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The week began with a short run today. Sometimes a time on feet can mean just that – running until the prescribed time – and not bothering to round it to the nearest kilometre.

After a couple of days of eating more than I should, I ate low yesterday. Which to me meant lesser in quantity, especially for dinner. Sleeping low, an old coach friend had said to me. That’s how I came by the phrase.

Whether that was the reason, or perhaps I was too wired with work, I barely slept at Sunday night.

But sleeping low came with an advantage. At least for me. It was good to wake up hungry. To feel an empty stomach. To reckon what appetite and energy meant. Perhaps none of these in the most visceral sense – certainly not in the manner of what harsh hunger really meant – but maybe as a simple endeavour of rebooting the body. Just that ever so slightly.

After the young boy went home – a lovely run and conversation with him – I continued the long run. I crossed some of the usual runners – and nearly everyone was complaining about the weather. I didn’t find it any more unusual than the recent heat and humidity.

But towards the end of my run – with about five kilometres to go – it suddenly hit me. Especially down Shanti Path, there was no shade, the sun was strong, and the heat made itself felt. I doused myself several times with water, squeezing a bit of gel in my mouth. Sometimes a short distance at the end of a long run can feel nearly forever.

I remembered that earlier in the year, towards the very end of the Bombay Marathon, the last few kilometres seemed never ending. Any math calculation that I did – eleven minutes of running, eight, six – was to no avail – it seemed that the seconds passed too slowly – time in slow motion.

But when it finished – today – like it does often, within a few minutes, I asked myself, what’s the big deal.

It isn’t a big deal but it feels tough – very tough – at least for me, when for any reason, the end of a run seems like a mirage in the distance. One that eventually does come to pass if you stay with it, and that’s the reward for a Sunday when its all done.

Rain stinging like pellets slashed across my face as I ran the second set of mixed intervals. I looked back at the young boy, hoping he was alright – he was – swinging his arms and running with all his might.

Great, I thought. Good for him, this training. It was yet dark, the stadium lights illuminated columns of rain moving across the track, and the eight to ten runners who continued on.

When it was clear it wouldn’t let up, my sister Roshini came down from the safety of the stadium ramparts to continue on with her run. That’s the way. Long distance races never stopped because of weather.

Just before the last interval, I looked back to see the Agniveer boys and I wanted to imprint that image in my mind.

The lights were behind them and I could only see their silhouette, shadowy blocks of limber and youth, glittering at the outlines with lashing rain, the drops bouncing off bare shoulders like diamonds, hair glistening wet, water streaming down legs, arms, fingertips.

When we finished the last interval – a 1000m – the sky was just beginning to turn an angry blue, the rain continuing to hammer down, and the young boy finished too. He wanted to do more and ended with a couple of sharp 200s.

A morning to remember, I thought, as we sat in the car, drenched, soaked to the bone and the workout done.

Goal: something that you are trying to do or achieve.

What was I trying to achieve in running? PBs – absolutely yes. A secret desire to try for Masters in the future? Perhaps yes. But was that the goal, the desire?

The greatest accomplishment I could hope for in this sport is consistency. That I can do this now and that I would continue to run ahead in and into the future.

It is wonderful to take part in races, to get that PB, but the journey to a race, the training far surpasses any other achievement. For in my case – the everyday amateur runner – that is simply against oneself, against one’s own previous time. Bettering that but to what end? After all its personal best.

I would at this point rather not think of that and keep furthering the training in itself and see where I go from here. The intervals, the long runs, the easy treadmill runs (like today) are process and the process is like a sturdy tree in its routine, in its predictability. What is glacial is the outcome (if any) and the way that routine shows a result.

The result might be official with a race time, but really the true outcome of routine is the addictiveness of the routine in itself. In that the journey in itself is complete.

Of course such musings, useless or not, are the so-called benefits of the armchair amateur enthusiast – certainly for me – and neither applicable to any Agniveer hopeful nor a professional runner.

The etymology of the word in itself is quite ironic in its possible origins as obstacle or barrier.

Far from it, the goal to simply run, sets me free.

It was a steady run that started with my sister Roshini. On the way to the park, we were mostly quiet, soft classical music emanating from the car stereo.

There was scarcely a runner when we began. Easy pace, punctuated with conversations and a few laments about the challenges of everyday work life as we traded stories, looping around from Niti Marg to Shanti Path.

After a bit, I ran on my own, continuing the easy pace, building ever so slightly with each kilometre and ending with stride work.

