Bangalore Backyard Ultra – May 10 2025
TBH, possibly the worst performance in 3 years, other races didn’t feel as bad because leading up to this one I hadn’t put the work in. The past year or so, I’ve steadily been losing discipline.
Though I’ve got my PB in Mumbai and Coimbatore, running 140km and 181km, respectively, my discipline has been dropping. I wasn’t really watching what I ate and there has been an increase in consumption of alcohol, which eventually led to poor sleep, poor recovery and weight gain. I’ve nearly gained 9kilos since a year and that’s quite a lot given that I run ultras. Every extra kilo is more strain on the knees and ankles and I did feel heavy while running.
I was very excited that this one’s happening in my backyard but at the same time, I wasn’t sure of my performance. This year was already quite hectic. By the end of April, I had already participated in three races, February was Mumbai BU, March – Coimbatore BU and in April I had been to Arunachal for the Adventure race.
Out of this I had only planned two races, the Mumbai and Arunachal, the other two just sprung up on me. Between travel and racing, I hadn’t got time to train much and my recovery was a whole nother story.
In this race, I felt completely out of place, I’ve trained to a level where I can run 100kms any given moment and that day, I struggled to finish 60km which is 9 loops/hours of running, at the seventh loop I told my brother, who also happens to be my crew, that I’m going to maybe push another one or two loops and then I’m going to throw in the towel. It was a hard and an easy choice, if you know what I mean, it’s easy to give up but it eats you up later on.
Anyway, I don’t hold on to losses too dearly, there is a lesson here and I’m going to learn it. This was a necessary loss, the one where it wakes you up.
The most important thing for me is to earn back my discipline.
Practice 