Comrades 2013 - The Ultra Ordinary Race

We all love an underdog story. I figured that from all the love I got for my post about Comrades 2012. Comrades 2013 happened on June 2^nd from Durban to Pietermaritzburg and I… spoiler alert (!!!!)…finished in exactly the same time as last year: 11:56:36 – talk about consistency! Except that it didn’t feel consistent at all. May be because of the unusually high temperatures, strong head winds and that, unlike last year, most of this race was a tough uphill climb of 87 kms! The Comrades Association has gone on record to say that it was one of the toughest races ever, with only 10K of the 14K runners finishing (another 6K didn’t start the race) and more than 900 runners had to be treated in medical tents.

Before I write more about the race, I have to explain why this post comes more than a month late. Well, a lot of people have told me over the last 12 months that the underdog post was an inspiration for them to start running and that they’ve been inspired enough to participate in half marathons and other races after reading it. My eyes well up every time I hear something like that because I know that my running makes life tough for everyone close to me. So, the slightest difference made to anyone’s life really helps my Karma.  But, the truth is that Comrades 2012 was a good story because my real odds of completing the race had been sub-10%. This year was different. I had trained more, my timings had been much better for all the training runs and well, for the most part on race day, I’d stayed well ahead of the 12-hour pacers. Hence, I decided that there should not be a post about Comrades 2013 (how convenient!)

But, alas! Husbands are EVIL beings. Well, mine’s also a Gemini! After trying to persuade me for a month to write a post, he decided to play dirty! I was locked in the house on a Saturday night with a bottle of Sula Brut Rosé (well played, Kaushik!) and told that I wouldn’t be allowed to sleep till there was a post! So, here I am at 2:30 AM on a Saturday night wondering where to start…

All over again

My Comrades training started with the Mumbai Marathon in January. It was the day after Vellvette’s first offline event and 30 hours after Ravi and Alpa’s wedding. So, even though I’d hoped I would be better off without the pressure of having to finish the race under 5 hours (whenever you complete the Comrades, you automatically qualify for the next year’s race – recipe for addiction!), I did a miserable 5:01.

A few weeks of on and off training later, I realized the total mileage was looking grim like last year – less than 20 kms a week. And, as if magically, I came across a Facebook post on the Comrades group about a Lonavala run with most of the Mumbai/ Pune Comrades runners (which, surprisingly, is 90% of Team India). I messaged Pratik, who had put the post up and didn’t receive a reply for several days. The practice run came and went. I justified it to myself that these were guys who were on the 1200K total mileage plan for Comrades and could do a sub 4-hour marathon. I was much slower and was on a 400K plan, so what was I thinking?! They were the “Special Batch” equivalent from my days at FIITJEE while I was studying for IIT.  I had hated not making it to the “Special Batch” and that had been a great push for me to actually do well when I took the IIT exam. So, I thought this was déjà vu…

Except that it wasn’t! Turns out Pratik hadn’t seen the message at all and the whole gang was actually quite accommodating. I missed a couple of runs because of my travel, but few weeks before Comrades, finally ran for the first time in Lonavala. When I reached Bushi Dam at 2 AM on a Saturday night, I was shocked to see 15 uber-fit guys stretching together. Looking at them I wanted to turn the car around and run home. Had I not messaged Satish and Pratik that I’d reached, I wouldn’t have had the guts to come out of the car! But, I can’t be happier that I did. Running up and down between Amby and Bushi on a Saturday night is a big upgrade from the 1.2K circuit at Hiranandani that I had been looping for years! I had a chance to run with some amazing people – Neepa, who was running her 4^th Comrades, and Ashok, who cycles down from Pune for all the Lonavala runs just so that he can give Neepa company, and Sham, who stopped at 40K just so that he can let the Wine Marathon at France in September be his first 42K run, and of course, Kaushik, who decided to run the last 7 kms with me because it was burning at 9 AM and I was refusing to complete my 60K target!

Post Lonavala, I got hooked to this group running thing and over the next 4 Sundays I actually woke up at 4AM and went to run with Sham, Pratik, Ramdas, Moiz, Ajay, Swapnil and the rest of the gang at BKC. I was regular (at least for the Sunday runs) and faster, because every time I slowed, Sham would scream “Come on, Great Indian Lady!” Embarrassing as it sounds, it was super-effective! And the group stretching that followed the runs – I think that was one of the biggest reasons I didn’t have to see my physiotherapist even once this year!

So, when I met my parents at the Dubai Airport on 30^th May and 3 of us boarded the flight to Durban, I felt much stronger than last year. Kaushik wasn’t able to make it because he was “running” the company, but I got my “Cindrella Man” style booster from him before I left, and one from Navya and Shereen and Vellvettines and Hip Hip Hurrahs and of course, the family – every word of which I was sure I’d be repeating in my head during the last 30K.

Race Day

After 2 days of sleeping, eating, expo-visiting and route-seeing, it was the morning of 2^nd June. I had decided to go to the Start Line with 6 other Indian Runners, but by the time I reached the meeting point at the given time, they’d already left. I couldn’t believe my day was starting so bad. Thankfully, the misadventure was short-lived. We found a cab and made it to the start line before time. I joined the other back-of-the-pack runners and waited for our turn to reach the start line. That’s when I met Ramdas, who told me that he was planning to run with me. I was alarmed, as I was pretty sure I wasn’t his best bet. Besides, we’re quite the opposites. Ramdas is quite philosophical and insists that one must not let the pressure of performance take away from the joy of running. I, in spite of all my Bhagvad Gita readings, NEED the medal at the end of a race and no matter how less I’ve trained, I am quite cranky after bad races. So, as we started running together, he was incredibly amused by my Garmin and the spider tape I had on my legs to prevent my glutes from getting worse (well I had another on my knees, but in my defense, that was a free sample they’d given me!) and the band on my wrist to tell me the cut off points.

The gun went off at 5:30 AM and we started running together up and down the Durban flyovers till we had safely exited the city and we started climbing the first of the 5 Big Bad Hills. Ramdas was in great form and he was pushing me to run-walk the up-slopes to keep the momentum going. I was feeling good too, but I was slower – and was slowing him down. He refused to shoot ahead in spite of all my persuasion, so I decided to respect his choice and stopped pleading. I told him about how I really wanted to take home the Back to Back medal (which you receive for running your 1^st and 2^nd Comrades back to back) and he told me about how he was already happy that he was running this, so the outcome wouldn’t matter.

