There is no tri there is only do

Yahan ke hum sikander

What do you call it when someone gives themselves reminders of a goal they set themselves? I don’t mean apps on your phone which do that. Like one I heard of which reminds you to drink water every hour. Something that would have come in handy when I would frequent bars thrice a week in my 20s.

Nor do I mean sharing it with others necessarily, to keep yourself accountable. Like one of those people who posts their workouts daily. Or Jay shah sending a text “papa karado pls” for a job at the ICC.

I remember a classmate in school who had pinned a rank to his desk. His target in the IIT exam. Unlike what mine would have been, his number didn’t look like a wifi password. I’d also seen a relative put up a list of holidays and a car they wanted to get on their fridge.

For me it began with Hal Higdon. The name conjures up some mild mannered accountant from Canada. The kind who says “Have a good one” to you as he steps out of an elevator that you’ve shared for 4 floors. 

I first encountered him over a decade ago when I signed up for my first 10k. I was 24 and It was the TCS 10k in Bangalore. It was a few months into my first job and I only signed up because my friend had as well. Where he was someone who had been an athlete in school and college, I was coming off 5 years of solely training my lungs and liver in law school. I just stumbled on the Hal Higdon plan while looking for a training plan for beginners.

It was a 12 week plan to get you from 0 to 10k. And it’s so simple I remember what the broad structure is to this day

• 3 days for running (1 of these is a long run)

• 2 days for cross training

• 1 day strength and stretch

I broadly stuck to the routine prior to the run. While it was faithful to the schedule of activities, I had aligned it around my packed schedule of using my newfound financial means to test my liver and lungs with an improved budget. My runs would happen late enough in the day to accommodate sleeping at 2.30 am. I was counting my cycle ride to work as my other day of cross training. And my swim on Sunday was planned with a biryani and beer that would follow it for lunch.

This plan had its limits of course. I was not well prepared for the half marathon that I had signed up for 6 months later. My overwhelming feeling as I finished, having climbed 2 hills and 3 flyovers en-route, was anger. Especially at the volunteer who told me the finish line was just around the corner, when I was a kilometre away. I didn’t do any more runs for 6 years.

But in the interim, my fitness regimen was some variation of Higdon’s plan based on what I had access to. If I had access to a pool, I would swim. If the weather permitted, I would cycle. And at least once a week, I would go for a short run. I was able to build up a reasonably respectable stamina despite erratic work hours and a steady relationship with ITC and United Breweries.

What had stayed with me from my training for the runs was a realization that largely these activities did not seem like a chore to me. It was not something that had to be done in a group. My poor hand-eye coordination was not relevant. It gave me an excuse to be outdoors to deal with my incessant cabin fever. 

While I disliked the immediate effort of doing heavy weights in the gym, I didn’t mind prolonged periods of pain and discomfort. A trait that I developed as a long time believer in the Indian constitution.

Also like anything else, the more you did, the easier it got. I would improve much slower when I did not have a target in front of me. I peaked in 2018 when I did 3 half marathons in a year, shaving 20 minutes off my finishing time. But then took a hiatus again. Until I moved to Canada in 2022.

In the 2 years since, I’ve completed 2 half marathons, 2 sprint triathlons and my first olympic triathlon.

Or what I like to call my “Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar” phase. It shares a thread with other Bollywood movies that I have rewatched multiple times because it features Aamir Khan.

The last time I saw it was at a friend’s house in Chandigarh. He’d moved for work and I passed the time while he was at work by watching it on the little TV he had set up in the guest room. 

Unlike most other films from that time, I’d argue that it’s aged well. The dialogues are memorable, the music is great and the sports scenes are compelling. The fact that its shot in the Nilgiris was just icing on the metaphorical Black Forest cake.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s a movie that is centred on a school rivalry between a bougie school called Rajput and a local school called Model. Mamik AKA Lionel Richie of Juhu, is the star athlete of the local school and their only hope to win an annual cycle race. He is injured by the rival team and the rest of the movie is about his wayward brother, Aamir having to train to win the race in his honour.

I’d argue that my approach to races on a scale of Aamir to Mamik, leaned more towards the former. Yes, I was signing up for a half marathon so it wasn’t 0 effort. But I’d skip a couple of runs to sleep in. I’d change nothing about my diet.

At one point my weekly long run preparation was to have beer and biryani the night before and so I’d stick with the same plan the night before the actual run. 

So how’d I get from there to finding myself on the start line of my 3rd triathlon in 12 months? And my first Olympic length one to boot?

Firstly because I had the bike. My 3rd month in Toronto, I bought a red and yellow road bike, which just like the movie, was probably released in 1992. I got it off a guy on Facebook Marketplace. His Facebook album looked like if BSA cycles had a harem. I landed on this one because it cost 80 dollars and looked sleek.

After paying him in cash I decided to cycle back the 15 km. After I got used to being hunched over, working the brakes and shifting gears that were on the frame instead of the handle bar, I was zipping on the cycle lane.

UDTA HI PHIROON

Secondly because of access to lakes you can swim in. I had finally graduated from swimming in just a 25m pool in the few months of the year that the weather allowed it.

“Ontario has 90% of the fresh water in the world” as a chatty furniture store owner told me.

“I see” I said while spinning in one of his chairs. Maybe I would have had more water trivia if I hadn’t been kicked out then.

