Looping forward: Bengalurean finishes marathon in corridor

BENGALURU: What do you do when you’re a compulsive runner but have to be home-bound? If you are like Shajan Samuel, then you would run indoors... not 5 or 10 km, but a complete marathon of 42.2 km. And Samuel ran all this in his 10-metre corridor at home recently. “As I did the loops, I suddenly found myself enjoying it. Being a passionate road runner, I decided to look at this time of crisis as an opportunity,” says the 44-year-old vice president of Aptech Limited, who lives in Bengaluru but went to Pune, where his parents are based, just ahead of the lockdown. 

The barefoot run took him six hours and 30 minutes, while otherwise a regular marathon would take him 4 hours 30 minutes. “There’s lack of free movement, having to turn every few seconds. And when I started, I wasn’t doing it competitively,” says Samuel. Once this feat was complete, Samuel registered for a virtual indoors contest which was held on April 19. Like he would on a regular race day, Samuel woke up at 4am and started running an ultrathon. In the next 12 hours he completed 75 km.

While many have taken to binge eating during this lockdown, Samuel, for the sake of health and fitness, has been mindfully eating, having realised that you can run faster and longer with the right diet. “I still finish my last meal before sunset and I continue eating a protein-rich diet without the intake of any carbs or sugar,” says Samuel who wasn’t always like this, and took to eating clean four years ago when he realised he was obese, as a result of which other parametres weren’t in place.  

Having completed 650 km running so far, a milestone he hadn’t imagined when he began, Samuel is wondering about what next. “On an average I’ve run 22.4 km a day, which is like doing more than a half-marathon on a daily basis,” says Samuel who is quick to caution that doing so for everyone is not advisable. “In these times of uncertainty, it’s a good way to stay positive,” he signs off.