Is there such a thing as being tooooo thin...?

As I mentioned in the last post, I gave up eating sugary foods about 4-5 months back. I also gave up eating fried stuff, which wasn't that much of a sacrifice, greasy food isnt really what gets MY knickers in a twist. Anyway, I happened to lose some weight.

(so what does this have to do with a running blog, you're asking... wait, Im getting to it...)

Since then, everyone's been telling me things like You've really lost weight, I can look around you now. The polite ones have been saying stuff like you've sort of lost your belly, which was like your butler, it announced your presence three minutes before you actually entered a room.

Charming. I must have been a real Miss Piggy before, without really realizing it, since as per me, I have lost only about 4kgs over 4 months, which is a decent amount, but its not like I dropped 150 kgs in 6 months, like those poeple you see on Oprah. In response to their stupefaction at my new silhouette, I have been preening piously and gabbing on about not having eaten sugar yada yada yada. And feeling quite pleased with myself in a non- butler- belly sort of way.


Ok, enough already about the boring diet bit. Here comes the running part.

Sunday was supposed to be my long run for this week. I was supposed to do 11.2 kms - 7 miles. So I get up in the morning, hit the track, start off great, am running along ok, legs feeling strong , mind feeling positive. Then, all of a sudden after 6 or so kms, with no premeditated plan, literally on the spur of the moment,I simply run off the track, cut across the rolling little hills and paths and thickets of jacaranda trees and frangipani trees, lope with an intensity I havent experienced in my running of late, all the way to the parking lot, sit in my car and drive home.

Hmmmmmmmm.

While I drove home I thought about what had just happened. It's almost as if I simply could not run another step. It wasnt as if I was stumbling and fumbling and fighting with myself to carry on and then deciding I really didnt have the energy to.One minute I was running ok, and the next I had veered off across the trees and was sitting in my car.

If this were some sort of lawyer show on TV, and instead of simply driving home, I had taken a pick axe to somebody, I would now be pleading not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Because that's exactly what it felt like. Temporary insanity.

When I think about it, my runs have been tortured of late. I'm not a natural long distance runner, i know that. I adore running about 5 kms or so, more than that i really have to work myself into. However I have never been so unable to push my body for such a long period. So maybe I'm doing something wrong.

You're too thin to run, my (non runner, butler belly comment) friend chortled when i called her up to report on this momentary lapse of reason. I always knew this silly diet of yours would boomerang on you. You have no fat on you, and you arent eating any fat either, so where will you get your energy from?

Ok, its not a diet. Giving up sugar and fried stuff isnt really putting oneself on starvation rations. Also, how terribly charitable to think that i have to spend my life veering between a butler belly and the lack of it boomeranging, how unfair is THAT? Most importantly, Paula Radcliffe my friend aint- she's never run three steps in her life and has no clue about nutrition so its not as if she knows what she's really talking about.

I havent been eating badly at all. By a long shot. I eat two fruit for breakfast, along with tea, whole wheat toast and an egg. Sometimes I skip the egg and eat oats instead. For lunch I have vegetables, lentils, rice, salad, yogurt. At tea time I eat fruit, tea, millet biscuits, whole wheat crackers and dinners the same as lunch. Occasionally I eat meat ( not very fond of it!) and not so occasionally I have many glasses of beer. or wine! I drink lots of water every day. I think i eat fine.

But I cant deny, I havent been able to push up the mileage the way I generally can. Running 7 miles isnt really something that's like climbing Mount Everest. Yet my body is scuttling away from the task before I get the chance to intervene. So could she be right?

Was eating sugar ( lots of it) and the occasional fried samosa what was nurturing and nourishing my butler belly and therefore allowing me to run? Was my adipose fuelling my adrenalin? Has my body, independent of me, managed to prove that you really CAN be too thin...? And can you really be too thin without being too thin? ( as in too thin to run without being to thin to exist, since at 5'5" and 55 kgs, I'm not exactly fading away)

What do YOU think?

And right after you've figured it out can you please help me disprove the too rich part as well....?

Sweet rewards

I crave sugary foods

I dream of lush fields of chocolate mousse, of virgin billowing clouds of tart cheesecake, of the simple wonderful embrace of a just-baked pound cake.