Chaahe tum kuchh na kaho maine sun liya

The 2 sprint triathlons I did had their swim in Lake Ontario. And at 11 am on a Saturday, I found myself on Wasaga beach, on the shore of Lake Huron, for the start of an Olympic triathlon. It was double the distance that I had done in a sprint. I now had to

• Start with a 1.5 km swim

• Follow up with a 40 km cycle ride

• End with a 10 km run

Between each of these phases, you have to go to a transition area where you change, put on shoes, eat something, drink water etc and your timing is your total time between the start and the finish.

As it was my first olympic triathlon, with no reference for a finishing time, I was starting in the last but one group. Or wave as they call it. The swim has always been my weakest section because of my poor vision necessitating me having to stick my head up every few minutes to see where I’m headed.

The route was a triangle. You had to turn twice at each edge to head back. There were a lot of people around me when I made it to the first turn. By the time I made it to the second turn I didn’t really see anybody around me.

My mind began to wander to what I would have for lunch after the run when I heard a volunteer yell at me to change course as I was swimming in the wrong direction.  The swim section usually features some teenage volunteer on a paddle surf board or in a boat to help you in an emergency.

In a sign that I am assimilating involuntarily at this point, I gasped “Sorry” as I rotated around in the direction she was pointing. I began to swim faster but a few minutes in I realized that she was following me. 

When I realized she was keeping up with me the way Amal does when I have a cookie in my hand, I figured that I was one of the last people in the water. Tepid applause broke out as I ran out of the water and the people around realized I was a participant and not an inconsiderate sun bather.

“And we now have the 2nd last swim finisher--deee?—the gent in the swimming trunks” 

The additional 100m I had swum and the quicker than usual pace had made me pretty tired but I sprinted to my bike. The transition area just about had enough people, including me to start a medium sized boy band.

Despite my exhaustion, I sprinted out to the bike start line and began to ride my bike. The route was a convoluted loop through the town of Wasaga, out to the country side and a loop back to the transition area. The sun was beating down on me by this point.

In the first 5 kilometres, I felt like my ex roommate. He commuted on western expressway against the flow of traffic from Kalina to Chakala. For every 1 person who was in my lane, 10 would cross me on the way back to the transition zone. After that, it was like being in one of those apocalyptic movies where you wake up and the world just moved out of the city without telling you. I’d spot occasional signs of life, like a dropped water bottle here or a bicycle glove there. 

Instead of the Nilgiris, I was cycling through suburbs of a small Ontario town. And then, rows and rows of corn fields. On the occasional incline where I would have to stand up to slowly climb a hill all I’d hear was the breeze, my knees creaking and an involuntary ‘banchodh’ escaping my lips.

As I cycled into the transition area, I hurriedly parked my bike and took my helmet off. I had cycled the 40 km at a speed of 24 mph as I would later find out.

As my legs and back screamed in pain I began to slowly jog past the start line of the final section; the run. It was a 5 km loop that had to be run twice. It began and ended right next to the stretch of beach that we started our swim in.

After the first few hundred meters, I was suddenly surrounded by other participants. Like it was day 1 after the end of the lockdown. And it was now almost 2 pm. To put it mildly, I was boiling. I huffed and puffed till the first water station and then to the 2nd one. By the time I finished the first loop and turned back around, it was a ghost town. Most people had finished and I was one of a few people who was yet to complete.

This final stretch was what I call the existential phase of the triathlon. I would gulp 2 glasses of water and dunk another 2 on my head at each aid station. For the first time, I took walking breaks mid run. Questions kept flashing through my mind as I hobbled forward in the blinding heat.

Why is it so fucking hot? In Canada of all places??

Why was the school called Rajput when the students looked like Models?

Why is no-one here? Did they just close the aid station? COME BACK.

By the time I crossed the finish line, there was just one volunteer left. He shook my hand and congratulated me on finishing. There was a wall of ankle bracelets (used as timing chips). Adding mine was literally like adding the last piece to a jigsaw. The free pizza had gone cold and the coke had gotten hot because all the ice had melted in the cooler.

In that moment, I wasn’t angry like I had been after my first half marathon. I was just feeling alone. Not because of my finishing time. Because I was without the biggest reason I had completed my first Olympic triathlon, my coach, Mali.

Not only had she bought me my triathlon watch when we first moved, she had bought me the bike. She’d also bought me my running shoes on a trip to Ottawa.

But most importantly she was also driving my training plan. Be it long cycle rides that we planned on weekends. Like that time she made us cycle to a suburb called Oakville which was 60 km away. Or when we travelled to different lakes in the summer to practise open water swimming.

Short of driving behind me in a jeep she was like Ayesha Jhulka.

I probably wouldn’t even have done the first triathlon sprint in Toronto island a year ago if she hadn’t suggested it. I feel the impact of her coaching has been to push me further on the scale from Aamir to Mamik. I probably would have been satisfied with one. But she pushed me to sign up for the Olympic one.

When I met her and Amal after, we celebrated with Biryani and my first beer in 2 months. We spent the next week after chilling, as we travelled to the west coast. We travelled to Seattle, Vancouver Island and finally Vancouver. While Amal went to California with my parents, Maliha and I stayed on in Vancouver for another day to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The weather was great. The friend that we were staying with drove us to a trail close by. With his puppy in tow, we followed the wooded trail to get to a lake.

I had fully recovered from my triathlon. I know because my watch which told me what my recovery looked like no longer said “EXHAUSTED”. This trek had been the most physical exercise I had done since. I was fully at peace as we jumped in the lake. The water was warm as I swam languidly in the water to get to where Mali was. A 1.5 km swim was the last thing on my mind.

“So what’s next?” she asked me as I caught up to her

“I don’t know. Lunch some-“

“No I meant are you doing a half iron man next?”

“Gulp”

Woh sikandar hi doston?