We were doing good time and when the 11 hour pacers just came up from behind us, I realized just how fast we were actually going, so we let them run ahead. We reached Pinetown, the first point where mum and dad were supposed to meet me. They’d been warned about the traffic at these spectator points, but you know how parents are – they were determined to see me at least thrice during the course. When I passed the last point where I could imagine seeing them, I figured that since I was going slightly ahead of schedule, they may not have made it yet. Nevermind, I was going to see them at the half way mark anyways. So off we went towards Drummond, enjoying the weather and the crowd support. I had worn the Team India T-shirt, which turned out to be a good and a bad thing. Good because it had an India flag on it, so I got cheered significantly more than last year – not only by spectators screaming “Come on, India!”, but also by other runners. Bad because it was a cotton tee – a big no-no for long distance runs. We reached the half-way mark (43kms) in 5hrs 37mins and that was good because we had more than 6 hours to run the second half and only 2 bad hills remaining – Inchanga and Polly Shorts. I saw my parents and I was on such a high that I actually told them I was finishing it for sure. I told them how Ramdas and I had been pacing each other, so they should expect both of us to finish together at around 5 PM.

Of course I said it all too soon! From thereon it all started crumbling like a pack of cards. Firstly, Ramdas started cramping. He was intermittently stopping and rubbing his legs vigorously. I got him some ice and he applied it on the cramp. He needed salt, but we couldn’t find any. He kept telling me to go ahead. For a couple of kms, I’d move ahead and wait or keep walking backwards looking for him. When I’d spot him somewhere, I’d run ahead a bit to maintain our momentum. But, I knew he was in a lot of pain and running was becoming really tough for him. I also saw that time was ticking and hundreds of runners were passing us by. Over and above that, it was getting hotter, the sun was shining right into our eyes and there was a strong wind resisting our uphill movement. It started hitting me that I was again heading for a close finish. I saw the disappointment on the faces of my parents and Kaushik and my friends who were tracking the race online, for not making it after getting this far. I started imagining what the pain of not finishing would do to me during the long flight back to India, in all my conversations about the race, on all those nights when I’ll lay awake thinking about what I’d do if I could do it again. And in my mind I decided the right thing to do was go all out and finish the race – and that is what I did! I know that Ramdas held no grudges and in his mind too, it was the right thing for me to do. But I also know that he would have stayed back…

I got to know at the end of the race that he did walk till 82K with that cramp before missing the final cut off.  Every time I think of my decision, I know that if I were to go back to it, I wouldn’t do it any differently because on that day, at that time – I was there with the single goal of finishing that race. But, it’s something I do think about often. I saw a lot of Comrades runners go through the same dilemma and I saw choices being made both ways. In their own contexts, I know they all did the right thing. But, you can't help but bow down to those who took the tougher call to stay back - in some cases at the cost of their own race. They really went one level beyond "sportsman's spirit". 

The Real Fight

The remaining part of the race was a tough battle against time and against the damn hills that just wouldn’t stop showing up. There were some weird moments, like again having to “go” behind a bush, running briefly with a South African who insisted on referring to my dad as “father in law”, multiple runners seeing the flag and asking me if I was sponsored by the “Guptas” (some major business family in SA). There were funny moments like me asking a 10 times Comrades runner if a small slope was the infamous Polly Shorts. He held my hand and said, “Sweetie, you will KNOW when it’s Polly”. And then there was this man who saw me struggling against the wind and asked me, “Aren’t you too frail to run the Comrades?” I was so happy with my response – “I might not have a runner’s body, but I have a runner’s mind!” It’s not an original, but it did the job!

By 70K my mind was so tired of all the calculations that I wanted to shut it and just focus on running - running flat out. So, I was only relying on external signals – like the morale of those running close by. I noticed how the conversations around me had dived from “You think we have a shot at a sub-11?” to “This is going to be such a close finish – we have to run the upslopes now”. There was an increase in the number of runners lying by the side of the road, a few vomiting and several running with the “can’t do this anymore” expression. There was one such girl running ahead of me at the 79K mark. Suddenly her coach (who wasn’t in the race, but was supporting her for some distance) pleaded aloud, “Honey, just look at me! Believe me - there is this hill and then there is Polly and I PROMISE you after that it is all downhill. Just 8K – I know you can do it!” I felt like she was talking to me too and that did keep me going - although I were to soon realize that it was not ALL downhill - even after Polly.

I wanted to throw up, but I tried to hold it till the finish. I promised myself, “just do these last 5K in time and then you can vomit away all you like at the finish”. So, I stopped intake on anything but water. The 12 hour pacers crossed me – I knew I still had a shot – just had to keep moving. Besides, the other pacers were still behind me.

Soon it was 1K to go, 10 minutes at hand and I sprinted – so much so that I just about overtook the pacers who had crossed me a while back. Ran into the stadium for the last 100m and that was all lights, crowds and very, very loud cheering! There I could see my parents anxiously waiting. They noticed me and what I then saw made it ALL worth it – the pain, the dilemma, the uncertainty and of course the Saturday nights spent on the road. What I saw on my dad’s face was a look of unbound pride (if your dad’s a scientist, you’ll know this one’s hard to come by). Mum was, of course, crying. We hugged and I cried – I guess it was due since last year, so this Comrades I really, really cried. I was told that Kaushik had tracked me on the app for the last 8 hours and he already knew, so we just had a brief chat, consisting of no words and tons of shrieks. Oh, by the way, sometime before all of this, I did cross the finish at 11:56:36, got my Vic Clapman Medal and the Back to Back medal.

It was time to go home. We headed on our long drive back to Durban. As promised, I let my head hang out of the car as I threw up through that journey and then a few times at the hotel. My feet had big balloon shaped blisters and everything hurt. But, that didn’t matter. My Comrades dream had come true!

More than just a race

Comrades Marathon is always a lot more than just a race. For every single runner. When I look back at this one, I think one of my biggest takeaways has been the rediscovery of the “bonus” joy of having running buddies. When I’d trained for my first marathon at IIM Ahmedabad 7 years back, we used to run in a group in the middle of the night and for every bunk, you had to treat the others. It worked – most of us finished the race, but we all finished alone. It was then that it first hit me that to finish a marathon, one has to be prepared to run for long, painful stretches alone.