And Indian sweets… aaaaaahhhhhhhh. The intravenous injection of 100% sugar and fat that constitutes most Indian sweets is what constitutes my idea of pure heaven. Crisp hot jalebis, creamy tracts of kalakand, rasgullas that dance with happiness inside your mouth, the crumbly perfection of a bundi laddu cooked in ghee….. these are the things my palate dreams about.

Three or four months back, for reasons to do with vanity, I gave up eating sugary foods. Since then, I have been able to do up the waistband of several items of clothing that were precariously being held across my waist with giant safety pins, so that’s been wonderful. However that’s been the only impact I’ve really felt (apart from the craving, which, though its much better now, was terrible terrible terrible for weeks)

Yesterday I read a blog of someone who seems very put together both as a runner and a writer. In it she wrote that she knew she was a runner because she went to a fair and decided to forgo eating sugary snacks because she knew it would impact her run that evening. And had a wonderful run subsequently, which she declared was sweeter than any food she could have consumed.

How incredibly unfair is that? I have eaten my way through a trillion truckloads of sugar and run my entire life. Then, I give up eating sugar, suffer depression, anxiety, withdrawal and have strangers move away nervously from me in crowded places, since I am leering like a gargoyle at their sweets/ desserts/ ices. I think my reward will come when I junk all my safety pins and can make the two ends of my trousers stretch across the expanse of my waist. Which it does.

But, since I am ignorant of the benefits of not eating sugar for running, I have no expectations of the impact my no sugar diet will have on my abilities ( or lack thereof) as a runner.. And guess what, my no - expectations get fulfilled. Because my running has shown no improvement. At all.

Nil, nada, nothing.

So now I am hopping mad. All this while, even though I thought I was denying myself the pleasures of paradise ( with an extra dollop of jelly on the side) just to lose weight, it turns out I should have been able to run faster, longer, stronger as well. Which I haven’t. Anyone reading my recent posts knows that I have been pushing the envelope on being training - challenged.

And that is soooooo unfair. Just because I was ignorant doesn’t mean that the benefits don’t accrue me.

Someone , somewhere owes me.

I am off to dive into a moist chocolate cake while I figure out who to sue.

Does a long walk count as a long run?

The trainer in the gym I go to is a sadist.

His name is Bobby and he thinks that I am a gym wuss. He, meanwhile has been put on this earth to call me on my essential wimpishness. The fact that I am a lazy dog who would never do a 756th crunch on my own without him yelling into my face just proves his point.

Two days back he made me do some squats and lunges that I thought were hard, but not un doable by Bobby's standards. Ha ha ha ha ha.

My thighs, my calves, my hamstrings have been killing me since then. I'm not exactly unfit, so I dont know what muscles he made me use, muscles I obviously have never used in my life, but I have been a walking sore for the past two days.

Ok, so I decide I am going to do my long run for this week today. Its 6 miles - 9.6 kms. And since I have discovered that running on the treadmill's easy peasy for me, it has to be on the track. So I set the alarm for 5.40 am to be off by 6 to nehru park where I figure I will run for an hour or so, be back by 8.

I hate mornings. Specially Sunday mornings. So i dont stir out of bed till 7, reach nehru park at 7.30. Oh oh.

Everyone in Delhi is there. And I mean everyone. Cancel everything I've said about Delhi being a lonely place for runners. Bar me, who is gloriously solo, there are three thousand running groups, all doing efficient looking things, ( yes I did see some doing fartleks, my old friend!) So obviously, while I have been snuggling into my quilt at 7 am, all the runners of Delhi have been congregating at Nehru PArk and training.

So I start my run. Its supposed to be 9.6 kms so that's 3 and a half loops of the 2.75 km track.

I can barely run. My legs hurt. My thighs are leaden. My hamstrings are about to give way. Bobby is a bastard and may he rot in hell. I get a stitch in my side. I hobble on gamely, while all around me the real runners, the ones who wake and toil while I sleep blissfully, are loping past me, all lithe and controlled.

I give up after one round. I stop hobbling fast and begin to stumble slowly. i.e I stop what passes as running in the first round and walk for about 250 m. Then shame and the old competitive spirit at seeing so many runners in fine fettle overtakes me and I start the whole rigmarole of stumbling- running-clutching-side- cursing Bobby again. Ditto after the 2nd round. Ditto after the third.

