Use your (dis)illusion

You don’t call, you don’t write and then you come bearing a blog with Guns n’ Roses album title rip-off? Yes indeed. Much like slim-shady, I am back. And without a writer’s block, in part thanks to “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. I have been putting pen on paper most days, writing almost an essay a day and then today I was like, “I have more to say, and some of it sounds wise”.

Last weekend, I ran a 10k. After an year of no racing at all, I signed up for this local 10k and I trained for 6 weeks or so(I had vacations, travelling and I was also in a band at the same time. And we were moving offices. So many excuses, you wuss). I did the best I could in training, slowly getting back in that mental state of pure discipline and then I set off at 2:20/km in the race(oh the irony), which is 17'' per km faster than world record pace. Even on my best day, I am almost 4–5' slower than Joshua Cheptegei, so I eventually backed off, but I just had fun with it. Every time there was an uphill section or the TV crew, I attacked(Thomas Voeckler would be proud). Guess what? I paid for it. On a downhill section, I got a stitch and I ran the last 3k trying to not fall apart. (Luckily there was no TV crew to capture that.)

In between adjusting my falling heart rate monitor and falling race belt, my bib got tucked under my shirt and so I have 1 “official” picture from the race.

It was fun. I have no regrets. It was great to be back and be on the roads, racing and trying to vie for position in a race. Everything that happened that day was a part of racing and I love that, I missed doing that.

But you know what I did not miss? That humble brag post at the end of the race. You see, over the last year, I hung out with more and more “normal” people. People who do not define themselves in miles run/week and kilometer per minute pace. People, who when I told them I will run 26k and go to such and such place, asked me “Are you sure? I wouldn’t go there by car”. To be fair, I had no choice in selecting my definition because I could not define myself as that marathon runner. Lucky for me, I have been injured in the past too, so I knew how to cope with the loss of something which was a big part of my identity.

6 years ago, on 14th May 2016, I finished day of Ultraman. It was brutal as hell. I was untrained, unfit and I just pulled it off because I am a bad man. I have a lot of underlying strength and I know how to bring it to the surface. I usually don’t do that because it is not a pretty sight. The months preceding Ultraman were horrible. I was injured, I could not run without pain. I was depressed and everything was falling apart. I was worried because I had signed up for this expensive race. Before this race, I had done an Ironman and had raised money to fund my personal joke of a dream.(India’s fastest Ironman, remember everyone?)

Honestly, that Ironman was one of the biggest, most public failures of my life. I was 24 years old, that done 1 half ironman, had no clue of about strength training, had no discernible bike handling skills, had a marathon best of a mere 2:56:24 and I thought I would be “India’s fastest Ironman”. And I asked people for money to fund my fucking idiotic dream. Why? So that I could buy Carbon wheels. *facepalm*. How they would make me go faster when I had done 0 road riding is beyond me. I was living in a fantasy land. The thing is, back then I was used to getting what I wanted. I was in a relationship which made me feel insecure about myself and frankly, I had no exposure to the real world and how hard people really trained. It was all a fantasy to me. I was riding on a clunky-ass bike trainer, which had no feedback, sitting on my ass for 5 hours while watching movies on it and thinking I rode at a 30 kmph average. People like me back then are the people I make fun of now. You know why? Because I see myself in them and I want to shout at myself. (I guess you must have figured it out by reading this last paragraph).

India’s fastest Ironman finished with a fat man crossing the line in 13 hours, trying to impress a girl who didn’t give a shit about him and trying to impress a bunch of nobodys on social media who were just as delusional as him. The boy still had an inner compass of right and wrong, he felt like he had failed miserably but instead of regrouping and assessing, he decided to do more and more until people saw his talent. So he did 7 half Ironmans in 7 days. He got injured because of that and everybody on his social media circles talked shit about him. He lost sponsors(Why someone with a 13 hour Ironman had sponsors boggles me). Then he signed up for Ultraman. Spoiler Alert: He finished it too. Didn’t do a great job, but got the job done. And then he had 4000 Facebook “friends” and people asking him for advice and he thought he was making a difference in this world.

