I Used to Wait at the Finish Line

For the last few years, my job at Preethi's races was the car. I drove her to the start before sunrise, found somewhere to park and waited near the finish. That meant 10ks, and the Spice Coast half marathon in 2024 and again in 2026. I stood where she would see me when she crossed the line.

I have been running adjacent for a long time. Back in 2013 and 2014, a lot of my friends ran with Soles of Cochin, and I turned up for their runs on my cycle. Cycling was the best I could do. I tried running a few times. I was much heavier then, and it never felt good. Nothing stuck, and after a while I stopped trying.

Runners have their own way of saying hello. For years, the first thing many of them said when they met me was "When are you running?" Plenty of them tried to talk me into it, every other day, and none of it worked. Preethi never tried. She took up running three or four years ago, and she just goes. She wakes up and goes. Her feet hurt and she keeps going. She is a slow runner and may be the last one in, but she always finishes. Nobody's nagging ever got me out of bed. Watching her did.

Driving her there was the part I was qualified for, and even that had taken me four attempts at the licence.

In April I started losing weight, and I made a deal with myself. At 75 kilograms, I would try running again. Less of me would land on my knees with every step. My legs had spent years carrying 97 kilograms around, so they would have some endurance to spare at 75. I got there on Oct 12, 22 kilograms later, one morning at a time.

A few days later, on 20 October, I ran the Georgian Run 10K with zero prep, and it did not turn out too bad. Preethi was running it too. I finished before her, to her slight chagrin.

On 3 November I had my first proper training session. A moderate run went into a tempo block and then a speed block. A recovery came after, and the whole set repeated several times. It was the first time I had ever trained for anything.

I am now part of Preethi's run group, the Soles of Kakkanad. It is a newer branch of Soles of Cochin. That is the group I followed on a cycle in 2013, so thirteen years later I have finally shown up without wheels. Next up are a 10k on 5 December and my first half marathon on 13 December. Both will go into the runlog.

Preethi has always worried that her alarms would ruin my sleep. Her runs start at 4:30, and she is a deep sleeper who needs about two hundred thousand alarms to get up. I wake up on the first one. Most days I am awake even earlier, when her sunshine clock starts brightening the room. With both of us going, there is someone to drag the other out of bed, and the alarms finally have two people to answer to.

For years I waited at finish lines for Preethi. On 31 October we went out for a 15k long slow run together. There was no finish line anywhere on it, and we kept pace with each other the whole way.