When I finally cross the 6 mile mark, I try and put my leg up to strech it on the frangipani tree near the marker. I am in so much pain, I have no idea where my leg ends and the tree begins. I end up with both legs and bum on the ground, heavily crushing the pale pink blossoms scattered below.

When i get my breath back, I realise that out of the 9.6 kms I am supposed to have run ( this weeks long run) I have walked at least .75 kms of it. Maybe even 1 km of it. This is afirst for me. Either i am running or I have slunk home. I have never ever been a walk run walk sort of runner.

Obviously, Bobby's squats and lunges, the presence of the entire Indian contingent for the Commonwealth Games athletics at Nehru park, the time of day ( running when i am generally asleep)have all contributed to this abberation.

Im proud of myself, that i didnt just slide behind the wheel of my car after my first loop and take off home. I am also amazed at how unfit I am. But most of all I am thinking to myself. If you walk quite a lot of it, does it still count as a long run?

After all there has to be a run in the long run, right?

What do you think?

A fartlek IS just a.....&*%&* (rude noise!)

So; feeling serious and runner-ly and technical's all very well, but you've actually got to run a fartlek, not just know what it is. Right?

So on Aug 15, Independence Day, I land up at Nehru Park. It was beautiful, btw, masses and masses and masses of families just lying around on the grass, huge picnic hampers open, with loads of grandmas and grandads chasing after small kids, lots and lots of kite flying, wonderful carnival atmosphere. So Im thinking to myself, this should be fun.

Run at 80% speed to hmmm, maybe , say that tree right there, then slow down for a bit till you get your breath back and then do the same thing all over again till you've done 2 and a half rounds ( my target was 6.5 kms - and Nehru Park has a 2.75 km loop)

Firstly I never ever ever factor in how hot it is, and how sapping it is to run in the humidity. Secondly i completely forget how for me, running 6.5 km on the track is roughly equal to running 8 or 9 kms on the treadmill. And thirdly I suck at fartlek.

So even if I had been running in 18 degrees C weather, on the smoothest -frictionless-est treadmill in the world, i would still have been panting after the 2nd km and cursing after the third and ready to lay down every second therafter.

So here's the verdict - Fartlek is killing and terrible and doubtless invented by some Swedish sadist to while away the long cold 8 months of winter darkness. I suck at it. Big time. I suck at the long runs. I suck at the speed work. I suck at hills. In fact, I suck. period.

I dont know why I am bothering to do this thing. The half marathon. The training. The blogging. It's just not happening. And at 38, I have to face the reality that none of it will ever get easier.

So fartlek it all, I think I should just go drown myself in a tub of Jamoca almond fudge ice cream...

A fartlek's not just a rude noise

Its lonely being a runner here in Delhi.

Actually thats what i love about running, the aloneness of it all. The fact that when you run, there's no conversation, no relationships, no arguments, no anyone else, just you and your thoughts and your legs one step at a time, running to whatever rythym your body is used to.

But it still doesnt alter the fact that hardly anyone around me runs. A few friends do, but they all live really far and its difficult to co ordinate and rejig our running schedules to match. When i go running at Nehru Park, this beautiful park right in the heart of New Delhi, I always see a few serious runners, but no one who has been coming regularly enough for me to even have a nodding acquaintance with.

What i miss really is not the communal running, its the communal chatter of runners. The talks of the long runs and the arguments on how treadmills at a 1 degree incline still dont equal a natural running track's resistance and other such boring stuff that only runners care about.

Last year when I trained and staggered across the finish line at my very first (and till now only!) half marathon - last year's edition of the Hutch Delhi half marathon, I read up a few training tips on the internet, obsessed daily about how humiliating it would be to hail a cab mid way and crawl home and basically just upped and did it.

This year, based on my experience of last year, I decided to get a bit more scientific about it. The fact that i was a lot fitter at this stage last year and therefore am more panic stricken this time around may have something to do with it as well.

So I started downloading and reading training charts in dead earnest. Which is where I picked up ( for me,)a brand new, intriguing term. The Fartlek.

Being a huge fan of all sorts of rude terms in all sorts of languages I leapt at it. Though the juvenile part of me was disappointed to find it means speed play in Swedish and has nothing to do with any bodily functions at all, the gear head in me is delighted. Having nobody to obsess about the relative merits of DMX technology vs Nike Shox, no one to argue over whether thin socks are better than thick socks, this knowledge of what a fartlek is, and how it can supposedly help my training, makes me feel part of a secret cabal.