And, over the next 7 years, it became an “individual” sport for me as I mostly trained alone and always raced alone.  I started enjoying the “me” time, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that it was taking its toll. Firstly, on my own, I could never enforce the discipline to follow a training schedule half as rigorously as I’d done before my first marathon. Secondly, given Bombay’s weather, I could only do long runs at night and safety was a real issue. Believe me – it takes one traumatic incident to annihilate all the notions that “Bombay is safe for a woman to run alone at 2 AM”! This meant more torture for Kaushik, who slept 2 nights in the car for “surveillance”; actually, let’s just say there was 1 night of sleeping and another of being on a live call for 2 hours till sunrise.

So, after all these years of running alone, when I finally experienced the kick of running as a team – at least on a few days. It feels like running has come a full circle in my life – from being a team sport to solo to again team…

What next for me? Well, definitely no Comrades 2014 – have promised mum, dad and Kaushik. But, I’ve added a few important things to my bucket list:

1. There is a 100 Marathons Club – I am pretty sure I will be eligible for it some day.
2.  I want to run at least 1 marathon/ ultra from start to finish with someone – I am sure it will require a new level of strength, but it should be a beautiful experience.
3.  I want to run at least 1 race for someone else – totally, wholly completely - not worry about my timing or the finish line – just run with the only intention of making someone else’s dream come true.

Well, I don't know when #3 will happen, but one thing is for sure - the day it does, I promise to write a post about it! J

Comrades 2012 - Ultra Insanity

Great to blog again after so long. A lot of my people asked me a few times why I had stopped blogging. Well, no excuse – maybe just laziness – or may be I was waiting for the big reason to write again.

On 3^rd June I ran the Comrades¹ for the first time and could not stop talking about it for days. Clearly I was on a big high. I had run 89.28 kms from Pietermaritzburg to Durban in 11 hours 56 minutes, including the 7 odd minutes I took to just reach the start line. My husband, Kaushik, suggested that I write about it. That sounded painful. When you write, as opposed to talking, you have to worry about structure, grammar, etc. and I have a disease – I just can’t write short posts. Plus I had read Amit Sheth’s blogs about Comrades and they were so fascinating that I didn’t think there was anything more to write.

Suddenly it struck me that there is one unique perspective that I have. There were 19,000 runners who signed up for Comrades 2012, out of which only 14,000 made it to the Start Line. Out of the remaining 5000, I can conservatively assume that a majority would be first time Comrades runners, say 3000 (60%). This is just a guess based on the Indian contingent statistics that suggest that 78% of those who dropped out before the race were first time runners. This brings out a startling trend. Out of 7000 people who register for their First Comrades Race, only 4000 actually end up reaching the start line, i.e. just over 50%. The reason I spent time thinking about this is that I was one of the 5000 last year and was quite close to being one this year too.

The 2011 Breakdown

I still remember the mail I received from a friend on 14 Jan 2010 with the subject line “Comrades – the Best Ultra Marathon”. That was the birth of the fascination. I was told that entries open and close on 1 Sept 2010 and I registered first thing in the morning. Ran the Bangalore Ultra in the same year completing 75 kms in 11:23. Not bad to start with I thought. Did my qualifying marathon in Jan 2011 in 4:54. That was my personal best for marathons and I thought I was in my best form ever. And then, it all went downhill from there!

I had my first running injury ever! My right gluteus maximus (that’s what the docs called the largest of the butt muscles) would severely start hurting the moment I crossed 12K in training. Then I would pop a Brufen and do another 6-7K before the effect would wear off and I was back with excruciating pain! 4 months and several physio sessions later I was at the same place - could not run a half marathon without a painkiller.

Sometime in early April (just over a month to the race) Kaushik decided he had to intervene. We were at a bar in Lusaka when he decided to talk straight. He said, “Listen I think you are really stubborn, but if you had a daughter, would you let her destroy her body like this?” I knew I did not have a case. Using painkillers to train is myopic. We made a deal – I promised to not have any painkillers during training and he promised to be with me at the start line of Comrades 2012.

I kept my side of the deal and he kept his. I remember crying the day I officially bowed out – a month before the race. I had decided to run a marathon overnight. If I could complete it without the painkillers, I would go to South Africa. I dragged my legs in pain till 30K and then it was over for my 2011 dream.

Dreaming again

Now that I had started thinking of the Comrades Finish Line, I was restless. But, the downhill period continued. And I am not talking about the Comrades route here (bad joke!). My month long wedding and honeymoon in Dec -Jan and two massive falls (one during a training run at Rome where we were honeymooning and another identical fall back in Mumbai) ensured that I ran the qualifying marathon in Jan 2012 with the least training ever. Just about made the Comrades cut-off with a 4:58 timing.  

The next 4 months of training were not much better and my Comrades training was marred by couple of long bouts of sickness, a few emotional setbacks and frequent reappearances of the gluteus pain. I ran a total of 350K in the 6 months leading up to the race (including the qualifying marathon). What was worse – these were mostly on the treadmill, since I was extremely paranoid about another injury due to a fall and a bit paranoid about running alone at night (which is the only feasible option given the weather here). Well, if you have read about the race, a minimum of 1200K of hill running is recommended and a lot of runners do upto 1800K. My longest had been a 55K run on a treadmill in 8.5 hours (you can do the math to figure out just how lame that is!).

So, all the excuses were in place for yet another skip. But, the problem was that Kaushik and I had made travel and hotel reservations long back and I did not have the heart to tell him it wasn’t happening – yet again. My only hope was if our visas did not come through! Kaushik and I travel a lot, but still keep running into visa trouble and because of a couple of international trips, we just had 9 business days to get the visas. Well, the day before our travel date, I realized that wasn’t happening either. So, I gave our parents and friends all the disclaimers about my lack of practice and in fact, when Bikram asked me what I would do just in case I finished the race, I thought about it for a second and said, “I think I will cry out of disbelief and happiness”. We took off for South Africa a week before the race.

Travelling through Stellenbosch and Cape Town, I knew there was nothing that could now come in between me and the start line. So, if I had to give it my best shot, I had to stop lining up more excuses and had to do some serious visualization. I spent all my free time imagining the race, the cheering, the pain (as they say, if you’re not hurting, you are not winning), the finish line (with just a few minutes to the gun). Over and over again in my mind, I would cross the finish line at eleven-fifty-something, crash into Kaushik’s arms and start crying.

