Running 600 km for a cuase to adopt healthy lifestyle for women

With the temperature steadily rising, it’s quite natural to stay indoors surrounded by blissful air conditioning. And that’s precisely why Giridhar Kamath and Spoorthi Seethamma Muruvanda’s run from Bengaluru to Hyderabad, covering 600 km, is hard to digest.

“Whenever people see the two of us running down the street with a support vehicle tailing us, their initial reaction always is: ‘Why don’t you get in the vehicle instead?’” laughs 28-year-old Spoorthi.

Running 60 km every day, the two have been attracting a lot of attention. But considering the cause they support, any spark of interest is welcome. “The motto of our run is to create awareness about the need to adopt a healthy lifestyle by the women,” says 45-year-old Giridhar, a Bengaluru-based toy manufacturer who took up running in 2011.

“Blinded by their love to take care of the family, women always end of neglecting their health. And if they want to protect their families they need to first be strong themselves,” says Giridhar, who ran from Bengaluru to Chennai (350 km) to promote the same cause last year.

The duo’s social media page, Giri & Spoorthi’s Great GulabiGola, is flooded with posts chronicling their run from Bengaluru which was flagged off by the “Ironman”, Milind Soman, on February 23.

“Gulabi is ‘pink’ in Hindi and ‘Gola’ stands for ‘noise’ in Telugu. So this ‘pink noise’ is aimed at every woman that we come across during the run,” says Bengaluru-based working professional Spoorthi.

En route to Hyderabad, the two reached Penukonda, a village in Anantapur district, on Thursday afternoon.

“We start our day at 4 am and run 20-25 km at a stretch. But we make sure we stay hydrated and take water breaks after every two km and consume fruits high in citric acid such as an oranges,” says Spoorthi.

While Giridhar is a seasoned runner, this is Spoorthi’s second long-distance run. “I took up running in 2014 because I was obese,” says Spoorthi.

Having realised the benefits, she has been running regularly ever since. “We hope to reach Hyderabad by March 3 or 4. With a major running event being hosted in the city on March 6, we had no option but to undertake this run around this time. To be honest, it’s quite a lot of fun and rather than taking any severe precautions we are enjoying ourselves.”