Let’s focus on the italicised part for a minute. He wanted validation of others. 6 years on, when I look at the miserable public failure which was my 1st Ironman, I am not angry at myself. I am amused at how unprepared I was and how weak my mindset was. But I am not angry, I feel for that guy. He was so unsure about himself. After high school, where he was more than a decent student, he ended up in a terrible college(again, my fault. Not blaming anyone but me) and then he ended up in a job he didn’t like. Somehow, all these places, he felt he was owed something. Some unearned sense of respect. That’s why when he started running, he started sharing it on social media because he knew he was above average at that. And then he began to do more, just to prove to the world that he was not just another brick in the wall. He felt unloved in his relationship, so he pampered himself by giving into his delusional fantasies. I am sorry 24 year old Arunaabh, but you got what you deserved. You never studied, you fucking played book cricket instead of revising organic chemistry. You ignored Complex numbers and Probability instead of working hard on your weaknesses. Of course you went to that shitty college. Because that’s where you were at that point. You deserved to be looked down on because self-flagellating in public is frowned upon. It was your fault in your relationship too. You were insecure, you were an overburdening piece of asshole and you know what, I am sorry for all the harm I caused by my toxic instincts.

Wow. This went into a therapy session, didn’t it? But you know what? I am really at peace with who I was and who I am now. So I do not feel insecure hanging my dirty laundry in public.

This blog today is a result of what happened yesterday. I always stop at pedestrian stop lights, even if others cross. (I silently judge them, working on not being that way).Yesterday, I crossed the light when it was green but it turned yellow mid way and I thought to myself “Oh no, what will people think of me?” And then I thought to myself:

1. Why would people think of you? Who do you think you are?

2. Why do you care what others think? You crossed the light correctly. You know you were right.

And that’s when it hit me (not a bus, a thought). We live in a society where we value the opinions of people who do not even matter. We want to impress people who are irrelevant. We want to prove our lives are better than millions of others. But in reality, the only person who matters is YOU.

You know, in the last 3 years since I ran the 2:35 marathon at Lausanne, a lot of people started approaching me again. Not on social media because I was once burnt there. But still, people began to befriend me because I can run decently well. And in the last year, when I didn’t run, I stopped mattering to them. When I finished the race, those people didn’t even give a fuck because I ran 34:48 but before, I used to run in the low 32s. I keep telling myself they think they are better than me, maybe they do or maybe they don’t. But if I think they do, I will carry their supposed arrogance as a chip on my shoulder and only make myself miserable.

But does it really matter how fast I run? You know this 34:48 meant a lot more to me than my 32:07 from Payerne in 2020. Because I overcame an injury, I overcame pain and the best part about it, I overcame my identity disorder. For years, I defined myself as a runner who did other things too. Now I am a cool guy, who plays the guitar, who can cook pretty well, is emotionally stable, is able to distance himself from other’s problems, knows how to say no, is working on being less judgemental and happens to run decently.

David Goggins has this thing about dying and going to God, and God having a list of things you should have accomplished but you failed to do so. That’s Goggins’ biggest fear and his goal in life is over-accomplish and impress God. I can respect that but I do not 100% agree to that.

Life is not a bunch of accomplishments, it is not how much money you have in your bank account or how fast you can run a marathon. When I die and I face God, I want him to answer me one simple thing “Did I become a better person over the course of my life?”

Did I treat people better at 32 than when I was 24? Did I take the lessons of discipline and hardwork from running and apply them to my job and in keeping my house clean? Or did I shirk all responsibilities and run, just so that I could prove to myself or to the real people/social media around me that I live a great life? Making a bunch of money doesn’t make you a better person.Billionaires are often monsters. You can run a 2:10 marathon and still be an asshole.

That is why I am disillusioned by this pervasive running culture we have these days. People patting each other on the back for a running a certain pace and share that on social media, building a following of people, much like a cult or a religion. I believe in the concept of God but not in religion. Because I believe God doesn’t give a shit about your religion. God cares if you are a good person. And trust me, God doesn’t care about your marathon time.

Instead of trying to be a better runner, try to be a better person. The runner aspect will follow or maybe it won’t. But it is rhetorical because running doesn’t matter. Being a good person does.

Thank you for reading, this was really cathartic.