The Race Day

We reached Durban 2 days before the race and everywhere - at the airport, at the Comrades expo, at the hotel, while touring the route, we kept meeting runners attempting their 10^th, 25^th, 40^th, etc. race. I would have said it was a humbling experience, had my lack of practice not already humbled me as much! In South Africa, road running is a huge cult with several running clubs that coach and field runners (I bet if even India had that kind of weather, roads, hills and coastline, running would have surpassed cricket as the most popular sport)! Almost every family in SA has a Comrades runner and the papers, radios and TV channels and buzzing with Comrades news. So, it was reassuring on the morning of the race, when I finally met a few other first time runners at the McDonalds’ in ‘Maritzburg. At the same place, a gentleman who had run it 10 times told me about how he finished in 11:59:30 in his 2^nd Comrades only to realize that 24 others had finished just after him! Wow – I thought – I should try to make it a bit less adventurous than that! Kaushik (who stayed up all night so that he could drive me 90K to the start line at 3 AM) commented on how all the happy eating-and-drinking at McDonalds looked more like a picnic rather than the start of a race. It was only the ChampionChip² on the shoe that differentiated the runners and the supporters, the latter being far outnumbered.

It was 5 AM and I kissed Kaushik goodbye to join the last seeding batch (basis our qualifying marathon timing and previous Comrades experience) of runners. At 5:15 AM the South African anthem and the “Chariots of Fire” theme got all the runners singing and swaying in excitement. I was frozen (cold and fear), but the other participants would not have it, so they held my hand and made me sway along too!

At 5:30 AM, the gun went off and we started running slowly uphill and I could hear runners talk about how far “Polly shorts” was (one of the “Big Five” bad hills that take turns to destroy your knees and quads). A sweet girl introduced herself to me and suggested we run together the whole way. I am sorry, Richita, I just lost track of you so soon – I hope you made it!

I would have just about crossed Polly, when the first tragedy hit! My right gluteus did a little “Aboo!” out of the blue. I counted the number of Brufens in my pocket (it was allowed on race day since I had been at my best behaviour pre-race – at least with regards to the painkillers). I had 3 and Kaushik was going to meet me at 60K, so if I have one at 20K, next at 40K and the third at 60K, he might be able to give me a couple more for the remaining race. I popped one at 18K and the next 15K were smooth sailing! The sun was out and most of us had shed our woollens and were enjoying the pleasant breeze. I was trying to run with the sub 12 hour pacer so as to maintain my speed, but it was getting tougher with every mile. Firstly, the pacer was switching between walking and running quite frequently and I was not that comfortable with the switches. Secondly, he also made the group run some up-slopes and walk some down-slopes and, although I was happy about the latter, I just could not manage the former. Thirdly, he did not seem to cater for washroom breaks. And, finally, to my utter horror, I was getting stretched trying to keep pace with him. And for some vague reason, he kept saying for the longest time that the Comrades had not even begun yet!

So, between 35 and 40K I fell behind the first pacer and joined the second pacer and somewhere around 40K, I saw the last of the last pacer. From thereon, it was just me, my watch and my big dreams of finishing! I had the second pill since the pain had suddenly shot back and started talking to my legs to keep the pain under control. I was focusing on running on my toes and keeping my back straight (my physiotherapist had explained that the pain was because of my flat-foot heel running and excessive swaying). I spent a few kms actually saying “Toe! Toe! Toe! Toe!” in my mind and made it to the Arthur’s Seat (where they have a permanent Wall of Honour with the names of Comrades finishers).

Around the half way mark I overtook the man who would feature in my thoughts through the remaining half. Japie Greyvenstein (I think that was his name) was running with a prosthetic leg. Every time I winced with pain, I’d remind myself that it was still insignificant in comparison and not reason enough to give up. (I know Japie did not finish, but I could see how his heroic effort touched and inspired several runners around him. Hats off!)

The 42K – 53K stretch was significantly uphill and by then my right leg was in such bad shape that I was literally keeping it straight and dragging it with my left leg. That was the longest stretch of the race, but I put my iPod on and kept moving. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any other runner with a music device on the entire course. I guess that was not only because all Comrades literature advises against music so that runners can focus more on their body and the timing, but also because it is easily one of the most picturesque races in the world - lovely hills and countryside throughout.

From 58K onwards I started looking out for Kaushik, who had promised to be there around the 60K mark with some Milky Bar, Bar One and energy drinks. 59...60...61...62...I wondered whether he’d overslept or maybe he miscalculated my speed or perhaps these spectator points were not accessible or did he lose his way...63...64...65 and I gave up thinking about getting to see him. The pain in my right knee and gluteus was killing me, my speed had dropped dramatically, most runners were now overtaking me and I was way behind the schedule as per the worst case scenario in my mind. I had just had my last painkiller, but it was not effective anymore. I was seriously considering one of the rescue buses. But, I told myself that I have to just keep moving for now, so that when the steep downhill finally comes, I can cover up. It was also some respite that a few other experienced runners (10+ Comrades races) seemed to still be in my proximity. I could see some light, albeit at the far end of the tunnel!

And then suddenly at the 68K mark, Kaushik magically appeared out of nowhere. The repressed pain came bursting out from inside me as I completely broke down upon seeing him. I realized how silly I must have looked and quickly wiped my tears as I told him about the pain and how I don’t think I can do it anymore. He did not have any painkillers, but his words helped. He told me to just hang in there and that the other pacer was just 5 minutes ahead of me, so it was not panic time yet. Reassured I started running again and I found him waiting for me again at the 71K mark. Some more encouraging words and some pain relieving spray and I reached the 76K mark. I saw him there again and promised him that I was making it to the finish line. I had 1:45 to do the last 13K and I could almost hear the cheers at the stadium. The left leg was my hero as it kept dragging the almost dysfunctional right leg up the hill and down again. But, even more heroic than that were some of the other runners around me – the lady who kept moving through so much pain that her back was completely arched, the old gentleman who kept looking at the watch even as the medics were treating his cramps and Neepa, who ran in the opposite direction when she saw her husband, Amit, fall a few metres behind us and of course Amit, who recovered from the fall to run to completion.

8K left and more than an hour to go - I knew I’d nail it if I just kept running. An amazing bystander paced me for some distance explaining what was left of the course and urging me to keep the momentum. And before I knew it, I could hear the music from the stadium. Just 1K to go and 12 minutes to spare I was sprinting (I realized later that what seemed like a sprint to me was just about 9 kmph J)

I entered the Sahara Kingsmead Stadium along with a few other runners and there were lakhs of cheering, screaming supporters. I started looking around for Kaushik and 20 metres to the finish, I saw him looking anxious. According to him, rather than running straight into the finish, I started moving in his direction. Well, whatever...I did cross the finish at 11:56:36 and leapt into his arms as I had imagined. I had lived this moment so many times in my thoughts, but this was grander. The stadium lights were brighter, the cheers were louder and the happiness was extreme. The only anticlimax was, well, I did not actually end up crying. I was just happy high!

