Taking Charge

I’m in Charge, with Nightcafe AI

Goa is hot. And humid.

Even in December, I don’t fancy running after 9 in the morning, and last November, when I swam for a relay team in the Goa Ironman*, conditions for the cyclists and runners were brutal. The 1.9 km swim is followed by a 90 km cycle ride, and I watched accomplished cyclists pedal like their legs had turned to lead. Most athletes didn’t finish their 21 km run until well after noon, when the sun was high, and the tarmac blazing. Eighty four cyclists exited the race, I was told, and I saw my friend Shridhar, normally swift of foot, shuffle into the last leg of the 21 km run.

Triathlons are not for the faint-hearted, or the ill-prepared. The Goa triathlon particularly not. 

Over the last decade, I have celebrated the mushrooming tribe of endurance athletes across India - at city marathons, and ultra-races in the mountains, in open-water swims and inter-city cycle races. It often worries me that enthusiasm and the desire to belong to the tribe, paraded on instagram handles, override adequate training and an appreciation of the effort involved. 

This year, the Goa Ironman was held in October. 

“How hot was it?” I messaged Kukreti, whom I met at the race last year.

“Couldn’t have been worse.” he texted back.

A 26 year-old participant collapsed five hundred meters before the finishing line, was taken to hospital, and died of multi-organ failure the next day. Two months later, the Goa Police charged the race organisers with culpable homicide and criminal conspiracy, based on a FIR filed in Ranchi by the young man’s father. To lose a child in the prime of life is devastating, almost incomprehensible. Your world loses its compass, the Universe seems unjust. Why me, you ask. In the search for meaning, the need to assign blame is all too human.

Perhaps there was some delay in getting the athlete to an ambulance, but I doubt it - based on what I’ve seen on the Goa course, and other city-based events, the volunteers are attentive, and emergency medical services on full alert, especially so close to the finish line, The law will take its own course, and I hope it is fair to all concerned, but the outcome I would like to see cannot come from the courts. 

It must come from the outdoor community - a shared learning that racing for seven or eight hours is not a trifle. It is not enough to be an adrenaline junkie, as the unfortunate athlete described himself on social media. You need to train, to prepare your body and your mind for the rigors of a long course. It takes time and the practice of listening to your body before you learn to pace yourself, to hydrate yourself, and to ingest enough nutrition. And it takes courage to accept that quitting is an option, before the finishing line, or even the starting line.

Earlier this year, my friend Mohit Oberoi, he of the Kali to Indus traverse, and a hundred other high intensity adventures, buzzed me the evening before a 65 km trail run in the Beaskund region above Manali:

“I’m opting out, babajee, the conditions are not great. There’s a missing runner.”

I thought he was joking about himself, about the fact that he would be missing from the starting line the next morning. But he was referring to a young man from Bangalore who had gone up to ‘recce’ the trail alone, and not yet returned by nightfall. Two days later, the search and rescue teams found his phone at the edge of a path, and his body in a stream several hundred feet below. Anything could have happened - the sudden sighting of a wild animal, or a stumble over an unseen rock, risks that are amplified if the path is wet and slick, you haven’t fully acclimatised, or the evening drop in temperature brings about hypothermia. 

We’ll never know much - beyond the tragic fact that a vital young life was lost.

I am the last person to suggest that young people should shun the sense of adventure. But I believe we need a much wider and deeper appreciation of managing risk in the outdoors. Nor would I place this responsibility upon governments and courts - they are hard pressed to deal with the most basic aspects of governance. But there are experienced people out there, the Mohit Oberois of the world, who have dealt with tough conditions, and the tougher decisions to hold back.

Most young athletes I meet are entirely focused on how to get stronger, finish faster, pose with that medal at the finishing line. More power to your elbow - but for your parents’ sake, if not for your own, learn to assess risk, and manage it. Above all, learn to say - ENOUGH.

Especially in a race, no one else can make that call for you. Endurance racing is an exercise in taking responsibility for your own life.