Lausanne Marathon 2018: Part 1 (The Mindset)

Updated: Oct 31, 2018

On 19th January 2015, I crossed the marathon finish line at the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon in 2 hours 56 minutes and 24 seconds. It was my 1st ever Sub 3 marathon and in the years that followed, I took decisions which led me to a point, where I thought that it would be my only Sub 3. I come across a harsh person, someone who is inconsiderate of other’s feelings. I say things which need to be said, not because I like being the designated “asshole”. I was raised by parents who never afraid to call a spade a spade. If I did things wrong, they were first to tell me. They never sugarcoated stuff and I love them for that. I held myself to a higher standard and have lived my life in pursuit of those standards. There is a syndrome which faces our society today. Atleast, I have observed it in the country I originally belong to. People have a misconception about what our sport really boils down to. Recently, I was discussing this with a good friend of mine and he pointed out that “People waste so much time on women/men, relationships, social media management and what not. I think a sport like running should make people deter from the above, but it’s becoming the other way round”. It reminded me of a quote I read in one of my all-time favorite comics: “The terrible and wonderful reasons why I run long distances.”

📷: The Oatmeal

Running well boils down to the fundamentals of stoicism. Anything good in life comes after a prolonged battle with pain and suffering, and the journey is a lot better if you embrace the pain than complain about it. What awaits you at the finish line is a sense of accomplishment, which is unique to you and you won’t ever be able to justify that to anyone. That is why we subject ourselves to running for miles on end, that is why we do Ironman races and Ultraman races. The struggle is the reward: The ability to endure suffering and finding how deep you can dig to achieve you goals, that’s what differentiates us athletes from people who come armed with excuses for not pushing themselves. When you understand this, you don’t look for motivational videos or quotes. Yes, they help, but you are not reliant on them. Like Chuck Close said:

But somehow, success leads to a feeling of superiority. It is inadvertent. No one ever gets successful without measuring their competition, it is an objective table. You know where you stand. If you can run 5k while your friend “jokes” about not being able to run 1k without stopping, you do know you are better than them (at that particular thing). This leads to people becoming hoarders: of accomplishments. Everything is about the next big goal. It is great, human civilization wouldn’t have made it this far if we didn’t move from one thing to the next, but it wouldn’t be in so much a mess because of 1 tiny mistake we made: We went from one goal to another, without actually reaching our full potential in the 1st goal. The problem with approaching things objectively is that we check the boxes and then consider the task to be complete. But we do not stop and quantify how well we did each task. In 2015, this is what happened with me. I always wanted to do an Ironman, I was fascinated by the distance and I knew that I could finish the distance; I am a glutton for punishment. What I failed to see was, in order to do an Ironman to the best of my abilities I needed to maximize my potential in 3 sports rather than dropping my level in all 3, to fit them in 1 box. After my Sub 3, I signed up for an Ironman and my training logs from that time are dismal. I did no research on it. The training I did leading up to my first Ironman, was far from adequate for an optimal performance. I had reached a Sub 3 marathon in 2.5 years of running, by using my brain and now I was relying on someone else’s inputs and I was still using my brain to contradict parts of what I was being told. I was overconfident about my abilities, I misjudged what I needed to do and when I failed (miserably) to achieve my goal, I rebounded by doing something even more idiotic. James Lawrence did 50 Ironmans in 50 days in 50 states after years of being a triathlete. I chose to do 7 70.3 in 7 days, not even having properly recovered from an Ironman because of a severe sense of dissatisfaction post my Ironman, not understanding what consequences it would have on my body. Over the next few months, I was severely injured and despite that I had to find ways to get some level of fitness because I had signed up for an Ultraman. I was so grossly under-trained for the Ultraman, that when I finished it, I was engulfed in a fake sense of satisfaction. Suddenly, everyone wanted to talk to me, they wanted to listen to me. Sponsors, who weren’t even bothering to reply to me, wanted me to go and host events. And somehow, I was swept up in that hype. I was going to Switzerland, to start a new life and in the fanfare, I somehow failed to realize that I had underperformed badly at the Ultraman.

I came to Lausanne in 2016 and 22 months after I had run a Sub 3, I ran a 3:27 at the Lausanne Marathon. Yes, I walk-ran the second half, helping others but the fact of the matter was the I wasn’t in good shape. I was pretty fat, eating badly, training inconsistently and deep down, I still wanted to a “good” Ironman. Nothing had gone right since my Ironman in 2015 and building up to Zurich in 2017, I did a lot of things right but I still didn’t fully commit. I wasn’t swimming, I just wasn’t running that well and above all, I didn’t enjoy riding my bike for 6 hours. If you can’t even enjoy your “hobby”, there is something definitely wrong with you. And then on a sunny afternoon on April 12th 2017, I tried to run a 15k “tempo run” @ 4:11/km. I had to stop twice, my average heart rate for that effort was 183 and when I stopped, it hit me : “I AM A PIECE OF SHIT”. (with added fat).