So over the past 24 hours I have been hugging the concept of a fartlek to myself. A fartlek. How technical, how serious and how runner-ly that sounds. For someone who has been running practically every day of my 38 year old life ( ok, well the past 37 years if you must get technical about when I may have learnt to walk!) there's nothing that pleases me more. Despite my current level of physical fitness - very poor, despite my heffalumping performance at last year's half marathon - despite and inspite of everything, simply because I know what a fartlek is, to feel like a serious, technical runner.

Its that time of year again.

Its wretchedly hot and humid. I am wretched and hot and humid. However, unbothered by the state of the weather, or my personal feelings on the matter, the Hutch Delhi Half marathon is back. With pictures of grinning you-couldn't-find-unlikelier-runners-if-you-looked-for-them-with-a-light-under-a-slimy-stone unlikely runners. All grinning maliciously. Not looking hot or humid. Or even wretched. All supposedly there to reassure everyone that running's for everyone.

(...To run the half marathon..) All you need is heart says Mrs something or the other, in her bindi and her sari, pale lipstick bravely in place. Sure, you need heart. But you also need ten thousand buck shoes, or you're not about to finish this decade on your own two feet if you're above 35. And heart's very well, but you also need to train. My heart would sure give way if I just got up, put on my bindi and my pale pink lipstick and trotted out the door to run 21 kms.

I think its admirable this whole Hutch half marathon thingy. But I think they need to put someone who runs in charge of it. For once.

Last year after moaning and pissing and boasting to every passerby that i was running or attempting to run the half marathon, I did in fact complete it. In about 2.30, which is roughly the time taken by Magellan to circumnavigate the globe. Suffice it to say, that at that speed, no world records were in jeopardy when I ran. Small kids running barefoot, old men wearing thin canvas soled shoes on their prostheses and giggling grandmas breezed past me throughout the race.

But right through I was struck by how the runners (and since I use the term loosely, i include myself in that category, though technically my shuffling and wheezing and lurching may not qualify exactly as running) were the last people the organizers were thinking of this entire event.

To begin with there was a callow youth at the holding centre before the race began who insisted on talking non stop - telling misogynistic mother in law and girlfriend vs wife jokes. Right before most normal people like myself went out to the most gruelling physical task we had set ourselves in this lifetime, listening to jokes from a callow RJ type ass was exactly what we wanted.

Then in order to entertain us, 5 kms into the race they had set up a little van type thingy with a PA system, where some demented child from one of the 125 talent shows on TV was shrieking into the mike. Strange that not one single runner stopped to appreciate her not quite dulcet tones.

After you lurched through to the finish line, you still had to fight your way to the enclosure to hand in your time chip and get your certificate. Near riot near the water tent. Meanwhile lots of glippy oily weasely 'commentary' on the loudspeaker on how blessed we were to have all sorts of page 3 celebrities to flag off the race. Of course , if after two and a half hours in 35 degree heat (and the lack of water at the finish) hadnt dehydrated most of the particpants, I'm sure the organisers would have seen real tears of gratitude from all of us towards the aforementioned celebrities.

Dont get me wrong. Despite all my moaning and pissing I loved the whole experience. It was the most democratic thing Ive seen in Delhi in my 5 years here. The traffic guard from my kids school started the race alongside me ( he finished a good 1 hour 20 minutes before me!) I chatted with a 52 year old woman half way through the race who told me this was her fifth half marathon, her first was when she turned 50. I ran alongside people with no shoes and people with shoes, the price of which would have kept a small African nation in style for 6 months. I loved running through the most beautiful parts of Delhi ( though Rajpath was a bitch - beautiful but no shade - not a blade of grass to protect you from the sun). I loved ignoring the temptation of the Delhi Golf Club's serene facade along km 17 of the route - what i wouldnt have done to have nipped in for a long cold beer...! But most of all I loved running. Every last pain filled this-will-never-get-over and-I will die-right-here- step of the way.

All I'm saying is, Hutch, get your act together. Dont just put runners (or your idea of what runners are) on the billboards. Put them in charge. Let this be one day that everyone who runs is much more important and whose needs come before any one who doesn't.

What do you think?