Time Out — Runner, heel thyself

It’s another matter, though, that I was still running out of gas at 10k and you could hear the death rattle if I tried to do a sub-6 minute mile. No one need know that.

After all, as a 36-year-old gander with 15 years of dissipated living under my belt, I was entitled to some remission. All it mattered now was I had been rendered out of commission hors de combat! with Achilles tendonitis, the bane of the tried and tested. The bone of the tried and tested.

A wave of euphoria swept over me and drowned the pain in my heel. Ah, now I had really earned my first pair of professional running shoes. Off with the Asics Gel 125, that pitifully quotidian joggers footwear with which I had tramped down the pavements and reduced my Achilles to tendonitis. Now I was in the big league.

A Nike Terra Outback or Nike Air Max Tailwind, perhaps? Or should I settle for an Etonics Maestro? Or better still, a Saucony Grid Hurricane? And next, I could start pushing the 20k mark. Why, at this rate, I could even give the Boston Marathon a shot. And Sydney was still three years away…

You have to belong to the truly mad club of chronic runners to realise the joy of being an addict. It is not a reality that can be realised easily in India. Although I had been meaning to run for years during my youth back home, I never really took off. The excuses were many… pollen, pollution, stray dogs, traffic. But the bottomline was: I never really got off my bottom. Gradually my youthful resolve dissolved into a decade of dissolute living, but I swear I always had running in my heart.

Out here, it’s a different matter. The US is a running-crazed country. At last count, there were 22 million joggers, including the First Citizen. Washington DC in particular is a runners city.

On any given day, morning, noon or night, joggers and runners (and there is a fine distinction — joggers amble with no regard to time; runners keep glancing at their watches) are swarming all over the place, pounding on pavements, weaving through traffic and searching out the trails near the Tidal Basin and Rock Creek park, bathed in sweat and happiness.

It’s a happy affliction that comes down or goes up — to the White House itself. While we continue to be ruled by illness-prone geriatrics who cling to power till death comes rattling by, three of the last four US Presidents (Clinton, Bush and Carter) were regular runners.

In Washington, it’s not an unusual sight to see a certain William Jefferson Clinton setting off for an afternoon trot doubtless to digest a lunch of two-pound burger and French fries — trailed by a pack of Secret Service agents. It’s an uplifting sight.

At the risk of sounding like a nouveau runner (which indeed I am) and an irksome NRI (which I am not), I guess we have a problem at home. At least running is one activity which requires no investment, one would have thought. But no, sir. Notwithstanding Amit Khanna’s wonderful 100 m dash in the Nationals, tripping up remains our national sport.

The inspiration comes from our netas at the very top. The last youthful leader who could remotely be thought of as running material was Rajiv Gandhi. Only, he ran from the truth.