Aage dekh le, she spoke sharply to a runner coming opposite her. For a moment I thought she said it to me. I crossed her after another loop and she said Hi to me. I don’t know her name.

We wave sometimes but have never exchanged a word. We don’t run with each other. But perhaps just as I am aware of her and the other familiar faces that show up earliest at the track, she would of me.

I thought about the sharpness of her tone to the runner from the opposite side. Not just her tone but also the way her face had contorted. I was startled but I wasn’t sure why.

I finished the last two rounds and thanked Suryavanch for running with me. I hadn’t slept well the previous night and the only way to push away the brief temptation to cancel was to remember the feeling of running and the just after.

Later in the day, I thought of the girl again. Her familiar yellow T shirt and short dark hair. And sometimes it is a moment like this that stays with you for a long time.

After a long run, a day off feels anywhere between a hangover and a repose and often both at the same time. The fatigue of a long run catches up. 

At times that feels like a hangover – the rush abates and the eating, drinking and all around merriment of a Sunday catches up by the dawn of Monday morning. 

Yet there is a pocket of time. In the early Monday hours, there is quietude. I can browse the New York Times or do the crossword. Read. Write.

But soon, as dawn moves to morning, the week stretches ahead. Lists, meetings, to-dos, catch-ups.

I flick through my Training Peaks and read the sessions for the week ahead. A mix of curiosity and expectancy. The garnish in the mix, the brine of this Martini are the intervals and the speed work.

Today there is no hangover – neither literal, nor figurative. But I did feel a soft tiredness – I am glad for the day off. Tomorrow, I will lace up again.

After 5k he wanted to run barefoot. He kicked up a stride as soon as he was rid of his shoes and it was joy to see the pure, seemingly effortless running of a young child. 

When he left, the pace of my run quickened but it was solitary. Just thoughts that came and went, without perception, without attempt to think or not think. Pace and breathing.

It is easy to think about Waking Up by Sam Harris as I write this. A few years ago, the app subscription was a gift from a friend. It had lasted for a while. I wondered if I should pick it up again. 

Coming towards me, I saw Shikha, her beautiful, effortless stride from a distance. As she approached, I motioned her to join me. 

I’m slow today, she said. 

Within a kilometre we were running faster and soon at nearly tempo effort. Slow? 

We both laughed. Whatever laughter feels and sounds like between the rhythmic breathing of running. A few runners and cyclists acknowledged her and called out her name.  She had run astonishing ultra marathons and we had known each other for more than a decade. Training almost solitarily, her cadence and cap was as familiar a sight as could be at Nehru Park. As it is with many runners, we knew each other in the context of running and little else.

The Shanti Path-Niti Marg loop abutting Nehru Park was still crowded. I was alone again, this time counting down the kilometres, continuing to run at a faster pace. 

Familiar faces, bare chested runners, hydration packs, sound of music, the thwack thwack of feet, laughter of friends, selfies within groups, the Nehru Park scene was intimately known to me and yet I knew nearly no one. A wave, a smile, a nod was always enough. 

The roads at Nehru Park were our home.

Intervals are hard. They are meant to be. But sometimes it can feel like you’re fighting with yourself. 

Perhaps it was the lack of sleep or the weather. The humidity was at 90 percent. But most likely it was just me. Whatever reasons of the body and the mind that conspire to give that feeling of struggle, it was heart in the mouth running. My upper chest felt like it was knotted in ragged breaths, my legs heavy, finding no fluidity of motion. 

I hit nearly all the paces anyway – but it was they were flailing, inelegant sets. It reminded me of a friend who said that the answers to the math problems he solved in college – I think in a course called Math 55 – is not simply to find the answer in itself but the most elegant path to the answer. 

Today the track mocked me, gently as it were, and knocked out and flailing as I was, it was another run in the dock.

One of the meanings of treadmill according to the Oxford English Dictionary:

a large wheel turned by the weight of people or animals walking on steps around its inside edge, and used to operate machines. 

Wiktionary adds: It was used principally as a means of prison discipline. 

