Running, let alone doing it for a cause, can be something of a mental block for general public. But Hyderabadi Sandeep Raj has been running for the past six years to prove that anyone can be a runner.
Recently, the 34-year-old completed a 260-km run from Jaipur to Delhi in 66 hours straight, running nonstop over three days. The run was a part of the Pinkathon runs held across the country to raise awareness for women’s issues. The idea came to the four — all Pinkathon ambassadors — when they wanted to take the runs to the next level.
Sandeep, who works in real estate, explains, “Since we’ve already done city-to-city runs, we thought why not make it more challenging — let’s do it non-stop. This is something no one has really attempted, in India at least.”
The run was flagged off from Albert Hall in Jaipur at 5.30 am on August 31, with the four being accompanied for a short distance by a group of runners from Jaipur and a police escort.
“The road conditions were very bad, since these highways are mainly frequented by heavy trucks. We were running on the corner of the roads, on the gravel and even through puddles,” Sandeep says, adding that they also faced incessant humidity and even rain en route.
After three days of running — in which the runners slept for four hours in all, in breaks, along with water, fruit and refreshment breaks every five kilometres — Sandeep and his fellow runners ended the run at India Gate at 10.30 pm, in New Delhi.
Sandeep, whose first official run was a half-marathon at the Hyderabad marathon in 2012, says that he trained himself according to the conditions expected. “For me, the idea was to replicate the conditions of the run: How it would be to run at 11 in the morning or at 2 in the night, or even in the afternoon. I also had to get myself used to running immediately after dinner and other meals,” he says.
And while he has no other marathons in sight for the next few months, Sandeep does add that he may be planning a run from Hyderabad to Vijayawada in December. He says, “There’s this clichéd thinking that something like this can’t be done by regular people, but that was the point of this run — to show that it can be done. You can push yourself to the limit.”