In spite of the odds being heavily stacked against me, I made it – only because Comrades is a very very special race. It makes you a better person.

Thank you, Richita, Balaji, Narendra, Parag, Neepa, Vishal, Devashish and several other awesome runners– it takes a lot to inspire another runner when you’re fighting such a tough mental, emotional battle with yourself.

Thank you, Ma, Pa, Mumma, Baba, Reema, Navya, Shereen, Bik, Ravi, Reshu, Vivek, Rahul, Ram, Bhush, Bubs, Jas, Aditya, and all my other amazing friends for putting up for months with all the Comrades talk– I really saw each one of your faces multiple times during the race.

And most importantly, thank you, Kaushik - for what you said at 0.1K, 68K, 71K, 76K, on the morning of the race and on all those days leading up to it, for the sip of red wine at 78K J, for believing in me all along 100 times more than I did and for holding my hand and feeling my pain through the 89K.

Finally...

Well, given that my overall rank was 11,688 and category rank 212, I am still a non-authority as far as the race goes. But, this blog is dedicated to those who are on the verge of creating the “unavoidable reason” for not showing up at the start line for the Comrades. If you are, these 10 suggestions might help you:

1. If you think you can do a marathon under 5 hours, do land up at the start line. The race day energy, millions of supporters, lovely weather and pristine countryside will get you to the 70K mark at least. Thereafter, you have life’s best shot at amazing yourself! 
2. Find your angel – spouse, parent, best friend, just anyone who is just not ready to give up on you. It is so much fun to just keep trying to convince them how you can’t do it and just keep falling Bam! Bam! Bam! - Flat against their solid conviction!
3. Book your tickets way in advance. We did ours in Jan 2012. Even if you have done an MBA, chances are that you will never understand that it is sunk cost and that just might get you to the start line.
4. Visualize the race and the finish line several days in advance – every small detail from your sweaty clothes to the exact parts where the pain keeps mounting (it will surely be more painful than the peak during visualization, but still!) to what you keep telling yourself to ease the pain to the expressions on the faces of those you embrace at the finish line.
5. You know this – but believe me, you will never be able to do an excess of this! Taper well and keep your legs fresh (I know I know – if you’ve hardly trained, it’s not technically a “taper”), do tonnes of carb loading (most runners I know love eating – so this should be easy except that we often eat junk in the name of carb loading – like I don’t think all those Mugg and Bean cheesecakes I had would qualify as carb loading) and sleep well on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night before the race! 
6. Talk to your mum on the night before. Unless she is a Comrades runner herself, she will tell you how crazy 89K is and that she will be proud of you even if you do a fraction of it! That helped me not hate myself too much during the race for not being as fast and fit as all the other runners!
7. Don’t have painkillers in practice or during the race. They just temporarily numb the pain and your body will get immune to them quite soon and the pain will keep resurfacing! It is better to focus on your running technique to reduce the pain and injury.
8. Stick to one of the pacers for dear life! I could not manage that, but I learnt that each of the sub 12 hour pacers brought along with them 30-40 runners successfully to the finish. The teamwork dramatically reduces the pressure and you spend less energy repeatedly looking at the watch and doing back calculations! But, if your body is fundamentally not in agreement with the pace, listen to your body. You still have a shot at the finish line as several hundreds finish after the last pacer.
9. Do keep eating and drinking through the race, but use discretion! I was worried about refreshment points drying up towards the end like it often happens in Indian races and I just ate and drank whatever I could lay my hands on. Paid for it by having to use the washroom 5 times during the race. If you are a woman who has run the Comrades , you will know how tough it is to find even one clean washroom! So, stick to stuff you are used to having during a race.
10. Talk to yourself through the race. Even the most well trained athletes realize that the last 20K is purely a battle of the will power. So, happy chatting up and getting to know yourself better!

Good luck!

1- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comrades_Marathon

2- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChampionChip

The latest "small talk" topic in the world

As the title suggests, most of us have moved on from talking about the weather, movies and the pathetic state of Mumbai transportation. I would not like to make the political blunder of including cricket in this list, though hush-hush speaking, an overhyped small talk topic is what I really think it is!

So, for the last 8 months, every single day of my life someone or the other has come up to me and asked, "So, how is the recession treating your start-up?" Obviously, I have 2 fundamental problems with this question:

a) It is not a recession, it is just de-growth (for the lack of a better word!). I know a lot of people make this statement to demonstrate their "intelligent conversationalist quotient" and I will risk being classified as one of "those" people, because this IS a fact according to any authentic definition of the word 'recession'. 

b) I am not running a start-up; I run a small business! Today marked the 2nd IIMA convocation since I graduated. It was exactly 2 convocations back that I was proud of Quetzal being referred to as a start-up, but not today!

Of course, we still do have some of those traits - For instance, we do not have a clear idea about which one of our business streams we should clearly focus on. We still have budding entrepreneurs joining us to "experience" how a "start-up" operates! We still, at times, convene our "Board of Directors" meetings in coffee shops! We still operate out of 3 "galas", where the CEO and Interns share the same desk and keep betting with each other on everything under the sun - from Federer winning the French Open to who is going to lose more weight faster! 

However, those are start-up traits that we want to hold on to and do not match the overriding criteria that indicate our graduation from the "start-up" mode. For instance, we have had more than 70 Quetzals who have worked with us in the last 2 years  - most of them being people with spectacular pedigree. There are hardly any large educational institutions or companies in the sectors we work in, that don't do business with us. There is hardly any project that goes through without the intervention of Quetzal's stringent quality processes! Truth be told, I am not projecting this in the hope that it would help me win over clients or employees or investors - I am more in touch with reality than to assume that! Of course, my opinions could be coloured because of my emotional involvement with my company, but come on - on MY blog, I couldn't care less about being objective! 

