The Bermuda Triangle, as many of you will be aware, is one
of the most fascinating unsolved mysteries in the world.
A fairly large patch of the North
Atlantic Ocean, this region has earned notoriety in popular
culture as a sort of magnet for aircraft and ships headed for a less-than-ideal
fate. Explanations ranging from alien spacecraft to lost continents to
wormholes to freak geo-magnetic anomalies have been proffered on various
occasions. It makes for very captivating entertainment tropes.
However, the most sensible explanation seems to be, simply a
matter of statistics. The area is just a very, very busy place, with a large number of shipping lanes and air
routes passing through it, and misfortunes within it are bound to happen every
once in a while.
Shit happens... what can you do?
When put that way, the whole thing just becomes, well... ordinary. The glamour of the unsolved
mystery vanishes with its solution.
After much contemplation of my inability to finish the
Mumbai Marathon this past Sunday, I am thinking that I have been, to coin a
phrase, ‘Bermuda-Triangled’.
Here’s what happened.
Since August 2015, I have been fortunate to have had a series
of satisfying races... two good half-marathons at Hyderabad,
one at Goa, another two at Delhi and a great marathon
at Dubai.
In spite of a few minor molehill-sized bumps in the training
progression (which I never fail to make mountains of) I have had little to
whine about in the scheme of things.
The more things went well, the more the chances of things not going well crept up through the
ranks, from possibility to probability to certainty. Buoyed up by a good-ish
ADHM in November and blissfully ignorant of odds stacking up against me, I
continued through some fairly haphazard and inconsistent training as race day
approached.
In all honesty, I don’t recall what possessed me to even
register for this one in the first place. With Boston looming in April, a January marathon
leaves no window for a proper cycle of recovery, build-up, training and
taper...
But register I did, and that figuratively placed the RMS
Titanic at Southampton, on course for a jolly rendezvous
with a certain innocent-looking iceberg.
I landed up in Mumbai with the usual concerns... training,
nutrition, conditions, the Trump presidency, real estate prices, the depletion
of the ozone layer... all credible excuses for a bad race were rehearsed to
perfection.
But there are no
excuses that can cater for what seemed to be a ton of wet bricks to the head,
three-fourths of the way into the race.
Pain and fatigue aren’t strangers to distance runners.
Running with and through them... that’s what we do...
This time, however, I couldn’t even take fifteen minutes of
it.
I started conservatively, took my gels, stayed hydrated...
did pretty much everything right. In spite of being spot on target pace for a
3:10 finish until just before the thirtieth kilometer, I sank without a
struggle by the thirty-third. In that short duration, not once did it occur to me to man the fuck up and dig in.
Off came the bib. I thumbed a scooter ride from a good
Samaritan and reached the finish in a fantastic time of 2:58.
It took many beers at multiple locations around the city
over the course of the rest of the day to stop agonizing over the whys and the
wherefores.
Much can be said after a DNF...
From a dismissive “Some days
you just don’t feel it” to a long tirade of real and imagined reasons. The
truth will lie somewhere between the extremes. To find it will, much like in
the case of the Bermuda Triangle, remove the charm of the unsolved mystery.
Sometimes it’s more fun not knowing.
All said, the experience taught me some profound technical, spiritual
and moral lessons...
Haha. Just kidding. No it didn’t. I already know everything.
