Born to Run!

A chance interaction with Mr. Satish Gujaran in Mumbai, in the year 2018, was the spark that ignited the journey of my 15000 km of run over the past 5 years.

Lt. Cdr Bijay Nair was launching his book “#TheyInspire”. As an avid reader, I decided to attend this book launch event, and there by chance, I met Satish Gujaran. He had done 10 Comrades till then and I was awestruck listening to his journey. I remember it was a day before the TMM (Tata Mumbai Marathon) and he was talking and interacting with other runners, giving his nuggets of wisdom and encouragement.

I thought even I should start running. I messaged Satish sir and he shared the training plan with me. Following his training plan, I ran my debut 10k in 2018 completing it in 43 mins. Later, I joined Bavdhan Brigade, a running community for runners based in and around the Bavdhan area of Pune. The mentors out here helped a lot in further shaping and growing my running journey.

I ran my first TMM in 2019 with the timing of 3:15 hours. The target during the training was sub-3, but I did a rookie mistake of going all out from the 1st km. I learned from this and eventually did two sub-3 marathons in 2020. TMM 2020 in 2:52 hours and IDBI Delhi 2020 in 2:48 hours.

Apart from this, I have done Mumbai to Goa run in 2021. As a group, we covered 550 km in 46 hours, in which I ran a total of 85-90 km. Then there was “The speed project”. Ran with Bombay running, and we were the only team from India to have qualified. We were a team of 6 runners and ran for 31 hours and 15 mins. Did relay half-ironman in Goa. We stood 5th in that event.

There have been lows as well. Suffered from ITB injury due to bad ergonomics. This kept me out of running for a couple of months as I focused on recovering through proper rest, physiotherapy, and doing interim run walks to check my progress.

Next, I am focusing on competing in Asian Marathon Championship and then in Nationals.

I believe in keeping a positive mindset even in the lows of life. Reading books helps me a lot and these are some of the books which I would recommend.

"Out Of Thin Air" by Michael Crawley

"Bounce" – Matthew Syed

"Peak Performance" – Brad Ulberg and Steve Magness

"Run for your Life" – Mark Cucuzzella, M.D

My personal favorites are – "Born to Run" by Christopher MacDougal and "Sapiens" by Y N Harari.

Happy running and happy reading :)

Runner - Amit Lahekar