Anyways, after having battled with peripheral issues like the inaccuracy in the framing of the question, let me try to address the real concern/curiosity (obviously the latter in 99.99% of the cases- exceptions being parents and lovers - who, for some strange reason, will continue to operate on a totally tangential plain of small talk, dominated by questions such as, 'what did you have for breakfast?' and 'what are you wearing?') My take on this is twofold:

1. I have been dealing with survival issues for 2 years. A "slowdown", my friend, is just one more of those "issues" to deal with and not something that will "shake me up"! Not to contest that there has been a tangible dip in our sales and revenue collections, but how much does it additionally matter when I have been riding a sinusoidal wave (I like to believe that the mean of these sinusoids is upward bound!) for the last 2years!

2. From being enamoured with "overnight success stories" like that of Facebook and YouTube in my early start-up days, I have, finally, reconciled with the more popular notion shared by the been there-done thats: It takes years and years of arduous effort and commitment to create something world-class from scratch! Sanjeev Bikhchandani took 13 years, Richard Branson took 20 years and I will not fool myself into believing that I am the "lucky" or "smart" one to beat that kind of a time curve! So, I am in this for the long run. And, it is but natural that in this ultra-marathon, there will be downturns (some of them being as drastic as this one!) and booms all the time. Earlier they are in my entrepreneurial career, better it is for me, because I end up learning when there is relatively less at stake, than later on when it will come at a higher price!

So, by some vague chance, if you are one of those people who have asked me this question in the last 8 months, no matter what my politically correct, fitting-in-with-the-global-paranoia response to you has been, I have muttered under my breath each time the immortal line from Gone With The Wind, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!"

Are you lonesome tonight?

Today was one of those days that I did something I had often visualized myself doing, but had been avoiding for years. I finally watched a movie at a multiplex ALONE! It is not a big deal and most people would roll their eyes at the glorification of this. For me, it was a huge kick! I had associated a sort of phobia with it, so even though I had trekked alone, shopped alone, eaten out alone, lived alone, danced alone, attended concerts alone, even walked around new cities alone- this was my first lonesome movie!
I analysed and broke the fear down into 2 components:
I don’t look at watching a movie as an activity; it’s quite a passive way to spend time! So, in my analyse-every-moment value system, I have low respect for it. Of course, there are some movies that make you think so much that you take a part of them away with you when you walk out of the theatre, such as Kung Fu Panda, but such movies are so rare that if you have movie-loving friends, you would end up watching such movies with them! Whenever I decide to go for a movie, I game myself into believing that “going for the movie” is a social event, i.e. a mere excuse to spend time with friends, where you don’t necessarily have to make conversation!
The bigger component was, of course, living to see the day when I did not have a friend to watch a movie with me! And, well today was the day- I wanted to watch Wall-E and I did not have any friends to join me! On mentioning to Barood, he quickly pointed out that it is lack of self-confidence! Ouch! That pinched hard. Barood has an uncanny ability to matter-of-factly make observations about people that they hate to admit. Sometimes, he is kind enough to sweeten his words, and this was clearly not one of those rare occasions!
Lack of self-confidence is not something I would, per se, find difficult to admit! I have, at times, battled with grave self-doubts about my capability to excel. Every time I have thrown myself into a professional challenge, it has been a bumpy ride for my self-esteem! But, this was not about Vineeta, the entrepreneur or the manager or the engineer! It was totally about my personal life- and I don’t remember the last time I had major self-doubts in that regard- probably in 10th grade when I was not propositioned on Valentine’s Day (an important metrics of self-worth for me then)!
So, after I had a nice time watching this movie all by myself, I was damn relieved! Not because this was a liberating experience on its own, but because it drove me right into my fear, and left me no option but to address it! It got me thinking about all those relationships I am still holding on to not for their own sake, but because they represent some kind of security that I will never have to be lonely! It got me thinking about the strong need I have to be liked by people and how it has often dented my decision making process. It got me thinking about my constant drive to grow as a person, because I fear being unpopular if I’m not smart or interesting enough. It got me thinking about the constant reassurance that I need from myself and others that I am not a socially unwanted person!
I chose to live alone in this city because I never wanted to voice such fears even to myself. But, like most other fears, admitting to myself that they exist has made it easier for me to tackle them! At least that's what I believe! I will only know when I am able to catch myself swinging towards a decision not because it’s right, but because it’ll make me more popular. I will only know when I don't succumb to the mistake of measuring my self-worth by the number of people who care about me, and most importantly. And, most importantly, I will know when I am able to guiltlessly walk out of those relationships that do not make me happy!

Mumbai meri Jaan?!

I have spent the first 17 years of my life in Delhi, except 3-4 initial years when I was shuttling between Delhi and Gujarat.
And it's been just over a year at Mumbai- so please feel free to disbelieve the title of the blog! Truth be told, the title of the bolg is just attention seeking behaviour at display- trying to cover up for my 10 months of non-blogging! I'm quite far, in fact, from giving my life for the city or any such noble deed! However, at the risk of taking the politically incorrect stand in the standard Delhi-Mumbai controversy, I will concede that Mumbai has been a lot more fun for me! Lest I get chopped into bits and pieces by my co-TDCs (those who cannot de-abbreviate this have clearly not engaged in too many third-party conversations about Delhiites), I'll give the disclaimer that a) first 17 years are really not the perfect period to make the most of a city and b) conservative middle class homes come with certain curfews, even if they send their kids to study at DPS! So, the fact that I couldn't experience the true colours of fun-Delhi may be all my fault!

Having suitably de-risked myself, I can now come to the main point this blog is making. Apart from the fact that Mumbai is THE place to run a B2B business in, and that the weather does not go to extremes, I am quite passionate about the city for the whole range of small pleasures that you can enjoy here- quite inexpensively! (Please note that inexpensive is an important criterion, because I do still categorize myself as gareeb entrepreneur!)

So, here's my list of Top 15 Small Pleasures in Mumbai ("in no particular order"- you can't imagine how long I've waited to use this phrase, because I always wonder why the writer couldn't spend an additional minute in sequencing the points in some particular order!)

1. Biking down the Palm Beach Road especially when it's absolutely empty at nights!
(Ravi, don't kill me for giving out your secret hideaway- I'm sure not more than 10 people read my blog, most of whom I'd have anyways raved about the road to!)

