Rashesh Shah is lacing up his trainers at 5.30 a.m. He is turning his last running session over his head repeatedly. It was close to how a marathon would’ve played out in his dreams. In his last session of 18 km two days back, his breathing had a musical ring to it. His trot also had a majestic rhythm. He could’ve gone on for more rounds but he pulled back.
Ah, that sweet sensation a marathoner feels when he pulls back — knowing that he can go on further. He pulled back that day so that he could run the 10 km today morning. And he will stick to his promise of 10 km today so that he makes the 14 km cut immaculately two days after. The sound of heavy rainfall outside wafts into his room. For an amateur runner, this sound would’ve been an excuse to slip back into bed. Instead, Shah, the chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Financial Services, pumps his fist and takes off for his run.
The world of marathoners is impossibly mysterious: it is said to be one of the most enigmatic of athletic pursuits. And that’s why most of what they do can’t be explained easily. For instance you would ask: What’s the big point of running in rain? Weren’t we taught by our parents not to play in the rain since we could catch a cold? Shah smiles when I ask him the same. “Running in the rain is ideal,” says Shah, 48, who is worth almost Rs 600 crore. “I think it is fun to run when it rains because when you run the body heats up a lot [more so in Mumbai] especially after the first half-hour with the heat and humidity we have. It’s almost like a car heating up. When you run in the rain your cooling-down process is automatic and that makes it a lot more enjoyable.”
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Today, he says, after finishing his morning session, was one of the few days when it poured all through his run. A year ago there was a similar instance: Shah ran for two-and-half hours and for all those two-and-half hours, without once abating, the rain washed the sweat off his body. He terms that as one of his “fabulous runs”. Earlier, like everyone else, when he started running three years ago, Shah abstained from training if it rained. But, he says, you start revelling in it (the rain) after you’ve done it a few times. He used to run around a puddle; now he steps on it.
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Shah, who started his career with ICICI Bank in 1989, took to marathon running because he got injured in the elbow while playing tennis. Then some of his friends asked him to participate in a half marathon. He prepared for his first half marathon by taking five rounds of Mahalaxmi Race Course which is approximately 11 km. “When I was able to finish those five rounds then I was sure that I would be able to compete in half marathons,” says Shah, who is going to Amsterdam next month to run his first full marathon. Shah has run in seven half marathons, including three in Mumbai, one in Delhi, and one in Tromso, Norway (the Midnight Sun Marathon). He was supposed to participate in the Paris Marathon last April but he suffered an athlete’s tendinitis due to over-exertion and had to give the event a miss. It’s why he’s so particular about keeping his promises, early in the morning. The Midnight Marathon has been his toughest so far. Running in the evening (or across the night in this case) is way harder than putting your body in motion in the morning. What happens is when you run in the morning “you have slept for six to seven hours, you have been in a horizontal position, and your legs are fresh.” Conversely, when you run in an evening competition — after standing or sitting most of the day — it becomes harder to reach your peak because your legs have carried your weight through the day.
Another question asked of marathoners by those who aren’t long distance runners is: What do they think about when they’re running? Japanese author-cum-marathoner Haruki Murakami has talked about thinking while running in his memoir, What I talk about when I talk about running. “I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void,” says Murakami. Of course, every now and then a thought seeps into that void. Human beings are not sophisticated enough to ward off thoughts completely for the entire stretch of the marathon: it’s in their nature to think of things. “Human beings’ emotions are not strong enough to sustain a vacuum,” says Murakami, who started running at the age of 33. “What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain subordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void.”
Shah agrees that the mind keeps on switching back and forth: from running to thinking and then back again to running. “Half the time is spent on the nature of your running: how you are breathing, how your foot is falling, ruminations on speeding up and slowing down,” says Shah, an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad.
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One of the hardest things to do in a marathon is to pace oneself. Then there is the constant reminders to oneself to keep the body erect and not slouch. The other half, Shah says, is spent reflecting on presumably unsolvable issues nagging at you. “Sometimes you’re running for four hours at a stretch. And in those four hours a lot of stuff that you’re grappling with, personally and professionally, becomes clearer,” says Shah. Somewhere in between the thoughts on running and life, the legs take over. You realise much later (maybe after the race, maybe next day) that the “brief empty space” of no thought was really the legs assuming a mind of their own. And this is what marathoners call “meditation in motion”. Not often will you hear a 1,500m or a 5,000m runner speaking in the same vein. This phenomenon is known more to affect runners who run long enough to exhaust all possibilities of conscious thought.
Once, Murakami asked Olympic runner Toshihiko Seko: Does a runner at your level ever feel like you’d rather not run today, like you don’t want to run and would rather just sleep in?” Seko is said to have stared at Murakami for an uncomfortably long time for even asking such a question. “Of course. All the time!” Seko had said casually in the end.
But the lure of “brief empty space” is incredibly hard to resist, marathoners, professional and amateur alike, claim. This is why you will find Shah lacing up at five in the morning attired in shorts, wrist band, and a cap on his head when the majority lie curled up in bed.