After a
pathetic day of moping and limping around by evening yesterday I made up my
mind that running has to resume. I was able to localize the problem to groin
area. It was painful when movements involved stretching sideways or a longer
stride length. Started at 4:23 AM. What is normally a slow shuffle of a warm up
for me till the strip tease point extended much beyond and it had its
consequences for my stock with a young fan of mine. You cannot blame me for
that, even when a longer stride was attempted to avoid a pebble or a break in
the road, sharp pain resulted.
Imagine
my ill luck when the entire stretch from Sangeeta hotel to the Uttamar Gandhi
salai-Haddows road intersection was being relaid. The warm tar and loose gravel-tar
mix gave my soles a firewalking experience. When I was slowly shuffling with my
soles having gathered a fair share of the hot tar-gravel mix, I was stopped by
a young boy dressed only in shorts, bright and smiling. He was with the
construction labourers and he asked me ‘Naina (for father figure in Telugu!),
why are you so slow today’, as if his stock with his group has been brought
down by me. Seeing confusion on my face, By way of introduction he mentioned
that he sees me every day and I was too slow today. I took the opportunity to
take a break and scrape off the gravel mix sticking to my sole and he got my
message. He triumphantly explained to his senior friend that I am usually quite
fast. I took leave of him and pressed on the throttle as soon as I crossed the hot
zone. In all this confusion and ‘fan se charcha’, my left leg forgot the niggle
and started behaving well.
My
meditation zone (the equivalent of the KM 11-13 of the Hubli route!) on my
current route is from just beyond the Gemini circle till the TTK flyover.
Today’s bee in the bonnet was the irony of a nation considered the diabetic
capital of the world (I can independently vouch for this as the most common
ailment discussed with me while on the run is also Diabetes!) subsidizing ‘Sugar’
considered white poison. The whopping figure of 6000 Cr was being bandied
around. Next we would be subsidizing beedis to support the tobacco farmers!
Even subsidizing jaggery would be a smaller evil, and would go to help small
farmers instead of the Sugar barons, ‘Jaago Graahak Jaago’!
My
thoughts were also with the Army dogs who I was shocked to learn the previous
day are being put to sleep after their active service. I thought the man’s best
friend deserved a more humane pay back after it spends the entire life serving
us and spreading happiness. Felt good to sign a petition today (change.org) online
for putting an end to this barbaric practice. I request all my friends to sign
the petition and help Biscuit’s friends!
Today I
had the company of Kakinada Express during the run. For a change I took the
Sivananda saalai and regretted it very soon as it became another torture
session for my soles. Better sense prevailed in the second loop and we
traversed the RBI route instead. It was a 3:10, 32K for the Hubli Passenger
today. Mercifully, the leg seems good after the run!
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