I prepared for my annual heart health checkup / age denial ritual / motivational retreat / sporting christmas aka the Bangalore World 10K much the same way as I have always done – have some water and a banana at 3AM and then step out to head to the venue to run a 10K race with thousands of others for company, who for better or for worse, have their own reasons to partake in what can only be described, to borrow a phrase from Emily Dickinson, a little madness in the spring. And it is indeed wholesome for King and commoner alike. But while my routine remained unchanged, there was much about the race itself that was changing this year – the course, for starters (with the organisers not able to get the Kanteerva Stadium this time, a new route was mapped that skipped Cubbon Park altogether, but more on that later) and more consequentially, the weather. Bangalore has been in the middle of the cruelest of summers on record and the conditions were expected to be brutal, high humidity even at 5 in the morning; in short, it was going to be a tough race.
The race being tough had not daunted me from the beginning, my first ever long run was the first edition of this World 10K, and I have loved taking that challenge on ever since – 16 consecutive times and counting – but this year felt like some kind of permanent shift. The changed course and conditions that most casual runners were not used to both loomed large, bringing with them the bigger question of climate change. There was no escaping it this time, it was going to be a spectre hanging over the entire route, a brutally effective reminder, even though everyone was out there for some form of recreation, that things are indeed getting serious. Race Sunday would end up being Bangalore’s second hottest day on record. The Open 10K race is run before the sun really rises, but even then the conditions were difficult, to put it kindly.
We began at 5.10 AM, and by the time I crossed the starting line it was past 5.12. I looked right, and saw the Army Supply Depot gate, and a wave of nostalgia washed over me. It was almost at this exact spot during the first race in 2008, an army officer, standing and watching the runners go past, had spotted me flagging and slowing down to the side, and had screamed “Ruk kyon gaye jawan? Daud!“. It was a memorable race for me, not just because it was my first, but also because of the green canopy cover we could run under even in the May heat, with a race that started past 8AM. In those intervening years, the city has lost literally hundreds of thousands of trees turning it into a heat island, and this year’s course with no welcoming canopy cover of Cubbon Park in sight seemed an on the nose reminder that we are in a new normal. As we crossed the first two kilometers and I took my first water break, I was doing alright on the pace, but with very little clue of what rate I was losing fluids at, and how much I could stretch myself in these muggy conditions, a lot just came down to guesswork, and mostly going – Jai Mata Di Let’s Run! It was a smooth ride until the 5th km, when we passed in front of the Vidhan Soudha, but this is where I felt my heart break, because unlike every other year when that would signal our turn into the green haven that is Cubbon Park, we had to take a U-turn and run towards the urban heat island again. Not even the stretches around Ulsoor lake were much consolation, they were narrow, an open sewer reminded you that waking up and smelling the roses takes effort these days, and eventually an uphill finish past the 9th km driving the point home, that no matter what we do to try and hang on to whatever environmental redeeming features the city has, everything is an uphill climb from here on in.
I did not do badly in the race. Finishing in just over an hour in these conditions felt like a triumph in itself, I had avoided any major injury – in fact, my muscles felt fine – and neither did I feel completely out of breath. But little did I realise of how insidious the effects of unusual and extreme weather are. Back home, I felt the effects of a mini heatstroke kick in. A continuous headache dogged me through the late morning, into the afternoon, and the night, a fever kept coming and going, finally subsiding by Monday morning. Everyone in the race put in superhuman efforts on a brutal day. I watched the winner of the women’s Elite 10K race – Lilian Kasat – fall flat on her back after crossing the finish line with a timing under 31 minutes. I had friends reporting that some of them got their personal bests. Another friend, who had run her first ever 10K just last year at this race, had a rough finish, but she stretched herself to make sure she finished, and as she rightly put it – “this year’s race was an unholy mix of heatwave conditions… and route… so I am just going to ignore my time for this one”. It did feel like a race, where, to borrow the tagline from Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, survival was victory. This was but one race for me and the thousands who showed up. But imagine what toll the shifting weather conditions, and their push towards the extreme are extracting from those who do not have a choice but to toil in the sun and the heatwave. For whom there awaits no medal at the end of the finish line, nor the luxury of taking an off the next day because you suffered a mini heatstroke. Pardon me for being dramatic, but this edition of the madness in the spring felt like a loss of innocence that we will never get back. I will keep coming back to the race, of course, because it remains an island of possibility and hope (again, two words that Emily Dickinson loved!) but even here, my body will have to adapt, to survive, and to overcome. But perhaps it will also become a reminder to not go gently into the good night and rage against the dying light. Because the only thing that drags me back to this race in particular each time is its ability to be a metaphorical inspiration to keep going. Because we can do it even with a broken heart.
I learnt it in the very first race that the only thing that matters is just to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and just being present in that moment to do the best you can, because thinking about the entire race every time will overwhelm you. It is a lesson that has carried me past the finish line every race since, and will do so every race hence. Because, forever, to borrow a Dickinson line again, is composed of nows.
For everyone who ran this race this time, and stuck to duking it out with the conditions like heroes, I hope it inspires us to keep doing that the rest of the year in whatever way we can. To steel ourselves for civic action that does not let this narrow window slip. Don’t stop running, Bangalore, because whatever the course, and whatever the conditions, no one runs like you do!
Get Sporty 