NK just completed the Chicago Marathon, late Jogi Chandana ran all the way from Gateway of India to India Gate a couple of years ago, these guys are in their 50s when others like us have already decided that just ambling around for a leisurely stroll on the promenade is good enough for our daily regimen of exercise. The rest of the day is spent putting the thumb to good use on the mobile, the part of the body which has suddenly acquired a different kind of halo around it. Thank God that during the Mahabharata times there were no mobiles else Dear Eklavya survived without archery but he definitely would have succumbed without the mobile swiping. Today I have to ignore the other limbs and focus on the exploits of the lower limb only.
Ever since we learned to walk, most of us started to run around first in circles and then running circles around the rest. But serious kind of running commenced when I joined RIMC Dehradun as an eleven year old and was taken for the introductory run to Tapkeshwar Temple (Droplets of water fall on the Shivling here in the cave, hence the name). Later we graduated to running upto Forest Research Institute and back. Being a shammer, I was not amongst the front runners, always an “also ran” pun intended. I could never understand why do people run as an exercise, when there are better methods for keeping fit I mean you could play a game of Football, Hockey, Basket Ball or any racquet game. Running was so monotonous, just ‘keep on running’ inspired by Spencer David’s song may be. I would rather go and play a game than run cross country any day. But then the Training Academies have their own method to bring the shammers to heel and our worthy seniors do the rest. So post lunch the Cross Country Captain (CCC) of the squadron charts out a route for practice run, which is meant to pay homilies to the virtues of the peaks and troughs of Khadakwasla such as Ralle-Rasi, Karpa, 2475, Pashan-Periphery, 7 milestone and Sinhgarh to name a few. These CCCs are in a different league from the other appointments in the academy viz the ACC, BCC etc, as they are generally self appointed who derive pleasure in the misery of the ‘also ran’ types, who would rather take a much needed post lunch siesta than spend the precious time exploring the geographical features. Just to bring some solace I think the stragglers must have assigned interesting names to these features which resembled anatomy of the feminine gender, I wonder whether these days these features have been rechristened with gender sensitivity being more of a norm.
Anyway we had no option but to run along and in the words of DCC Francis Kurgat, the man mountain from Kenya, whose tip for the final cross country was to keep it simple, just sprint in the Glider Dome, to get ahead of the pack of 1500 cadets, not realising that for most of us this Dome itself spelt our ‘Doom’. Then he exhorted us to just not let anyone overtake us till we reached the R Hill where most of us just walked up as we were literally a spent force by then. R Hill has been abbreviated by design as (samajhane wale samajh gaye jo na samjhe wo anadi hain), this feature separated the men from the boys, the infantry from the armour, a formidable military obstacle, where we walked and the medallists and first enclosure types ran. Thereafter it was downhill so just let yourself go and you will find yourself amongst the medallists. There were a few from other squadrons including my course-mates, Ravi Murugan, Babu Francis, Paul Bastine, Reddy, Awadhesh Bharti who paid heed and did their squadron and our course proud. Incidentally I was lucky to participate in the inaugural Pune marathon in 1984, so despite my credentials of being a shammer, or may be because of that I was nominated to run this event. Of course I have stayed away from any such temptation thereafter. Some of our foreign trainees would remark tongue in cheek that if they ran cross country they will literally cross their country itself. Alas we could not seek refuge under this excuse.
At IMA, we had to run the 10 mile in battle gear, which most of us made it in excellent time. Army ensured we remained fit through the time tested Battle Physical Efficiency Test (BPET), Physical Proficiency Test (PPT), the latter being applicable till we attained 50 years of age. Surprisingly the guys who are running international marathons these days like my friend NK, Upadhye and late Jogi did not figure amongst the medallists in the academy. I often tell them, if they had run well then, they would not need to make amends now. That of course is in lighter vein, actually we all are extremely proud of their stupendous fitness and achievements, while many of us are actually struggling just to be able to jog. I am eagerly waiting to recover from my achilles tendon injury to be able to get back to the occasional short jogs, which I miss dearly. So keep on running guys..