To Wonder & Wander

26th July, 2010 – I get a call from  my trekker friend Drushti, asking me if I’d be able to be part of her team in the night adventure race called Enduro3 (o3 for Ozone). I think for a while, decline the offer considering my current lack of fitness. But the offer is tempting and I finally relent. The next day, forms are filled, fees paid and we chart out our D-day plan.

The next evening, I run 2 km to test my stamina. It’s not as bad as I had thought, I say to myself. I resolve to run more the next day. Meanwhile, Drushti and Jyoti (Our third team member, in fact, the team leader) go out to check the route. I am unable join them due to my college schedule.

I report at the racing venue at 5:30 pm on July 30th. I have spent that day organizing an ACM event in the college. By the time I mange manage to extricate myself from the still undecided details of the event, it’s 4:15 pm and I am yet to have my lunch. I decide to grab a bite on the way to Katraj and rush to the bus stop, where my partners are waiting for me.

After autorickshaw, tumtum and trax-hopping, we arrive at the race location on time. On the way, I realize that all three of us had been rather sparing while packing our backpacks, which translates to me having nothing to munch upon during the rickshaw ride. I content myself with Dushti’s ghar ke theple and an apple and try not to think of hypoglycemia, with which I had become acutely familiar in the same race exactly a year before.

The whole day, I had been running errands and now I just wanted relax for a while and EAT! I stretched, went through a warm up routine and then sat down on the grass. It was fun to watch the familiar hustle bustle of NEF volunteers. Drushti and I were trying to placate Jyoti, who had been obsessing over getting acquainted with the rival teams with a goal of forming a “judgement” of their abilities. She was a hyper wreck and calming her down took a lot of our energy. I could not believe that this girl was in the winning team the previous year. Or it’s possible that because she had been a winner, the race was such a big deal for her. Everyone seemed to know her.

We were competing in the all-girls category. We were flagged off at 6 pm sharp. We wanted to run fast in the initial few meters so as to gain a lead. In a race, overtaking breaks the morale of the overtaken team. We wanted to remain ahead so as to have a psychological advantage. The route starts from a temple and the first section is a slope up a ridge. Up to this point, we had managed to gain a lead and were now in the second position; but we were panting and the running had begun to show its effect. Still, we continued walking ahead without stopping to catch a breath. We were climbing a steep slope of the first of the fourtheen hills that were part of the 19 km long route. Jyoti was ahead, with me and Drushti panting behind. We were still some distance behind the first team. We topped out on the hill and I started running down the ridge on the other side.

and there, just after a few moments, I sat down. I couldn’t get up because of severe cramping in both my calves. My lack of preparation was showing and the cramps resulted in us losing the lead on all the remaining teams. About 3 mins and a Relispray later, I managed to get up and the three of us started running up the second hill. I was feeling terrible for the loss of time I had caused to the team. Though both my teammates kept telling me that it wasn’t a big deal at all, I was engulfed in a feeling of guilt. My girls relieved me of my backpack and that helped a lot. The cramps went away as suddenly as they had come and after 10-15 mins, I started feeling confident about going faster. We had passed first passage control point at the top of that godforsaken hill and now we had the task of getting our lead back.

We started overtaking whichever team would come in our way and after about half an hour, we had got back our No. 2 position. It seemed as if the girls ahead of us would never give us a chance to break through. But this was still very much the beginning of the race and we were far from losing our hope. So we pushed on.

The next couple of hours, we did not stop at all, not even for 30 seconds. We stopped only to sign at the passage control points and there too, only one of us would stop and others would continue running ahead. By this point, we had established a clear lead on all except the one team ahead of us. That team had gone out of our line of vision. So the only thing on our minds now was to keep going as fast as possible to cover as much gap as we could have.

The route is a well-cut trail. It involves climbing up a hill, walking across its flat top , then climbing down on the other side, repeating this process across 14 hill. The key to not going off-track is to follow the visible trail in an almost straight line. No bifurcations should be taken, no traverses should be made. Invariably, we would feel tired on the uphill parts and break into a fast trot upon reaching the top..Downhills were the easiest and fastest for me. My previous trekking experience was helpful on the slippery, treacherous slopes. We went on like this for a while.

The sun had already set and the darkness was upon us. The Pune-Bangalore highway looked scintillating in the valley to the right of us. The valley to the left was covered in fog and gloom. It was the moment I wait for whenever I go into the mountains. It was just the three of us, very much on our own, walking in the silence of the hills, in the cool, damp air, drizzle on our faces, only the flashlight to lead us on. There were many times when we had to double check that were still on the right track. There was no sign of the team ahead and we had left behind other teams since a long time. This was my most memorable part of the race.

Conditions remained like this for another hour and half. In that time, we had run out of water and energy bars. Still, it felt awesome. I was elated and excited. My cramps were a thing of the past and I was feeling good leading the way. An unwritten understanding had developed among us – I’d run ahead but we’d keep each other in sight and we’d take turn in carrying the backpacks. It was a good team, even though I had never met Jyoti before the race. Drushti was good at running on the flat sections, Jyoti was good on the uphills, while my strength lay in running down the steep slopes without slipping off and finding and checking the route by going ahead. This worked well and we were in our element by the end of the third hour.

Only one problem remained – the team that had been ahead of us was still out of our visibility range and we were afraid that we were losing opportunities to close the gap. We had resigned ourselves to getting the silver medal. Now the only aim was to achieve our fastest possible time. This goal kept us moving.

One should never give up in a race, however bleak the chances might seem. For when we reached the third-last time control point, we came to know that we were actually the first team to hit that point. The team ahead of us had probably gotten off-track somewhere and as a result, we hadn’t seen them for some time.

We hooted and screamed at the good news but found it impossible to relax – We still had at least another hour to go and who knows, those girls might catch up with us or may be we might lose our way at some point.

Thus we went, running in the kichad (with one of the three flashlights not working), making sure we were on the right path, singing the victory song in our heads, screaming at each other for even a moment’s delay. The win was very much tangible now.

There remained just one slope to climb down – from Talai garden to the base of Sinhagad. It’s the longest section of the trek and also somewhat steeper and more slippery. It’s also so full of creepers and bushes that sometimes, we just had to go by the feel of the route under our feet.

It was 9:55 pm when we crossed the finish line, placed at the 1st position in the all-girls category! We had WON! Our race time was 3 hours 55 mins. The runner-up team in our category was only 3 mins behind us, having caught up with us at one of the last few time-control point.

It had been an unforgettable adventure with a fantastic team!