A fitness coach, a doctor and an athlete, 32-year-old Swetha Devraj don many hats. Hailing from Mysuru, Swetha is a Bengaluru-based vascular radiologist working at a prominent hospital in the city. As an avid marathon runner, Swetha took part at the San Francisco beach marathon in April this year, where she covered 21 kilometres in one hour 42 minutes.
“The San Francisco marathon goes down as a special one in the books. Why? Because I shaved off four mins from my previous half marathon time and clocked in 1:42:20 with ease While I was on a vacation that time, I would say that running a race during vacation is probably the best and worst thing. Best, because your still try to be in the best shape as you have a race coming, and worst, because you are on vacation mode and you don’t really want wake up too early to run sometimes.”
Juggling between two professions of being an athlete and a doctor, Swetha is of the belief that one should pursue their passions, no matter what difficulties come their way. Speaking about her tryst with sports and fitness, she says, “As a child, I was always into sports, but tennis was something which continued to stay with me. At 21, I started playing for numerous tournaments in the country and even in the US. That was also the time when I started running and cross fit training.”
Back in 2012, when she moved to Bengaluru for work, she took up the challenge of running from Mysore to Coorg, covering 120 km in two days, to help promote mixed martial arts in India. For Swehta, fitness is not restricted to physical fitness alone. “For me it’s about being physically and mentally fit. Fitness should not be something that you want to get out of your way. It should be something that you look forward to every day. We should enjoy whatever form of fitness we adopt, then be it weight training, yoga, running,” she explains.
But as someone who stays by herself, managing two things at a time can be a tad bit difficult. “My day starts at 4 am. If I don’t have the time to do my workout in the morning, I make sure that I go in the evening, after hospital hours. In my 10 to 4 shift at the hospital, I have patients back to back. Sometimes I don’t even get a lunch break,” she says and adds that her fitness background is the only reason she is able to live a life like this.
Her love and passion for fitness doesn’t end at the hospital as she has clients who desperately wait for her to give fitness training online. “I have around five clients to whom I give fitness training online. It is pretty much baby sitting them because I have monitor them for their workout and diet. They update me all day. Even when I’m at the hospital, I have to keep responding to their messages of workouts,” she says.
But nothing comes between Swetha and her love for water bodies, which makes her take a break from the hustle bustle of the city once in every three months. “I’m a beach person so usually, I try to go places where there’s water. In India, it’s usually Goa, and if I want to go farther, I visit Thailand quite often because I’ve lived there previously as well. I make sure that I give such breaks to myself, to re-energise and come back with a fresh mind.”
Ask her about how she plans to carry forward her endeavours and she says, “I want to reach out to people who think that they cannot afford working out and weight training at the gym. My goal is to make my programmes more accessible to people online. I’m planning to have a website in future. Along with physical training, these programmes would also include what kind of diet people should follow for a price of course.”
