Spiels of a Quill

Related posts: Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon Part 2:  You don't realize your strengths until you face your greatest weaknesses Part 3: Tick-tock, tick-tock... The count down to the race day begins Part 4:  The ups and downs on race day - literally and figuratively I think it wouldn't be a fair narrative if all I do is talk about the negative elements. So to give you a glimpse of the brighter side of things, let me start with introducing you to the two Team Asha SF running coordinators - Jennifer and Kristina. Throughout the season, I was lucky to have these two amazing people in the running group who would motivate me to not be disappointed at my failures. They would slow down to my pace to keep me company, talking to me the whole time - encouraging me to not lose hope, telling me about how everyone started out as beginners before becoming seasonal runners. While I was thankful for the company and the encouragement I re...

Related posts: Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon Part 2:  You don't realize your strengths until you face your greatest weaknesses Part 3: Tick-tock, tick-tock... The count down to the race day begins I had prepared a Marathon playlist with all the peppy workout songs I could find, and I had gotten accustomed to listening to those during my practice runs. I plugged in my ear-phones and started the playlist, and tried to focus more on the song than on everything that had gone wrong up until that point. It kind of worked like a charm, and before I knew it I had covered about 3 miles of my race, and I had crossed at least two dozen people by then. I felt happy and pumped up about that, and made me more enthusiastic about moving forward. Pretty soon, the hilly terrains started and my muscles started tiring out a bit. But we also had water and electrolyte stops to re-energize our body. It also meant that pretty soon, I was about t...

Related posts: Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon Part 2:  You don't realize your strengths until you face your greatest weaknesses (It has been a while since I wrote the last part, but I am taking my story forward...) As race day got closer, I started panicking. I was so close to chickening out, but my perception changed when someone told me, "Even if you are the last person to cross the finishing line, you are still better than the thousands of people who didn't even muster the courage to sign up and show up for the race!". I think that during the last few weeks before the race, I was mostly focussed on two things: 1) Seeking donations to support my fundraiser 2) Reading motivational blogs to find anything that can fuel my courage I always believed that fundraising might be the easier out of the two tasks because that is what everyone around me kept saying, but it wasn't that easy. I reached out to th...

Related posts: Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon A couple of people that I talked to about what happened at the first run humorously laughed at me and brushed it aside saying "You have been idle for too long in life that you can't even do something as simple as this. Look at people around you; if they can do it so effortlessly, so can you. It is not a big deal. Stop whining and train harder- build up your stamina, and your lung capacity." It broke me from within to hear that- probably because I am conditioned to take negative criticism to heart , but I convinced myself that it might indeed be due to the lack of strenuous physical activities in the recent years. Maybe if I push myself harder I can get better, I told myself.   Two days later as I was getting ready for my second run with Team Asha, I found myself taking mental notes for a To-Do list: take deep breaths, inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth,...

Today, I want to start telling you the story of my first ever half marathon. I know it is a cliche to do so, but please allow me to start with a quote: "  If it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you. " I never realized how true this quote by Fred DeVito is, till I signed up for the Biofreeze San Francisco  Half Marathon 2019 as part of Team Asha to raise funds for Asha for Education which is an NGO that supports the education of underprivileged children back in India. The race is over, but my journey isn't complete yet. However, I think it is important to get the narrative started - if not for anything else, merely to just share my story with anybody who is willing to listen. It was probably a hasty decision in the early days of the summer - one taken under the influence of people who had previously run for Team Asha. I always knew that I wanted to run at some point in life to raise funds for charity, but I wasn't mentally prepared to do it this...