop running and therefore puts barriers along the way. Some of these barriers are real and some are meant to be broken. He expects you to break some of these barriers to check if you are actually passionate about the sport and if you want it more than anyone else does. These barriers are intentional barriers which simply tests how committed you are.

He puts in some barriers simply because you are over indulging/abusing the sport. A common example of such a barrier is injuries. The purpose of the injury is often to teach you patience - patience to break free (from speed/distance), patience to let yourself go, and patience to simply challenge your own limitations.

I was evaluating this year in terms of running. I got three of my personal best half marathons this year with finishing 7th in one of them and 11th in two of them. It was possible to get my fastest 10k in 43 minutes. It will be good to see some of these timings improve in 2010 with hopefully a full marty in 3:45. Too much to ask for in Mumbai?