The problem, even that time was that I was trying to compare myself to my past. The time I was able to run faster at much lower heart rates. I wasn’t trying to train where I was at that moment but instead trying to draw a comparison to my past. In July 2017, I did PB on the bike and the run during an Ironman, but a 6+ hour bike and 4+ hour run isn’t something to brag about. I finished in 11 hours and 53 minutes, knocking off over an hour from my Ironman PB and quit triathlons to take step in the right direction (but with a wrong approach). I wanted to become faster in running, but I set my past as a ceiling. That summer of 2014, when I was running uninhibited by sponsor obligations or people, that’s where I wanted to go. And when you have such a low bar, things often work out that way. I ran the Lausanne Marathon in 2017, feeling a little feverish (it might have been psychosomatic) having built up with enough long runs but never doing them to pace or properly. They say that when you are feeling good, you don’t notice the hills, you don’t feel the winds or even if you do, you don’t mind them. That day in 2017, I felt every single hill and I complained about the wind and I faded and died out. I finished in 3:18, 9 minutes faster than the year before and it was so massively disappointing because I had built up much better to that event than the year before. It was enough to send me into a state of shock, but not enough to cause forward motion. This is something I have learnt from life, till you have a fail-safe you will not fully commit. At that point, I was about to be handed a job and I began to get relaxed. I showed massive signs of immaturity in my behavior and I enjoyed wallowing in self-pity, which came in handy when I was denied the same job that was dangled infront of me. Just to make it clear, at that moment, having that job mattered a lot to me as it would mark the culmination over an year of financial insecurity and provide closure to the big risk I took of moving to a foreign country in pursuit of a bigger life goal. But when it was snatched from me, the “Woe was me” mentality kicked in and I went through the 5 stages of grief.

