SCMM 2014: A race that wasn’t

Don’t we love the underdog stories? Rocky Balboa black eyeing Apollo Creed, the phoenix rising from its ashes, the ogre called Shrek who marries a princess , Croatia toppling some major teams in the 1998 world cup, Bangladesh thumping us on a few occasions and in recent memory Ireland making a mess of England in Bangalore. The lore around them is the belief that each one of us is capable of doing something majestic, something extraordinary and running has been a path to a door that opens up these possibilities. Running reiterated the fact that I was capable to star in my underdog story.  Kaveri Trail Marathon and I starred in it handsomely, content with the riveting experience of the training and enormity of a race, the experience brought tremendous belief to trust the process of training and leave out the result. Coming from Santhosh’s tutelage, results didn’t matter, didn’t matter if I came first or last and I managed to achieve the latter and the chief was witness to it and he was one proud mentor that day. But for some reason I needed the validation, the validation of a measure of that effort, it’s a single dimension and however hard I tried to shun that thought and bury it, it seemed to rear its ugly head and come right back.  And I literally tried to bury it too. I went out on a motorcycle ride to the ocean for a good 1000 kilometers after Bangalore Ultra. Sitting on the beach, some of the boys built castles while a few of us got busy building elaborate graves and hacking tombstones out of cigarette packets. A few of us threw in cigarette butts and buried it, symbolic to the act of quitting and lit another right away to mourn the passing. While we performed the final rites, I mentally threw in a few numbers into that pit, my KTM timing, my appraisal numbers and the numbers in a bank, all thrown in and buried. As we set the final tombstone, I was convinced I’d put behind these measure units and continue doing the things that brought me joy, but that was not to be.  The obsession with the numbers returned. It seemed to have gained some demonic powers and shaking it off seemed tough.