I used to be someone who avoided running altogether. My fitness world was built inside the gym, grounded firmly in the strict regimen and discipline of weight training. Running, to me, was a painful task, where even a meager two kilometers felt like an huge wall requiring every ounce of effort I could muster. The shift happened during a period when I was staying away from home, with lazy weekends stretching out ahead of me. One such weekend, I stumbled upon a short video of a bodybuilder running a marathon. This shattered my long-held assumption that heavy lifting and endurance running were mutually exclusive. Inspired, I decided to test the waters, starting small with three-kilometer weekend jogs. A couple of months later, I stepped it up to five. Then came the turning point: a deliberate choice to tackle ten kilometers. I crossed that first 10K finish line in 1 hour and 20 minutes. This felt like a great achievement to me and it was then that I decided that there was no looking back. Ten kilometers became my weekend standard. Within eight months of relentless consistency, I had brought my time down to under an hour. Fueled by that momentum, I pushed further, successfully completing a few half marathons. As on date, I finish a 10 Km run in around 56 minutes. and a half marathon in around 2 hrs 12 minutes. A massive catalyst in this evolution has been the VALLEY RUN — events that provided the exact spark and structure I needed to test my limits, rewarded all the more by the awesome medals that stand as testament to the journey. VALLEY RUN has undeniably been the prime factor of my marathon journey. The road doesn’t end here, and I am eagerly looking forward to the day I zoom past the finish line of a full marathon.