2. Sailing off the Bombay Harbour on a hot summer's day with a couple of breezers and some cookies!
(Cyrus, my sailing instructor would love me for this, because most non-DNA reading Mumbaiites have no idea about the extremely active Sailing circuit in Mumbai- and believe me sailing's less elitist than golf in Mumbai, because you do not need to "own" a yacht to sail)

3. Sipping coffee (and having the complementary cookies!) at one of the couches next to the French Window at Sea Lounge (Taj Palace's coffee shop overlooking the sea) at twilight!
(The best part about twilight is that you watch the transition from frontview to backdrop!
6:50 PM- Thousands of colourful boats with a smoggy horizon as the backdrop
7:10 PM- Thousands of lights (from ships far away in the horizon) capture the focus and the small boats disappear into the empty space that exists between me and the lights in the horizon)

4. Watching a play at Prithvi, and the paranoia that precedes it knowing that a second late and you will be locked out!
(The 15 minutes time lag of their clocks does not help, because it takes simple math to game it! Of course, the experience is not complete if you do not run into Kay Kay Menon/bearded man who sits on top of the wagon in the movie Swades/the flutist with the skull cap and grey beard engrossed in his art at the Prithvi Cafe)

5. The Point of View on the 30th floor of ITC Grand Central at late nights!
(Ravi insists on spoiling my kick by proving that it's not actually 30th floor, but that stratospheric view really lives up to the 30th floor expectations! No wonder, it's an only-for-guests-staying-in-special-suites lounge! I suppose if people start treating it like the Eiffel Tower, the authorities might get strict about that rule, so if you're going there, at least look like you stay in one of those suites- and if you have figured out how to stage that look, let me know as well, because I always have to negotiate my way up there!)

6. Singing at the Tuesday Karaoke at Aura in Powai!
(I'm not bothered about too many people reading about this because a) most Mumbaiites treat Powai as a neighbouring hill-station and wouldn't trek all the way here on a weekday and b) more first-timers in the room increase my chances of being above-average in the singing scores- which, for some strange reason, have very little to do with actual singing skills. They're not even inversely proportional, because then I should have scored high at Aura- it's a complex vertically parabolic function with me at the bottom!)

7. Having garlic cheese croissant at Birdy's in Prabhadevi before a meeting at ICICI Prudential
(Those who know me would know the psychological block I have against food products, whose nomenclature includes the terms cheese or butter! For instance, I would have been able to stand the Frankie guy at Ghatkopar if he served the same 4 types of Frankie, but didn't name them 1) Cheese Frankie 2) Cheese Butter Frankie 3) Jain Cheese Frankie 4) Jain Cheese Butter Frankie. What is an adequately health-freaky person supposed to order there?! But, the croissant at Birdy's is so soft and delicious that a carnivore like Barood also likes it (though, he prefers the Garlic Cheese Chicken Croissant for obvious reasons!))

8. Playing badminton on weekends at the Catholic Gymkhana, Charni Road
(I have taken the risk of writing this here, assuming that PG is the last guy who reads blogs. I have been explicitly instructed by him to keep this "our little secret"! Of course, the other reason is the altruistic streak in me that wants every badminton lover to play in a court, that is wooden, but comes really close to a synthetic court, and is incredibly affordable in this era of hilariously high membership fees!)

9. Having the gigantic Bloody Mary at Hard Rock Cafe on a Tuesday or Thursday, with a live band playing covers!
(I have great respect for Indian bands that make original music, but I'm not yet altruistic enough to allow this respect to come in the way of a brilliant evening where I can involve more in the music than just be able to critique it! And if you're going with someone who's going to Hard Rock for the first time, the men-in-black do play some interesting pranks! And I'm not talking about YMCA here )

10. Early morning jog at the Worli Sea Face or in the woods of IIT Bombay campus, especially when it is raining!
(Truth be told, I have done the Worli Sea Face jog only twice (once while running the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon and the other time when my mum had managed a wonderful guest house on the sea face at 40 bucks a day!). Of course, running in the rain implies no IPod, so this is the kind of small pleasure that ceases to be pleasurable if stretched beyond a certain time!)

11. Reading for hours on the couches by the French Window at Crosswords, Kemps Corner!
(Though my favourite bookstore in Mumbai is Landmark at Andheri, I'm currently protesting against them disallowing people who sit on the floor near the racks and read! But, even if they were to allow that again, it wouldn't beat the deadly combination of having access to a great view, a comfortable couch and so many amazing books! Also, it is not a good idea to read there during Lunch or Dinner hours, because the Moshe's that has recently been opened on the 1st floor of Crosswords is quite noise during its peak times!)

12. Losing most arcade games at Haikone, Powai and then regaining some lost pride by beating most people at Basketball!
(There are other places in Mumbai such as Phoenix Mills where you can bowl and play all kind of arcade games, but Haikone also has a go karting track. Honestly, I am so bad at karting that there have been times when Kaushik has overtaken me with an entire lap's lead, but, considering that the go karting industry seems to be in its terminal stage, I love to do this, hoping that I may go down in history as the last Indian woman on a go karting track!)

13. Having God level filter coffee at Maddu Mess at 4AM!
(The kick is in not just the coffee, but also in sensing how alive a khopcha in Mumbai can be at that unearthly an hour. Maddu Mess runs only from 4-7AM in the morning and is a God-send for BPO employees in Hiranandani and IITians. But, if you are not accompanied by a member of these 2 categories, or if you do not have medical insurance, do not even attempt trying to locate this dingy, severely unhygienic khopcha!

14. Working on my laptop or reading a book on Marine Drive, constantly soaking in the beauty of the waves from the corner of my eyes!
(Part of the kick is also in taking bio-breaks in the candle-lit restroom of Inter-Continental and occasionally picking up a fight with bystanders who randomly dump trash into the sea!)

15. Coffee by the pool-side at Rennaissance, Powai or at La Cafe, Chembur!
(Two disclaimers I forgot to add in the beginning- my entire worldview is biased towards a) coffee, because I'm an extreme coffee-fanatic and b) Powai, because I stay here and in spite of my love for Mumbai, I am yet to feel happy about too much of local-train-travel! But, coffee at Rennaissance figures not just because it's a fusion of both of these, but also because it has the most amazing view of the Powai lake, has lovely palm trees on its pool side and has the 2nd best driveway to a hotel in Mumbai . La Cafe in Chembur is quite secluded from the Mumbai crowds and is another of those hidden treasures. However, it did not merit a 16th point, because I think there quality of service has deteriorated in the last few months!)

Homecoming!

