Exploring Life One Step at a Time 😉
From hiding behind a tree in a school running test to running an ultra marathon on my birthday!
It’s been a long time since I wrote something on a public platform, but this feels like the right thing to share. Fair warning: this is going to be a long one. It has personal stories, general observations and a few experiments from my last few years. If you want something quick and easy, this probably isn’t for you. You can also split it up and read it in parts.
There is no TLDR, summary or conclusion here. It’s open ended. How you read it and what you take from it is up to you, and honestly that’s the best part.
The first step
It all started in 2020, on a normal day when I was wondering about life. I had just joined college and there was so much confusion about what to do next. When you look at seniors, it feels like they’re all following some roadmap and you’re supposed to follow it next: good grades, then a job with the highest “package”. I still laugh at that word. Who decided to describe a human being’s worth like a parcel?
Anyway, the thing stressing me out the most was my health. Low energy, low motivation, low effort, and I kept chasing shortcuts to avoid pain. It wasn’t that my body couldn’t do physical things. Mentally I was broken. My body might have pushed through, but my brain quit before I even started.
So I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t live like this anymore, and I started fixing small things one by one. There are other areas of my life that grew beyond health, but they’ll need more time to recollect and write about. For this article, let’s stay with health.
I picked health first because I felt it could have a multiplier effect on everything else, and I’m glad I made that bet. Everything in my life today traces back to that decision. Many studies show that when you take your health seriously, you don’t just improve your body, you improve your thinking too. I wanted to see that in action.
At that time I weighed about 85 kg (187 lbs), mostly fat, with very little muscle and poor mobility. So what could I do? I watched countless motivational videos, studies and podcasts. Some suggested strength training, some HIIT, some swimming or sports. But as a college student, I didn’t want to spend on gear and subscriptions, and I definitely didn’t want to ask my parents for money for my personal interests.
That left walking and running. Running honestly scared me. I never thought of it as exercise. Who suffers for hours on purpose? In my head, people ran only in emergencies, like chasing a thief or escaping a dog. I couldn’t run more than 200 meters before needing a 30 minute break. In school, during the physical education practical exam, I hid behind a tree after 100 meters so the teacher couldn’t see me, then joined the other students on their last lap. What a creative way to cheat a fitness test.
Still, running cost close to nothing, so I tried. My first run was in August 2020, and I still remember the date. There were no tracking apps that I knew of back then. I ran for a few minutes, covered about 200 meters and gave up. Maybe the body couldn’t take it, or maybe it was the brain. Then I walked for 30 minutes, got home in pain, and promised myself I’d never do it again. It felt too tough, boring, and it left me with even less energy for the whole day. The only upside was being extra hungry, and the first bite of food felt like heaven.
The flow state
For the next few weeks I avoided running. My shoes were casual sneakers (yes, my first run was in sneakers). When I looked into proper running shoes, I learned I have flat feet with overpronation, so I needed stability shoes. The best option then was the Asics Kayano 29, selling around 15k. My pocket said no, and I had a rule: never take money from parents for my own wants. So I parked that dream and bought a cheap, basic pair of Pumas. Nothing fancy, but comfortable enough to continue.
Since running even 200 meters was a struggle at that weight, I built my base by walking. 2 to 3 km at first, then 5 km, for about six months. That’s when I noticed the weight dropping and felt much better than my old self. It was the first real evidence that kept me going.
Around February or March 2021, I went back to running, and for the first time I ran 2 km without stopping. It felt surreal. I made myself two rules: no cheating by stopping in between, and nose breathing as much as possible (mouth breathing only when I really needed extra speed).
The pandemic lockdown helped more than I expected. College was off, so I trained twice a day around my other work and started to genuinely enjoy it. Every run taught me something, and I applied those lessons to my studies and everything else. That was more evidence, and not just physical.
I did back to back internships till my graduation in 2023 to gain as much real world experience as I could. In 2022, I bought my first pair of Kayano 29 from my stipend. Best feeling ever. I still keep that pair for motivation.
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From 2021 to 2023, I spent very little money on running but a lot of consistency. I ran alone in the dark of the park near my home, sometimes with some light, sometimes none, with bats around, in rain, on good days and bad days. All of it built resistance in my brain. There was no pace, no recovery plan, no diet plan, no running friends. It was just me, the sound of my footsteps, and an honest, quiet connection with God. I never cheated on any run. I just ran and learned along the way.
There is no finish line
After graduation, things went downhill. I wasn’t getting good offers. My college wasn’t strong enough to open doors on its own, even with plenty of internships and real work behind me. So I used the same tenacity I’d built on the track. I sent 50 to 60 off campus applications, cold DMs and emails every day, and even built some automations to handle part of it so I could focus on other things. Hardly anything came back.
