なぜ私はあのマラソンに参加したのか

It started with my cousin. She lived in London in 2010s with her partner, and every time she came back to India she brought postcards, and pulled out her phone to show me photos of the streets she walked on, the cafes she sat in, the trains she took. I would sit next to her and look at every image like it was a window I wanted to climb through.The city had this rich, layered history, and I remember feeling a pull in my chest that I didn’t fully understand at that age. A kind of longing, like the place was already mine and I just hadn’t reached it yet. Every monument felt like it had been standing there forever, waiting to be discovered by someone who would actually pay attention to it. The architecture had this royalty to it, this intricate detail in the design, the exposed brick I would later learn to call by name. I loved it before I had a word for it.My cousin would tell me about the underground, how everything had an order, how a train arrived when it said it would and people stood in queues without being told to. Coming from India, where order is something you negotiate for daily, this sounded almost fictional to me. She would tell me about the people on the streets, how they waved at strangers and said things like “lovely day, isn’t it” because the sun was scarce and a sunny day became a thing worth celebrating with someone you didn’t even know.And then there was the way they dressed. Those long, elegant overcoats and the confident gaze of people walking somewhere they belonged. In Mumbai, no matter what I wear, I am mostly drenched in sweat by noon, so the idea of wrapping yourself in something beautiful and walking through cold air felt like a kind of magic I wanted to be part of.When I imagined myself in London as a kid, I was always sitting on the top of an open red bus, looking around the city with the kind of curiosity you only have before life teaches you to filter what you pay attention to.Then 15 years later I came across a marathon.Anyone who signed up got a discount on their travel and an easier route to a visa, and I got pumped. What could be more beautiful than exploring London while running through its otherwise busy streets, exclusively shut down for the marathoners? People who had run it spoke about it like a breakthrough experience, the kind that splits your life into a before and after, and I figured if everyone was saying that, it had to be worth it.So I started prepping.I followed marathoners online, specifically the ones who had run this marathon before, and I read every blog I could find. The more I read, the more confused I got. One person said you should lower your training intensity in the week before the race to avoid injury, while another said you should hold the line and not let your body get used to slowing down. One said carb-load the night before. Another said don’t. Every piece of advice came with a contradicting piece of advice from someone equally credible, and I was sitting in Mumbai trying to figure out which version of the truth to believe. Eventually I picked one marathoner whose voice I trusted and decided to just follow what they did, not because their plan was the best plan, but because picking one was the only way to stop drowning in all the others.Somewhere along the way, I had also been introduced to supplements, a whole world of them I didn’t know existed. At first I was excited, like I had unlocked a hidden layer of the sport that the serious people had access to. Then I got overwhelmed, because every week there was a new one and I couldn’t tell which ones I actually needed and which ones were noise.I was training five times a week, watching my nutrition, tightening every part of my routine as race day got closer, and I was also getting nervous because I had never run a marathon before in my life. When my documents were finally ready and I was set to fly, I couldn’t stop running the race in my head. Pace, not too fast, not too slow. Energy gel on schedule. Water exactly when planned, not when I felt thirsty. I kept reciting the routine like a prayer.I checked into the hotel feeling nervous, excited and anxious all at once.The next morning, I made it to the starting point.Most of the others looked like they had been doing this all their lives. They were in professional gear, they looked fitter, they were stretching in ways I didn’t know bodies could stretch, and they were casually talking about muscles that I didn’t know existed but apparently lived inside my body too. They had friends there. They had supplements I didn’t have. I wasn’t on the wrong path, I was on the right path, I was just way behind.While I was still trying to take it all in, everyone started lining up, and by the time I got myself mentally and physically ready, the gun went off.I started running. A little too fast. My mind went blank, and the routine I had recited a hundred times disappeared the moment I needed it. While I was trying to bring myself back, I started overhearing chatter about a new supplement everyone was using mid-race, something I had never heard of, and suddenly it felt like I needed it.I ran while frantically asking the people around me about it, and someone handed me a capsule. And oh damn lord, I started sprinting. I felt like a superhuman. Every doubt I had carried to the starting line evaporated in a single breath, and for the first time that morning, I was finally one of them. I wanted more.The more I looked for it, the more available it became. At first it was just one capsule, the one a kind stranger had handed me, and I told myself that was enough. But five minutes later I was reaching for three, because one had stopped feeling like enough almost as soon as I had swallowed it. Every runner I passed seemed to have a different brand, a different version, a different promise, and each one looked like it might give me something the last one didn't. One brand literally threw a whole jar at me as I ran past, and I caught it like it was a gift I had been waiting for my whole life. By the quarter mark of the marathon, the jar was empty. I don't even remember finishing it. I just remember the rhythm of reaching, swallowing, reaching again, and the strange feeling that I was running less to finish the marathon and more to keep the high going.Then came the crash. Not the physical one, that came later. The first crash was emotional, this quiet realisation that I had only made it this far because of the supplement, and that the next goal, while I was still running through the streets of London, was no longer the marathon. It was finding more of the supplement.The next thing I remember is opening my eyes in a hospital.I was injured, but because it was London, even the hospital was beautiful. Clean, organised, a private room high up in the building with a window that opened into the city. As I tried to piece together what had happened, the nurse came in and told me she was sorry. A car had sped through a stretch of road that was supposed to be closed for the marathon and had hit me directly. Insurance was covering me, the driver had offered to assist, and I would be getting the top treatment.I called my parents. They had been waiting for me to call them after the marathon, not before, and they panicked. As I was telling them what had happened, I kept looking out of the window, and I was looking at the same architecture I had fallen in love with as a kid. The royalty, the history, the intricate detail, the exposed brick. From a high floor of a London hospital, on a quiet weekday, it was right there.Even I was surprised that I wasn’t really sad. I had been kicked out of the marathon through no fault of my own, and instead of grief, I felt something closer to relief. I told my parents that I was going to postpone my return flight, that in all the preparation for the marathon, I had completely missed the fact that I was already living my childhood dream, that London had been waiting for me and I had been too busy training for something else to notice. My mom went quiet for a moment, and then she said, “your happiness is all we care for.”A tear rolled down my face as I looked out at the city. It was the tear of realising I had spent months, maybe longer, fully consumed by something that didn’t actually matter to me. The marathon had never been the point. London was the point. London had always been the point. And while I was busy memorising my pace strategy and chasing capsules from strangers, this city had been right outside, waiting.I postponed the flight. Once I recovered, I wanted to spend my own hard earned money, maybe even a part of my savings, to live the version of London I had romanticised as a kid. From the top of an open red bus, with curiosity, slowly.The marathon, I understood now, had been a glorified distraction.Just that, London is the profession I fell in love with.

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