1000 Kilometres and Counting

I ran my first serious kilometres in 2013. Then I stopped. For ten years. Life happened — career transitions, building a company, the thousand things that fill the space running used to occupy. By 2024, the only running I did was between meetings.

In December 2024, I put my shoes back on. No plan, no goal. Just a run. Twelve months later, the Garmin said 1000 kilometres.

The Restart

Coming back to running after a decade is humbling. Your brain remembers a pace your legs can't deliver. The first few weeks were ugly — gasping through 3K runs that felt like marathons. But there's something about running that rewards consistency over talent.

What turned a restart into a habit wasn't a plan — it was people. Friends on Strava who give kudos on your 5K at 6 AM. Friends who show up at the park and say "let's add another loop." Friends who text you when you haven't logged a run in a week — "everything okay?" That accountability is worth more than any training plan.

Some of them are colleagues, some are people I've never met in person. But we run together in the way that matters — sharing routes, pacing each other through long runs, celebrating PRs. When you see someone knock out a half marathon on a Tuesday morning, it makes your excuses feel smaller. Some of my best product ideas came at kilometre four, running alongside a friend who asked the right question.

Building the Base

By mid-2025, I was averaging about 100 kilometres a month. Four to five runs a week, mostly easy-paced, a long run on Sundays. I learned to respect the easy zone. In 2013, I ran every run hard. In 2025, I learned that 80% of your runs should feel conversational.

I added weight training and yoga to the routine — partly for injury prevention, partly because a CEO who can't touch his toes is a cliché I wanted to avoid.

The Kolkata 25K

December 21, 2025. Kolkata. 6 AM start. 15°C — perfect running weather.

The route looped through the city — past Alipore, along Chetla, skirting the Victoria Memorial gardens. Kolkata at dawn is eerily quiet, which is useful when you're negotiating with your legs at kilometre 20.

Final numbers: 25.28 km in 2:54:24. Average pace 6:54/km. Not fast, not trying to be. The goal was distance, not speed. The half marathon split came in at 2:24:01, which told me the training was working — I negative-split the back half despite the extra distance.

The 2,072 calories burned also told me I'd earned the biryani that evening.

Running and Thinking

People ask what I think about when I run. The honest answer: Haskell.

I turned the Haskell programming book into a podcast using Google NotebookLM. Two AI hosts discussing monads, type classes, and functional composition while I'm doing tempo intervals on the treadmill. It sounds absurd, but it works. The rhythmic cadence of running pairs surprisingly well with abstract concepts. Something about the elevated heart rate makes pattern matching click.

Other days it's MIT lectures, history podcasts, or nothing at all. The long Sunday runs are usually silent — just breathing and the sound of shoes on road. Those are meditative. The solo runs are where the big decisions settle. Not where you make them, but where the noise fades enough that the right answer becomes obvious.

Running taught me something about building companies: the people who finish aren't the fastest starters. They're the ones who learned to love the boring middle kilometres.

Recovery and What's Next

January 2026 and early February have been recovery months. Low mileage, more yoga, letting the legs remember they're not machines. After a year of consistent volume, the smart move is backing off before building up again.

Next up: the Auroville Half Marathon. Auroville's trails are a world apart from Bangalore's roads — red earth, canopy shade, and the quiet of a place that was designed for introspection. It feels like the right race for a comeback from recovery.

The longer-term goal is a full marathon. No timeline. The decade-long break taught me that fitness isn't a project with a deadline — it's a practice. You show up, you run, you rest, you repeat. The kilometres accumulate.

Why It Matters

I'm a better CEO because I run. That's not motivational-poster wisdom — it's practical. Running teaches you to manage energy, not just time. It teaches you that discomfort is temporary and that consistency beats intensity. It gives you two hours a day where no one can Slack you.

The 1000 kilometres weren't the goal. They were the proof that showing up works.

See you at Auroville. I'll be the one listening to a Haskell podcast.

Follow the running journey on Strava.