Running with Pigs
I am fortunate to be able to run in 2 cities regularly….mostly Gurgaon and sometimes in the tropics (lets call it the Island) where my family stays.
I would have imagined faster runs on the Island given the early morning breeze and a lovely mix of flat city scape, sea side tracks, beaches and undulating hills (which is where you turn back so as not to lower your split average!)
But my runs in Gurgaon are faster. I start by scaring a family of pigs and they run ahead of me and I run faster to keep up. Keeping up with the pigs is my thing, given the city has so many of us.
Then it a brood of feral dogs. They snarl, they chase and I run fast thinking pleasant thoughts about Maneka Gandhi and culling. The next mile ( yup I track in miles…too lazy to change the setting on my fitness tracker) I get a wiff of that Gurgaon cream…..cow dung. I think the sweet smell gives me a bit of a high and it makes me run faster. I think we can convince the govt to legalise a pot of this stuff.
All of this is helping my split timing. I guess on the Island I soak it all in, the sea view, the tree lined avenues, the green hills, slow down to greet fellow runners and cyclists or acknowledge their greetings. The island lulls me and makes me slower.
Then it’s the smell of a rotting carcass and that I need to get away from…dead straight. Does wonders for my split timing since these average around 2.5 carcasses for every 5 miles. And then there is stench of garbage. Garbagegram garbage like the city has that ‘melting-pot’ stench, the smell of various cultures, ethnicities, cities, industries and even countries. After feral dogs this one helps in my split timings since these ‘stench-zones’ are present at every mile.
The other other benefit of a Gurgaon run is that even the city terrain helps one train for a cross country marathon. Enough dug out sections, rubble, obstacles, mounds, water troughs etc gives one quite a tough course to navigate. Good excuse to get myself a pair of trail running shoes I think.
One keeps running without the need to slow down to greet a fellow runner. For one there seem to be very few runners any more. Most have graduated to wearing colourful lycra and cycles (they call themselves MAMILS….middle aged men in lycra). If you greet them they look at you with suspicion and I guess they don’t want you slowing them down from the 10 kmph they are sweating it out to achieve.
The dust and grime also gets me running faster I guess. For one it makes me really thirsty and I have created an efficient process to buy water on long runs (how much can one carry). I have identified road side stalls along the way that are open early and literally throw money at them and pick up a bottle and in my own small way contribute to the real offline commerce by paying extra since I don’t have change. No discounts or cash backs here..
The issue is disposing off these empty bottles since garbage cans are few and far between and I don’t want to contribute to the stench-zones mentioned above. The more genteel parts of Gurgaon like DLF -IV have a few empty bins (either MCG does a stellar job or no one uses them), so I make sure this is part of my route on the return and I run faster to dispose off the bottles.
So yeah its Go Gurgaon for now. May the rot continue. Tempted to do a cliched piece on running and entrepreneurship now but breakfast with some bacon and hog….oops hops awaits.
