My first ever 10K.
(PS: I am a fat guy)
Have you ever had repetitive dreams wherein you knew what’s gonna happen next and still find yourself miserable experiencing the whole situation again?
I have had many different repetitive dreams. This one though was unique.
The feelings weren’t absurd, they were a concoction of stereotypes that I had made about myself.
So here’s how it used to play in my mind…
The young chap(me) finds himself in his school’s playground. He has to race with some of his classmates. Deep down he wants to throw up as it never spans well for him. He could never outrun anybody in his class.
Needs no explanation right?
Well there was always no choice for the boy as the trainer who used to conduct races demanded doctor’s dissent, otherwise the student shall be obliged to meet the humility. And oh gosh! The boy had been so unlucky to choose a timeline of poor health that could have matched these races.
The thing that he hated the most about 100m sprints at his school was that the organisers never waited for the last guy to finish his/her race in dignity. Their core concern had been to pick the top 3 runners as if there was a sorting business of separating female chicks for meat and twisting necks of the rest(males).
(Quite weird an analogy though…)
And by the way the boy never stopped applauding the winners, I mean why would someone not admire agility. This is where sportsmanship in racing faded away at school. The winners were honoured with medals while he was fighting dilemmas whether to complete the race or “run” away from the runway to save the embarrassment of who came last. To him the latter always seemed tactically valid.
There were longer variants of races as well where stamina could have been equally important as agility but the trainer saved his trouble by not even asking him to participate. He never knew why but the school’s mandate was not that stringent when it came to something like half a mile run.
So what happens next is he gathers impulse to push forward as far as possible for a plausible head start in the 100 m sprint. To his surprise he is leading the pack only to topple down the next moment. How did that happen? By the time that could be decoded, winners were declared. But since this is a dream humiliation escalated further. Spectators were still seated and the organisers waited for me to complete the race. Well let me tell you, the boy was aptly cynical, everyone on the ground gathered around in circles to bet how late would he finish.
He kept on making those spectators richer who would go longer on their bets. It started to feel like the gravity has upped its game by a few multiples to make it even worse for him. Sooner he started to crawl instead of running(walking).
That was the kind of typical satire my dreams would become sometimes.
I felt so pathetic although I passed out of the school long ago.
That’s when I decided to get rid of the haunting dream and I unlocked means to my greater potential. I discovered that I actually had a great stamina if not agility when I got into college. This time, trainers were much more humble and my batchmates much more mature.
Instead of opting for racing tracks I chose the labyrinth of streets surrounded by the green life BHU possessed. All thanks to the huge swathes of land Madan Mohan Malviya ji could muster for my Alma Mater.
Slowly yet steadily in the absence of humiliation while improving upon my inner strength to endure long runs, I was able to discover the true sportsmanship behind running. It is a means to equality and freedom, an uprising culture that brings together humanity to vouch for a greener society.
With every run run. I grew as person who valued patience and the long term benefits that would definitely follow.
No personal record is permanent, there is always a better and longer run waiting for you on a much harder terrain than the one you were used to train on.
The farther you run, the deeper you can fall inside yourself, to look inside the infinite potential and seek permission of the self, whether do you wish to beat your personal record today or should you schedule it for tomorrow’s goal and just cherish the runners’ high that flows inside you.
It should have been taught to me at my school that the finish line was not an end in itself. And the whole activity served purposes other than just picking the best human DNA. But I am happy that I still learned it , although on my own.
1K, 2K, 3K, 5K, 8K, 10K and the next ones in the series is how I would like to liberate myself.
And yes all of those memories flashed the moment I completed my first ever 10K run.
Raising a toast to running and specially to prejudice.
