The runner’s wife
I still remember that morning, almost a year ago, when the husband came up to me and asked “Darling, have you checked your mail?”. It’s not often that he sends me a mail, so I was wondering what that could be.
When I checked sometime later, it was a link to a website called 4Deserts and him telling me, we must do one of their trails together. I checked the link and what this was all about. These are ultramarathons which involve running 250 odd kilometers over 7 days in the harshest conditions, carrying your entire supplies for the week on your back. These are not your ordinary runs. They require intensive training over months, complicated equipment and nutritional supplementation which is not exactly easy to procure in India. So, having gathered this from my brief surfing of the website, I said, “may be sometime”. Given that our son was barely over a year old then, and no one else at home, other than the three of us, it wasn’t practically possible to think of plunging into this together.
Like any busy, always-stressed mother of a one year old, I promptly forgot about it. By then, S had made up his mind to do the Atacama Crossing in March 2011. The madness of undertaking this project slowly grew on him over the days. And then he started training.
Sumanth has been into running for over 2-3 years now. So, while he was already running over an hour a day almost everyday, training for this was a different ball game altogether. He had to complete 2 hours of running plus exercises and reach home by 7.30 am, so he could get ready for office and leave home before 9 am. For this he would lay out all his running gear, water supplies, nutritional supplements etc in the other room, the previous night itself and wake up at unearthly hour of 3.30 in the morning, so he could leave home by 4.30 am and get done by 7.30 am. To keep up with this schedule, he obviously had to be sleeping or at least in bed by 8.30 - 9 pm. Try waking up at 3.30 am, doing this strenuous training, put in a full day at work, and you’ll know what I mean. You’ll be sleeping off while watching TV on the couch by the time it is 8.
All our activities of meeting friends, having people home have revolved around his schedules. He had supposedly one rest day, and that was not a true at-home day. It involved going to the gym and getting the whole body stretched out in preparation for the running of the week ahead.
Getting hold of the supplements and equipment, gear, shoes etc is another story altogether. None of them are available in India and anything we got shipped here got levied with exorbitant import duties. S’s brother in the US and good samaritans from Twitter came to our rescue in helping us source and get the stuff back to India on their travels to other countries.
I must say, hat’s off to him for sticking by his training schedules. Never failing to wake up at 3.30 am, no matter what. In this last one year, I can probably count the days he has defaulted on training, using fingers of one hand. I remember the time he was down with high fever (suspected Dengue, Malaria and what not) and his main complaint was loss of one week of training.
In the last one year, I have seen the running-clothes in his wardrobe multiply like rabbits nearly take over his entire wardrobe. Ditto for the running shoes.
I realise I have not been entirely supportive of his rigourous schedule or his crazy hours of trainings. The alarm going off at 3.15 am, our son waking up at that unearthly hour due to dad waking up, our entire life revolving around his weekly running schedules, all those missed moments of togetherness doing simple stuff like having a cup of tea together in the morning or staying late watching a movie on the telly, it is almost like I have loaned my husband to someone else in this whole period. And which wife likes to do that? Our son literally glues his ears to the door at around 8 am every morning, knowing that the key will turn and dad will let himself inside. He goes running to the door at the slightest clicking sound so he can take the bottle and some paraphernalia from his daddy’s hands and let him inside the house. I can’t even write about this without my eyes tearing up.
Meeting a whole bunch of people from the Hyderabad Runners’ Club at the Bangalore Ultra in November,2010 was a great thing for Sumanth as he got tons of encouragement from the nice people in the group. He also managed to find some people to run with on some days of the month, a good respite from the totally solitary running he was doing all along.
After the 50 odd km at the Bangalore Ultra, it was the Mumbai Stanchart Marathon where S did the full 42 km and the same night we left for HongKong for a small vacation cum stocking-up-for-race trip. I did feel bad about the fact that he didn’t even get time to rest his weary muscles before leaving for the journey.
February was the month of further intensified training where he started training with the newly acquired actual ultra-marathon gear from HK. This meant filling up the backpack with heavy weights (up to 10 kg) and walking a good 20-25 km with that lugged on the back. It wasn’t an entirely new experience for him as he had already started training with his regular haversack filled with medicine-balls coming to 9 kg since end of last year. I for one, cannot even lug this bag from the main door to the guest bedroom, which has kind of become a running-supplies room since the last few months.
The last one week has been stressful and tumultuous for me, as far as emotions are concerned. Due to last minute visa issues, S had to change routes, ticketing and travel dates, necessitating him to leave 2 days before the scheduled date of departure, thereby cutting down on valuable family time before the big race. I have cried quite a lot these past few days, vented on twitter. Many people ask me, “Why? It is a great thing, something to be proud of”.
I ask myself, why do I cry over this. It is surely not about him going away for over two weeks. He has done a lot of travel on his earlier job where I have stayed all alone for well over two weeks in more delicate phases of my life. Is it because he is going to go through this enormous amount of physical and mental strain over a week? It is something he has chosen, knowing fully well the stress and strain involved, and I know for sure he has trained most methodically and trained well at at, for this big event. As regards the risk involved in this race, they are equipped with some of the best equipment, medical teams and technology all along the race. So it is surely less risky than driving a car on the roads of Hyderabad. Is it the fear of handling my toddler all my myself for two full weeks? Thankfully not, as my parents are being kind enough to come over from Bombay in a couple of days and stay with me until Sumanth is back. Also, the event website has live updates, photos and videos from the trail itself. Needless to say, I will be glued to that for those seven days.
Then why cry? Why do I feel that little hollow spot in my heart every time I think of this? I don’t know. Sumanth asked me yesterday as to why I am not more positive about this. I don’t know. I want to be. This whole thing is just turning out to be tougher on me that it should have been. He has left early this morning to BLR for a transit visa for the new route to Chile, waking me up ten minutes before he was scheduled to leave the house. Early morning is really not a time I get too emotional or hysterical. So it is all good. I said goodbye with a hug and a kiss and clicking a photo of him leaving to pursue his dreams big time, quickly saying a little prayer to the good forces to be alongside my husband to be with him and guard him.
I’m truly sorry darling, I wasn’t anymore supportive than I was, but I know you will rock the show.
When the Atacama Crossing ends on March 12, 2011 - my husband will be the first Indian guy to complete this race and I will be proud.
Links
My blog to track Sumanth’s Atacama Crossing updated daily for one week of the race
Sumanth’s blog and here are his words that will keep me going when he is running the Atacama
Atacama Crossing, 2011 - Itinerary
For those who want to check live updates from the Atacama Crossing - it is available here.