Quick looks at other websites says the word and its origin as a wheel or mill for prisoners has been in use since the early 19th century.

Two hundred years later, my treadmill is a trusty friend albeit mainly for short runs.

I start slow – it takes me forever to warm up as it always does on the TM. 

Meanwhile, the phone and the speaker refuse to connect over Bluetooth. I could do with some music.

Oxford gives the etymology of Bluetooth as a trademark:

said to be named after King Harald Bluetooth (910–85), credited with uniting Denmark and Norway, as Bluetooth technology unifies the telecommunications and computing industries.

I try connecting a few more times. No device found, it keeps saying.

Instead, on the treadmill, I toggle the incline up and down. It keeps the run interesting and is a way to kickstart the warm up. Or so I believe.

I gently increase the speed through the run. By the time I’m in some rhythm, the run is nearly over. 

When I finish, I try the Bluetooth again. Of course it connects. 

Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber is playing. I am sipping at my second cup of coffee, the composition tugging at everything inside me. How can music make one feel this way. Perhaps I should look up the science behind it, the anthropological connections that might be. 

Earlier in the morning, when I began my run, a pair of teenagers, a boy and a girl, were already racing around the track. Perhaps they were a family, perhaps friends. I couldn’t be sure. They ran beautifully – fast, graceful, tightly composed running. High above, the waning crescent moon shone like an incomplete lamp.

I thought of them as the music rose and fell through crests and waves – the visible strain on their faces yet the effortless rhythm of their legs.

Midway through the run, I was joined by Ashwini. The track had begun to appear from its pack of powdery dust. Two rounds later, there were eight of us, running the last lane – lane10 – in a tight pack, our bodies barely inches away, sweat lined arms and elbows often brushing, connecting. We were breathing the same air but also circulating each others. 

I finish the coffee and share the music with a friend. I get a reply: It has the feeling of a great big deep mental sigh. 

Sometimes the track feels like that too.

Amongst the first thoughts I had when I woke was that I had eaten too much at last night’s dinner. 

It will slow down my intervals, I thought. Or would it add energy, I mused. 

From coffee to car, it took me about forty minutes and the strains of Africa came through. Great song. 

It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do.

For reasons unknown, I thought about routine, mortality, all the while calculating – estimating really – the target pace and time for each repetition. 

Not so hard. I told myself. But hard is on me. Upto me. 

The track had emerged from the water covered in a sliver of dust and fetid odour. The lines were barely visible, as if faded scars on parchment. 

Suryavanch came bounding towards me with usual enthusiasm. Aaj kya hai bhaiya. 

We started off – four of us – at times five. Dawn had begun to reveal clouds – cumulonimbus clouds – I had to check the name. Columns of angry grey and beautiful charcoal shading. 

Five hundred felt unusual. I was used to (if the words ‘used to’ can be said for intervals) used to 400s, 800s, miles. Drenched in sweat thanks to the intense humidity and though I had carried an extra t shirt, I didn’t bother to change when I sat in the car.

Africa took up again. 

Gonna take some time to do the things we never had. 

This morning the track was submerged under water. I could see familiar faces peering through the iron gates. The glistening water mirrored the stadium lights – only a few patches of the ochre track and  lane 10 were visible – as if a washed beach. 

They could have opened just lane ten, I thought to myself. That’s where I had planned to run today’s session anyway. Session that’s what my coach called each training. She said it like SAY-shun. 

Monu called it work. He said it like var-ak. 

“Kal tak na sukhe ye bhai,” I heard one of the familiar runners tell another. 

The sky above was changing light. Already many had begun to run up and down the driveway of the sports complex. 

Whistles were beginning to blow, athletes here and there formed groups and and began makeshift exercises and drills. 

I shrugged. There was nothing to do but run. 

Today I could manage. What would I do tomorrow if the track remained closed? I had intervals. 

I tried to push the worry out of my mind and began to run – an estranged feeling – the submerged track not a few metres away – a locked iron gate – and dozens running in small loops.