Note: This essay was commissioned by the wonderful team at The Whole Truth Foods. I have been a big fan of their products for a while now, particularly their delicious protein bars. So, it was a lot of fun working with them to write this piece on one of my beloved topics. Running. (I have previously written about running here, here, here, here, here, and here. Phew.)
If you subscribe to their newsletter (Truth Be Told), you may have read this essay already. You may have also seen it on my Twitter and Instagram. For everyone else, the essay (with bonus gifs) is presented below. Hope you enjoy it!
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
This is one of the more famous quotes associated with running. The fact that these words were written by the legendary novelist, Haruki Murakami, certainly helps with their popularity. But truth be told, the reason these words resonate with so many is because they are true.
When you are running, pain is inevitable. Your heart pounds in your chest, your lungs scream for air, your legs are aflame. Your brain switches into self-preservation mode and orders you to stop. You can only keep running if you can ignore this instinct. The hurt, as Murakami had written, is an unavoidable reality. It is your disavowal of suffering that determines how far – and how long – you can run.
Much of the discourse around running is dominated by these themes of resilience and resolve – what one may term the ‘interior experience’ of running. This tendency is understandable.
Running, after all, is a visceral, meditative act. It compels you to engage with yourself and wield your will to rebel against the physical limits of endurance. It makes you focus inward as you coax, cajole and motivate yourself to go the extra mile. It sets up the starkest, and most existential, of contests: you against yourself – fuelled by a desire to lose weight, get fit, or simply to forget the world for a while.
This interior experience of running inspires a wide variety of content, which can range from rare insight into the human condition (is running just an expression of our need to break free of the lives we’ve constructed?) to banal self-help mantras (13 reasons why running can make you a better CEO!).
Yet, running is not just about introspective musing. It also offers an ‘extrinsic experience’, an aspect that is often overlooked but can be equally fascinating.
By its very nature, the act of running situates you in an external environment. (Unless you are running on a treadmill, but hopefully, you don’t have to suffer that tedious fate too often.) It allows you to observe your environs in a uniquely kinetic fashion – more urgent than a leisurely stroll, less fleeting than driving past – and get to know them from this fresh perspective.
Driving through any place can only offer you glimpses of it, but running allows for a more immersive experience. Its intensity also heightens your awareness. It puts you in a state of constant conversation with your surroundings so that even when you’re running alone, you are, in fact, communing with the world.
If the interior experience of running is about discovering what lies within you, the extrinsic experience can help you understand what lies around you. Which then means that this extrinsic experience depends entirely on where you choose to run: a question which generally presents the runner with two options.
The first option is to choose the comfort of the familiar. If you are someone who runs regularly, you probably know what I mean. Every runner has a route which feels like home. It is the path well-trodden, a way they have run many times before.
In cities like Mumbai, in particular, the paucity of public parks and open spaces leads to runners coalescing around certain popular running locations: Marine Drive, Worli Sea Face, Aarey Colony and Sanjay Gandhi National Park, to name a few.
For me, this ‘home route’ lies on Carter Road and Bandra Bandstand. Over half a decade, I have run this circuit so many times, turning every bend and jumping over every pothole, that it is now etched in my memory. Buildings have become markers for kilometres completed and movie-star residences serve as pace-setting targets.
I pass through these roads on other occasions too, but running on them throws them into sharper relief, making even minute details more perceptible. Like the beautiful stained glass rose window in a two-storey villa and the subtle incline of the road that grabs at a runner’s ankles. Or, the rusting sewer grates I know not to step on and the cracks on the pavement I have learnt to avoid. The secrets I have discovered while running through this neighbourhood are the reason I can call it mine.
If the easy intimacy of the home route is the first option when going for a run, the alternative is – quite fittingly – the exact opposite. It is to give a free leash to one’s sense of adventure and head into uncharted territory.
In his memoir, Run or Die, the exceptional ultra-marathoner and trail-runner, Kilian Jornet, wrote, ‘There’s no better way to get to know a city than to discover it through running’. Who are we to disagree with Kilian?
Running in a new city, or even a new part of one’s own city, can indeed be exhilarating. These runs are charged with the thrill of discovering the unknown; although sometimes, if you’re unlucky, it can also bring you uncomfortably close to dogs who hold runners in very poor esteem. (I have found that Goan pups, in particular, seem to resent runners. Perhaps they feel we’re ruining the vibe of the place.)
Espousing Kilian’s credo has made running an essential part of my travel itinerary. From the riverfronts of Kochi to the mountain trails of Kasauli, through the paddy fields of Goa and the ghats of Benares, I have tried to run them all. I do, of course, have other memories of these places. Memories of their markets and cafés and tourist attractions.
But what I remember with the greatest clarity are moments from my runs. The moment when I caught a glimpse of snow-clad Himalayan peaks while running in Landour; the time I jogged up Calton Hill, as the city of Edinburgh lay stretched out below; the minutes spent running on the ramparts of a crumbling fort in Udaipur, at sunrise.
In my mind, my experience of these cities is inextricably linked with the experience of these runs – wholly different from my home route runs, but just as precious.
It is tempting to limit running’s extrinsic experience to this neat duality: the familiarity of the routine and the novelty of the foreign. But as with much else in life, the truth is not quite so simple.
There are times when running can lead you to the in-between places. The ones that exist in the liminal space between the familiar and the forgotten; that are not unknown but are neither yours to claim. The experience of running through such places can be unique, and not a little unsettling.
I would learn this myself when I returned to Kolkata — a city I grew up in but left over a decade ago — to participate in the 2023 edition of the Tata Steel Kolkata 25K (TSK 25K).
On a chilly Sunday morning in December, the TSK 25K flagged off from Indira Gandhi Sarani – better known by its romantic moniker, Red Road. During the Second World War, Red Road had served as a makeshift airstrip for fighter planes. When the race began, it reprised this role for a brief period as the elite athletes flew down the tarmac, leaving the rest of us shuffling along in their wake.
The run route weaved through the heart of Kolkata. It passed localities that regularly feature in highlight reels meant to showcase the city’s aesthetic and presented views of monuments – Shaheed Minar, Prinsep Ghat, Victoria Memorial – that have become its visual motif.
As someone who grew up in the suburban fringes of the city, to me, these landmarks always had a touch of the exotic. Visits to these places required meticulous planning, almost as if one were a tourist in one’s own city. The ageing grandeur of Park Street, Ballygunge, and Golpark – all areas we crossed during the run – represented the archetype of Kolkata. I knew them, of course, and had visited them many times.
But I had never thought of them as being home – that feeling had been reserved for the narrow, modest lanes of my locality in a northern corner of the metropolis. Now, years later, as I ran through the postcard version of this city, the old feelings of belonging and unbelonging resurfaced.
I did not know quite what to make of this peculiar experience. Running had returned to me a place I recognised, but which still had the allure of something distant.
The colonial-era buildings that had awed me as a child were still impressive, still somehow original. As I covered miles of the city, in step with a friend, I wondered how this particular run would fit into the dichotomy I had so carefully cultivated. Familiarity and novelty, the two possibilities of running’s extrinsic experience, were both available in ample measure. Which of them then, could lay claim to this run?
Neither, as it turns out. Because running can, on rare occasions, offer you a third extrinsic experience – one that transcends place and allows you to travel through time.
Heartfelt and racy. I think I am 89% happy and maybe 29% jealous of your running habit. Also, I don’t know history so I cannot do addition properly.
No wonder this reads so free flowing. Running is too close to you
Lovely piece Rohan. Exploring a place in a slow pace through running or even cycling is a different experience altogether. Enjoyed reading this :)