My pre-race strategy for the 2019 World 10K in Bengaluru - "the No.1 10K on planet earth", according to the promoter Procam International - was simple, even if a bit ambitious by my standards. Take it slow, not look at my watch and, hopefully, enjoy my run.
Of the 42 IAAF Gold Label events - the highest category of road races in the world - in 2019, only Bengaluru and Ottawa, Canada have dedicated 10km runs. The size of the field means that intelligently pacing yourself is more of a challenge than it already is. After an intense warm-up, it was time to see if I was up to that challenge.
An inauspicious start (1-3 km)
With the crowd tightly packed together and no room to manoeuvre or make the slightest misstep, I began my run trying not to go too fast while simultaneously making sure I wasn't blocking the faster runners. However, I started faster than I would have liked in order to get out of the way of others.
Many runners, frustrated by the traffic, began jumping the dividers to run on the empty, opposite side of the road. I was tempted to follow, but decided against it, given I was running according to the speed of those around me rather than at the pace that would have been suitable, based on my preparation.
As the first kilometre got over, it was clear my plan wasn't working. Although I'd hoped to automatically settle into some sort of rhythm, by the end of three kilometres that still wasn't the case - I could feel my heart racing, my thoughts were scattered and I was still running in the same way as the start. My times, I later saw, corroborated that feeling. I had run each of those kilometres in nearly identical times.
A measured middle (4-7 km)
In the fourth kilometre, as the field thinned out a little, partly due to the wider roads and partly due to the initial burst of energy wearing off, I began to feel more comfortable. I switched from breathing through my mouth to breathing through my nose. At the same time, I concentrated hard on taking exaggeratedly deep breaths, the kind I imagine are not out of place in yoga tutorials or at the doctor's office. Those two changes helped me slow down my pace and heart rate a bit as I finally settled into what I thought of as a middle-lane-of-the-highway pace - decently fast but slow enough that an increasing number of people overtook me.
In his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami writes: "I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void." I've long felt that void, or an approximation of it, to be crucial to my own experience of the sense of joy described as runner's high. The few times I've felt that euphoria has been when elements such as breathing and pacing have been just right, contributing to an experience where the running has felt effortless, almost like floating. Those elements have been important, but losing myself in my own thoughts has always been critical to that experience.
Today, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't create my own void. So I consciously thought about random things. I thought about how walking to Cubbon Park or Lalbagh Botanical Gardens - the former a part of the route, the latter a nearby park that's also popular among runners - from where I stay in Bengaluru is a pain because of traffic. That allowed me to enjoy the rare experience of running on the streets of the city even more.
Although this bubble of thoughts helped the miles go by, I had to be alert enough at the same time to move to the opposite side of every water station, to avoid being stuck on potentially slippery sections of the route. I also had to stay alert to the innumerable timing mats on the route and swallow my irritation at the multiple U-turns in this section - clearly added just to make up distance.
A fast finish (8-10 km)
At the start of the eighth kilometre, as I got closer to the Vidhana Soudha, I felt energised not just by the sight of the building, but also by the knowledge that Cubbon Park lay ahead. Just before entering the park, the sound of a vuvuzela-like horn played by a bystander made me chuckle, while a heart-shaped pothole made me smile. I wondered if I was delirious.
The park section was my favourite part of the run, thanks to the extra greenery, the all-downhill route and the nearing finish line. As I ran, I imagined this to be similar to what the finish of that other, more famous TCS-sponsored running event - the New York City Marathon - must be like, with its final stretch in Central Park.
With 300m to go, I began my sprint to the finish, a way of ending a run strongly and on one's own terms, and held it all the way to the end. The possibility of improving on this performance already had me thinking about returning next year.
Before that, though, there is lots of work to be done. My immediate plan is to get in a good month's worth of mileage before attempting a half marathon in July, at home in Mumbai.