The thoughts soon gave way to action.
What got me running? Honestly! I don't know.
It just started one day.
Oh man! I couldn't even last the distance between two consecutive lamp posts on Marine Drive. That's just a distance of approx 33 meters !
My lungs felt as though they were about to burst! My lower body was heavy as lead!
The weight of the bag with the change of clothes for swimming.. I felt like "Apollo holding up the Earth!". I just wanted to fling it into the sea.
My husband, Kartik usually ran upto the NCPA end (distance of 2.15 kms) before hitting the pool and I would walk behind with friends.
Each day, I tried increasing the run distance by one lamp post ahead. This became our standard lamp post run! One at a time! At least one more each day! Every lamp post crossed felt like victory!
After a slow and painful 3 weeks or so, I could finally walk-jog up to Churchgate signal which was 1km from our house. I was still doing only 200 meter runs followed by 100 meter walks.
Soon enough, I decided to surprise my husband, Kartik by walk-jogging up to NCPA.
It was mid Feb 2012 and a day before we were to leave on our family trip to Africa.
As Kartik started his run, our friend Ajay & I joined him. He was surprised to say the least! Here was his wife who "hated" running in her own words, trying to keep pace with him till NCPA.
I was out of breath at NCPA. My lungs went to another world! I couldn't feel my legs either.
But I was elated! I finally did the distance of 2.15 kms in a mix of walking and jogging and with plenty of prodding from both of them.
My mind worked overtime. Maybe once we return from the trip, I should just try and run the whole distance of 2 kms.