The Runner's story

Amidst writing a very hard review paper while carrying a niggling idea that sounds good in my head about selling my bike and giving up biking, I decided to see how good I am at running. And I was pleasantly suprised to find myself knocking 30 minute 3 milers at least twice a week.

See, I always was a runner and I was dashed good at it. Four years ago, I started competing in Washington State and I did fairly well too. My motives for running were not so sound though. I basically wanted to eat good food and drink copious amounts of beer as much as I wanted, and I ran so that I can do all these things. Plus there were cute girls. My training was haphazard, my discipline was malleable and it was more adrelanin that kept me up than anything else. But I managed OK. Until I reached a point where I fell in love with it and it somehow became part of my life. The simplicity of it all appealed to me - put one foot in front of the other as long as you can, as fast as you can.

And then my ankles got shot. I twisted one really badly. Being dumb and all macho like, I refused to let that put me down and went skiing before full recovery and then the other one gave up. This happened continously. I would rest, make it better and try again to run but the ankles just refused to cooperate. I took up other sports. My ankles didnt quite agree to this idea. They said intermittent no's to softball and cricket and a definite resounding no to soccer.

Looking back, this one injury to me signifies the start of a downward trend in life, all culminating in Vancouver, before the yin (or is it the yang?) took over.

And now my ankles have said yes to running.

The familarity of it all - the lightness of the body, the soreness of muscles, the pasta, the craving for sugar - it's all so comforting. I am smarter now, so everything will be looked at with a pessimistic and cautious eye.

Don't meant to scare you, but.

Algorithms prof : I hope you've started studying for your qualifying examinations this summer.

Me : But that's three months away! Are you setting the exam scale to be really hard?


Algorithms prof thinks for a whole two minutes (during which I look at him increasingly astonished) and then,

"I would have started studying if I were you"

Gulp.

Ruminate

There is a little plaster on the ceiling above my desk that has come out. The shape it makes is similar to the outline of Kashmir.

The Kashmir whose outline keeps changing.

From what our high school textbooks used to say to what Google Maps shows us today.

Or the current map of India, for that matter.

And I sit back and reflect on this. On boundary lines in flux.

Blurt of the day, the week etc.

Being so nervous about giving a very biological talk that you mispronounce "organism" as.......


Not once.

Multiple times.

Words that got me brownie points

HG : So, how's the ring doing ? :P

Me: The ring...is a pleasure to wear.

Turn 29

Yes yes. It feels all the same after 27. I still act like a 12 year old, though. Well, perhaps 13.

Maybe more ponderings on age and it's effects next year when the big 3-0 hits.