I know what happened to me was not fair. I know people abandoning me at that point wasn’t fair, especially when they acted so warm and fuzzy to my face. I was angry at that point. I saw the world for what is really is. There is no one you can fully trust except your parents. Everyone has their own life and your sadness isn’t a burden anyone would want to share with you. If you do have people like that, more often than not, they are themselves sad and like they say “misery loves company”. They don’t offer solutions and you want to be treated differently because somehow in your head, you feel that the world is being unfair to you. This is what I thought and approached my life in the 1st 3 months of 2018. It was bitterly cold winter, everything was frozen or buried under snow. But to me, my house was a prison. I didn’t want to be left alone with myself and my thoughts. I would run miles and miles on end, no pace goal, no time goal, I just ran. My feet hurt because of the lack of grip in the snow, my lips got swollen and it was very hard to breathe in several degrees below zero. And I LOVED IT. I had run in -ve temperatures before but then I would come back into my warm apartment, create a post on doing that, think that I am serving my purpose and go on with my life. Running became something else to me in 2018. I would run by the lake, wondering if the bank would write off my education loan and unburden my parents, if I jumped in the lake and froze to death. When I was rejected to another job, based on a pack of lies and then I found about some horrible health issues with my father and I went out and rode my bike in freezing rain just to feel external pain. And when that wasn’t enough, I tied my muffler around my neck and pulled until I choked and fell to the floor, crying. I couldn’t do that to my parents. I don’t know if anyone else in this world would care if I dropped dead tomorrow but it would to my parents. At that point, I was hanging around with people who were just as miserable as me. In many ways they were even more pathetic as they cried about the smallest problems in their lives. For example; I helped someone design a website and then asked for some money, because I couldn’t afford dinner that night. That person gave me a “holier than thou” lecture on how I had not mentioned money before (which taught me never to assume anyone’s intelligence). I slept hungry that night and the next night. And that asshole never paid me. But if I didn’t give Strava Kudos to Person A, it would be catastrophic to their sense of self. I was trying a “high fat” diet approach to lose weight, and now seeing this in writing is making me laugh. I ended up actually gaining weight and becoming slower. Things weren’t working out for me and I was miserable. Till that tragedy happened to my family. I went numb. I had nothing to lose at that point. And none of the shit I was trying made sense to me. I was letting others control the variables without doing my own research. Worst of all, I was treating myself as a victim. So what if I was unfairly denied a job after job? So what if I was having money problems? So what if I was so broke that I had to sleep hungry? Was I the first person in the world who was is experiencing that? The answer was a resounding NO. I would come to learn that my parents knew of several opportunities back in India and could have easily called me back. But I would again fall back into a fail-safe. Like when I had messed up with my money, like when I had messed up in sport, in life. They decided that it was high time for me to burn all bridges, grow a pair and face my problems like an adult. It is freeing in a way. When you have nothing to lose and when it hits you that we all are going to die eventually anyways. You stop coddling yourself at that moment and just go all out. I had spent the entire winter and spring of 2018, running mile after mile without real purpose. They were just therapeutic miles. If I didn’t run like that, I would have been dead. I wasn’t running fast, but I was running upwards of 80 to 90 miles a week (130–144 k) with regular Sunday long runs on trails, getting lost on them to find myself. I even clicked off 2 100 mile weeks (back to back in February). I didn’t know if I would get to stay in Switzerland or get deported, but I began to create opportunities to stay. I have been a little shy in the past of speaking up for myself, but what did I have to lose now? And I dropped off that fucking, idiotic, absolutely useless “high-fat” diet and started to incorporate more greens into my diet. Instead of carb-loading with a pizza at night, I woke up early and began to eat Oatmeal 2 hours before my run. Money was still tight, I didn’t have a job but I wasn’t sitting on my ass crying. I had gained a significant amount of weight in 2015 when I did my 1st Ironman and I hadn’t lost it since. But in 2018, I kicked it up a notch because if I didn’t do it then, maybe I would be dead the next day with regrets of not even starting my quest to be the best version of myself. Sean Vigue Fitness became my best friend, for core workouts, for stretching videos. I would run, get my workouts in, read and just try to find employment opportunities. Day in and Day out, this is what became my life. I made it a point to eat 1 green vegetable a day, I stopped eating unnecessary everything. It is not like carbs are great in excess. Anything in excess is harmful and so I cut down on everything and made them balanced. I ate as many carbs as I needed and in order to burn the fat, I began to do fasted runs. 10 miles in the late morning, without food would leave me on my hands and knees by the 9th mile. I would break into a cold sweat and try to finish the last mile with the same amount of exhaustion as the last mile of a 100 miler. I know it wasn’t ideal for “performance”, but fuck it, I was trying to lay a bay for performance. People just saw the slow speed and thought I had lost my mojo but in reality, as I dropped the weight, my effort levels dropped for the same distances, I felt stronger but I still ran slow knowing I could still make it better.

I worked my way to rival Tommy Rivs’ abs. As I dropped the weight, I decided to check my speed by doing a 10k Time Trial in June. On a rainy morning on 12th June, after having some watch issues with my Apple Watch, I ran a 36:26 10k. A couple of 10 mile Time Trials followed, all at Sub 4 min/km pace. I began to meditate, I began to calm down and reached the state of acceptance. My life at that point was what it is was. It wasn’t going to change by crying and taking actions to change it were working. All those hours of pursuing people by inhibiting my shyness began to yield results too, I had solid job leads. When I decided to run full time, I wanted to pursue my goals like Richard McDowell. He left triathlons to pursue running full time, he is a married man, a father and from 2012 to 2018, he has progressed from a 2:59 marathon to a 2:26 marathon. And he keeps it simple. I have made it abundantly known that I am huge fan on the man and in June we placed a bet to see if I, who ran 16 kms @ 3:55/km on 21st June 2018, could run 21.1 kms @ 3:33/km by October. I might have gotten carried away when I said “piece of piss”, because I had pretty much run all out towards the end of that 16k. But did I have anything to lose at that point? No. To me, Sub 75 would mean besting my old PB (1:20:16) set in November 2014 by 5 minutes. I decided to target the half marathon at Lausanne marathon in October as my goal race, and even though it felt outlandish to say out loud, deep down, that “nothing to lose” mentality told me to go for it. Also, some tests in 2017 had confirmed, that despite being ridiculously out of shape, I had a running VO2 max of 72 (at that point). So training hard would help me tap into the reserves, I already had done enough base miles to mitigate fatigue. All I need to do was to teach my lungs to accept and enjoy the burning sensation of lactate. I picked up a book, which had helped many runners embrace the idea of suffering and made them better. Coincidentally, the day I finished the book, it was 18 weeks to go to the Lausanne Marathon and the book offered an 18-week plan. Sub 75 became 1 milestone, as I decided to target a Sub 2:45 marathon on October 28th. The only problem? I didn’t have money to register for the race. But that didn’t stop me from training.
Continued in Part 2.