I visit my parents quite often! Luckily official visits to Delhi just pop up out of the blue, without me having to do even the Om Shanti Om level "sachche dil se maangna". And not one has been a force-fit I swear! (Ignoring the "yeah rights" for the time being!)
So, although I still long for those trips - mum's coffee, Delhi's roads, endless arguments with dad (the only thing we agree on is free market economics and our choice of newspapers!), for me the real homecoming was my trip to Sharavati Hostel, IIT Madras in September 2007!

The alumni secretary had invited 3 alumni (including me) of the erstwhile girls' hostel, Sarayu to talk to Sharav's young ladies about "anything under the sun"! The following is an excerpt from what I spoke:

4 years at IITM formed one hell of a defining experience for me. It is only in hindsight that I am able to understand how and I am sure that is something that most of my batchmates will be able to relate to. I will share couple of stories with you that had a defining impact on my life.

1. The first story is about going out there and seeking "opportunities", rather than waiting for them to land into your lap. If I look back, every opportunity has not been a gold mine, but 1 in 100 have surely been. But, the way life goes, unless you have grabbed and done justice to the 99, you will never be able to lay your hands on that 1 golden opportunity. Sitting on board my first flight to Chennai when I was going to join IITM, I heard a voice at the back saying, "I teach at IIT Madras". Enthusiastic as I always was, I switched my seat with the person on the seat adjacent to the source and introduced myself as an Electrical Engineering student at IITM, only to be handed over a visiting card that read "Ashok Jhunjhunwala: Head of Department, Electrical Engineering"! Anyone who is remotely associated with Electrical Engineering or with IITM knows this Padmashree award-winner who had the reputation of giving nightmares to any student who dares to enter the hallowed portals of the ESB! But that meeting left quite an impact on me, as I would later realise. During that endlessly long flight (technically, I thnk it was supposed to be just 2 hours!), I was quizzed on a range of topics from "why digital media is better than analog" to "why there are such few women in IITs" and as I invented one fictitious logic after another, he decided to drop the quizzing and do a favour to humanity by offering to be my Local Guardian. Now, this part was life-changing primarily because it implied that I would have to dodge the "What’s your CGPA?” question over Sunday lunches for the 4 years of my stay at IIT Madras. However, what left a greater impact on me was a question that he asked me about what my ambition is life was. More out of the lack of creativity than an extreme need for brutal honesty, I said that I wanted to be rich. He masked his condescending smirk with a "bachchi hai" smile and told me that the next time someone asks me this question, I must, at least, say that I want to be an "Entrepreneur"! Now this was a word that I recognized, but it hadn't even remotely been mentioned in the same context as MY ambition! So, obviously, I was quite intrigued by his statement. Driven by my respect for him, I began to study the concept of entrepreneurship and observe the men and women in whose context the word had a lot more appropriately been used in the past!
Well, of course, it took several years from that day for that fascination to get concretized into a dream and then into a calling in my life. But, well, now here I am, finding it impossible to imagine ever not being an entrepreneur!

In hindsight, this is such a simple algorithm - the faster I grab every set of 100 opportunities, the earlier I reach every subsequent gold mine! To this day, I regret not being able to understand and consciously apply it during my stay at IITM - by participating in every event I came across rather than worrying about making a fool of myself, by working on projects with every Professor I had respect for rather than worrying about being labeled "RG" and by getting to know every IITian I could learn something from rather than worrying about being teased for "putting fight for n junta"!

2. The second story is about getting out of the comfort zone. To start with, IIT Madras was far beyond my comfort zone. In DPS, R.K. Puram, where I studied, the notion about Madras was everything below the Vindhyas and the fact that people from Kerala, Karnataka, AP and TN are not all Madrasis, but have their own unique language, food and culture was an unheard-of concept! In the narrow world-view of mine, my JEE rank of 378 was spectacular and I was a multi-faceted person with diverse skill-sets. So, obviously, I joined with a larger-than-life ego of the person who had “arrived”. It took me just 3 months to recognize that I was going to spend the next 4 years with a set of people, who started out thinking of me as a bloody Naarth-Indian with too much attitude! To top that, I also had to come to terms with the fact that they were accurate in judging me, since most of them were culturally fitter, smarter than me as far as test scores went, better sportspersons, superior to me in theatre and choreography, better read and a lot more focused on what they wanted out of their education. I found myself so far away from my comfort zone that it was painful, like life’s biggest lessons are. Months of struggle, that followed the realization, did yield, like most struggles do. For the first time after many, many years, we won an Inter-IIT Women’s Gold and subsequently, the Women’s General Championship. Several other small and large victories later I had graduated with a substantially larger comfort zone. Most other struggles since then (striving to excel at IIMA, running my own company, dealing with the slowdown), have similarly, seemed like opportunities in disguise – to ever keep growing my comfort zone! So, wish you all the best for expanding your own comfort zones, and if you ever wonder, what's the point of a particular Delta X in the zone, don't stop -just KEEP EXPANDING, because you have a long life ahead to figure that part out!

The all-encompassing one-line vision!

It's kinda funny when all your life you run around after that elusive purpose that can give you a sense of direction, and then one fine day you just bump into it out of the blue! I have always found it difficult to just float through life, and everyday I just need to know exactly what I am doing with my life and how I am growing as a person. If that does not happen, then I just end up going to bed feeling incomplete about myself! Of course, many times I also play semantics games with myself to justify some things I just want to do, but that don't really fit into the bigger picture! But, I more often than not forgive myself for these inconsistencies! What's the use of getting a 6.9 on 7 in self-knowledge in CPI if one is not able to game one's own behaviour, right?! But, that's really not the point of this post.

This morning Barood suddenly came up with a vision for Quetzal. I don't know if it is appropriate to write it here, but I am so kicked about it that I am getting goosebumps since morning! When he told us, though Bubs and Bhush had their reservations, but I instantly adopted it as the purpose of my own life. I just knew that, in a nutshell, that vision statement summed up that higher sense of purpose that I had been desperatey looking for all these years. At the risk of sounding too dramatic, I want to say that it was the search for that sense of purpose that drove me to read a few works in philosophy, it is that sense of purpose that made a Victor Frankl survive the concentration camp at Auschwitz (ref: A Man's Search for Meaning), it is that sense of purpose that will be the biggest stone (ref: the story about filling a jar with the big stones first) in my life, it is that sense of purpose that will forever give me perspective about right and wrong, it is that sense of purpose that gives me infinite joy in just striving for it, and it is that sense of purpose that is so much higher than me that it is worth giving my life for! Whether I achieve it or die trying, I will forever have the joy of believing that my life had a purpose!