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.