It had been an easy morning and with no workout later, I had a slice of time to myself in the early morning hours.

But the day ahead seemed to have plans of its own, an ever increasing crescendo of calls, meetings and such, in a cadence of its own and unpredictability in whatever came next.

More like a mountain trail run of a day that didn’t quite match the morning start.

I was exhausted at the end of yesterday despite having done very little. Technicolor dreams and a long sleep saw me wake up still groggy and deprived. Nothing a coffee wouldn’t fix, I thought, half-asleep, squinting at a NYTimes article about the September Vogue cover.

It was a long session with 800s, ending with a two-mile effort. Several of the boys were already at the track. I did my usual easy loops warm up and joined them for some stride work and dynamic stretching. I laughed at myself seeing their lithe lean bodies, stretching and moving this way and that – and me – stiff as a plyboard.

Off we went, Coach Ravi at the start line, yelling our splits every lap. First interval too slow. Second, bang on pace. And so, it went – heart in the mouth running – but I tried to take deep breaths into my stomach and relax into the run, ease into the hard effort, feeling the build up after each lap, each interval. I finished the 800s strong and faster than prescribed pace.

The two miler went on endlessly and when I finished, I wasn’t sure whether I was on target or not. When I checked, I was – and I was faster for it. Phew, I thought, that worked. Just about.

It was satisfying and as always I couldn’t be more grateful to the boys at the track – that I had this exalted company – that when we ran in formation, it felt like something. Even for a plyboard.

After two kilometres, I saw Shikha bounding down Niti Marg. She was running forty kilometres compared to my measly time on feet run. But I think we both were happy to run together for the short time I had ahead of me.

As usual, we kept the conversation to a minimum. But I was curious to learn more about the her ultra run ahead.

She was running the Silk Route Ultra edition as part of the Ladakh Marathon series. When I checked it out later, it seemed brutal – starting at about 3000m and climbing to well over 5300m. She said she would reach nine days before to acclimatise for the run.

Can you feel it, I asked. The altitude. A somewhat dumb question, I thought.

Oh yes, she answered. Above 15000 feet, you can’t run, she said. I bet, I thought.

It was Independence Day, flags were everywhere, flags attached with bamboo sticks to car grilles, including police cars, many pillion riders holding the flag up, and runners too, flags at road crossings, clutched in the hands of little kids selling them – an assortment of the tricolour – just the way they sell a veritable carousel of merchandise depending on the time of the year – Santa Claus hats on Christmas, pichkaris for Holi – and if nothing else – there is always tissue boxes for cars. Thinking about this word independence, I looked it up.

Not hanging from, a literal description of this word, that offers hope and history.

Onwards to reading tomorrow’s plan, to intervals and training that was already making me calculate lap paces.

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
    Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
    From morn to night, my friend.

An excerpt from the poem Up-Hill by Christina Rossetti is apt to read on a rest day. Although ‘rest day’, for me, as it is probably for most amateur runners, Monday can be a flurry of morning meetings and a slight sensation of fog and tiredness from the usual Sunday adventures.

What did give me peace if not physical rest, is that the clouds from yesterday did blow over. Conversations, connections, meeting up and that all important factor of time took care of those knots.

A roadmap to physical training, I have. The journey for PBs and races. Other journeys – for me – don’t have the luxury of mentors or retreats in silence. As I read this interview with a monk, I wondered how these may yet be discovered.

It was an easy path to the long run workout today. I continued to feel light, and the kilometres seem to whizz past taking care of themselves.

Shikha joined me for the last loop and half. She was running with a hydration pack, training for an ultramarathon. Crazy girl, I thought affectionately and with endless admiration. We ran quietly and in step, quickening the pace, sub-consciously or perhaps consciously, every couple of hundred metres.

As I was finishing, a half dozen of Army recruits (some had Army blazoned on their jerseys) whizzed past, showing me my place – and the true meaning of the word. I laughed inwardly at myself and looked on with unabashed admiration as I saw the cadence, the stride, their beautiful flying legs with perfect musculature kicking up towards their buttocks, feet just skimming the road – ground contact time seemingly zero. Phew. Just lovely. Phew again.

Runs will almost take care of any state of mind but today for a plethora of reasons I felt clouds gathered in my head. The rush at the end, the feeling of completing a long Sunday run gives the world a sunny disposition. But not today.

Of course, I know that I would have felt infinitely worse had I not run at all.

Sometimes, only time will take care of clouds. After all the wind will blow soon enough.