Then I reached out to someone working in the same space who had a similar profile and had even worked with me before. He suggested I apply at his company. I did, cleared the initial interviews, and then got ghosted for months. After two more months of chasing, I finally got a schedule for the final round, did well in the remaining interviews and got the job. I’m still grateful to work with great minds and to keep learning and contributing. Over the years it also gave me more freedom to make my own financial decisions.
In August 2025, my cousin introduced me to a sports complex. Funnily, it was right opposite the park where I had trained for the last five years, and I had never explored it because I was too focused on my own thing. After that I played every sport you can think of: table tennis (3 to 4 hours straight every weekend at peak time), squash, badminton, lawn tennis and swimming. I made athlete friends who kept inspiring me and made those moments enjoyable. Thank you all. During this phase I barely ran, maybe 4 or 5 times.
By late September or October 2025, I was back on track, and it felt great. The pain in my strides was gone. I bought my Garmin, my first big investment after the shoes, and built a proper shoe rotation. I buy new pairs regularly now for different runs: tempo, long, easy, whatever the type, I have a shoe for it.
On those sports complex runs I noticed a few people who were also very consistent, and I met Sahil bhaiya 🐐. Hearing his running experience was so insightful. He casually talked about 20 and 30 km runs, while I was proud of my daily 5 to 7 km. In my head I had a limit I thought I couldn’t cross. Meeting him started to change that. Over the next months I moved my daily average from 5k to 7k to 10k. From barely recovering from those runs, I now run 10k almost every day. I read and listened a lot about endurance training, and Sahil bhaiya’s experience helped too. My diet plan got better over the years, though I made plenty of mistakes, like ignoring protein, electrolytes and carbs.
I also did my first few half marathons at the same complex, and that unlocked something in my brain, because that distance felt like way too much for me once.
My core framework hasn’t changed: be consistent, do one thing at a time, and give your best in that moment. I’m not buying the “30 day challenge” idea. We need a full circle, a whole year of resistance against whatever comes at you: heat, humidity, rain, winter and Delhi’s special pollution. This year my plan was simple. 10k almost every day. On days I didn’t feel good, I didn’t skip fully. I reduced the distance or just walked. The point is to do some physical work and show up.
The ultra
Every step forward is evidence the false story in your mind isn’t true. FORWARD!!! FORWARD!!! FORWARD!!!
~ Mark Dowdle.
Every birthday is special, but I like to keep things easy on mine. Think of software. When you do a major release, you introduce breaking changes. Old features get deprecated and something new takes their place. Life works the same way. Doing the same stuff on every birthday isn’t fair to ourselves. We’re meant to break things so something new can be born. Change is inevitable, so why fear it? We should embrace it and live fully in the moment.
So this year I decided to run an ultra marathon. (While typing “ultra”, my keyboard suggested “ultra sound”, which says a lot about how many people end up knowing hospitals better than stadiums.) I never imagined doing this much in one go. So I focused only on what I could control: my footsteps, my heart rate zones, my diet, some good long runs in between and, most importantly, my mood. I did that for the whole month.
On the day, I kept everything free. The forecast showed rain for only two days that month, and the 29th to 30th stayed stable. The AQI was good too. I had a proper breakfast and carried electrolytes, gels and bananas. After 10 minutes of warm up stretches, I started around 1:55 pm. The weather was great, the place was completely empty, and the track was brand new. The complex had finished building it just before my birthday, which felt like another signal from God.
Then came hours and hours of running in a fully released state. Every step moved me freely. It was one of the best feelings of my life, alone, with so many experiences I can’t explain here. After 25k, Sahil bhaiya came, and it meant a lot to have him cheering me on. Daksh and Manmeet bhaiya joined me and kept me going too. Thank you all. Thanks also to Sankalp, Nishek, Yash, Kabir and everyone who cheered me on through the live WhatsApp updates. It was a once in a lifetime experience, and I’m still processing it.
I believe most limits are in our mind. We just need discipline, consistency, and focus on what we can control instead of the unknowns. Do that first, and the rest tends to sort itself out. This run is my evidence.
Life is tough for everyone. Whenever you can, take a moment to cheer someone on. Don’t fear rejection or ask yourself “why should I?” There is always someone waiting for that one push to unlock themselves. And on the days you feel low, clueless or directionless, push anyway. That day’s effort is only the last 1%. The other 99% is the work you’ve already put in. And when you turn back and look, it always adds up to 100% 🖤
