Bennet, Sriram, Siddharth and I come from different walks of life. But last Sunday (30-Oct-2022), we had the walk of our life. A 70K walk for absolutely no reason. This was neither an organised event nor was there any prize to be won. Which makes makes us wonder if there was any reason other than to inflict pain on ourselves and give in to our masochistic tendencies. Or we are just plain crazy people. Most likely, both.
The whole idea was floated by Bennet during one our morning runs - should we do a multi-day walk to Chennai, about 350K from Bengaluru. It sounded so exciting that we all said we should definitely do it one day. The safety catch was "one day". This is the easiest way for all of us, humans, to not say "no". Yes, but some other time. And just hope that the "some day" just does not come at all. So, it was all good. However, Bennet is one perseverant individual. He kept reminding and I opined that we should downscale this. Maybe a trip to Mysore is more realistic than a multi-day trip to Chennai. Mysore is 120Km from Bangalore and possibly doable over a weekend. We then decided that we will try this after the Bengaluru Marathon. Once the Bengaluru marathon got over, the topic came again and as we were planning the logistics, it was apparent that a two day trip would be difficult to pull off. So, I again proposed that we change this to a one day trip, for possibly around 75K. Many folks expressed interest and we decided that we will do this on the 30th October. As the due day approached, a lot of folks expressed their inability to join and it was just left to the four of us to do this trip. We decided that we will go to Harohalli, on the Kanakapura road (about 33K) and come back. I have a humorous analogy on how all this panned out at the end of this blog.
We started the walk at 415AM on Sunday, after taking the customary picture. We just decided to follow the route shown by Google Maps rather than go with the main road. It was pretty pleasant start and we were in high spirits. The only catch was that we had to keep checking the maps from time to time as we were unfamiliar with the inner roads. After we crossed the NICE road flyover, the road suddenly became a trail. Even though it was still dark, we could figure out that it was picturesque and we were enjoying the experience. We were also amazed on how Google Maps has been able to identify this route. It would have been impossible to even fathom such a trail existed if one had not used it before. The whole place was magical. And true to its magic nature, the trail suddenly morphed into a solid wall. With thick vegetation on both sides, the trail disappeared completely. Clearly, even Google cannot keep up with the speed with which we bring up new structures. As a result, we had to wade through the vegetation, climb a few rocks, cross a stream (to call it a stream is a bit of euphemism) to get back to the proper roads. We got a liberal dose of excitement just before sunrise. During this unplanned steeplechase, our shoes and socks got totally wet with all the water from the grass and plants. What is the point of these endeavours without these extra challenges anyway.
The next stretch was through village roads. Excitement here was provided by all the stray dogs. They barked all the way to glory and though none of them actually attacked, they did enough to raise the heart rate by a few points. The village roads led us to Kaggalipura road. This is a scenic road that connects BG road with Kanakapura road and is a favourite among cyclists. The road is in great condition and has enough gradients to challenge the cyclists. As the road was smooth, Sriram and I decided to do some bare foot walking as the shoes and socks were totally soggy. We thought that walking with wet socks and shoes might cause blisters. This, in hindsight, was possibly not a good decision. Only the two of us ended up with blisters by the end of the day. As they say, the road to destruction is paved with good intention.
When we hit the Kanakapura road, we stopped for some nice idly vada. This was around 18K and we had taken about 4.5 hours. Then we proceeded to just walk on Kanakapura road. This was a road with a lot of traffic and with the sun coming out, this stretch was not as enjoyable as the previous one. To break the monotony, Siddharth decided that he will wish every passing cyclist "Good Morning" and observe how they greet back. As we were walking on the opposite side of the road, facing traffic, we could watch the BMTC buses to Banshankari passing every few minutes, testing our will even more. During this stretch, we asked ourselves why we are doing this crazy walk, instead of just chilling at home and watching Netfilx or the India-SA cricket match while sipping a good coffee. Over the course of the rest of the walk, we would have asked this question another 145 times. Ok, I made up that number, but you get the idea. That we were glad is an understatement when we reached Harohalli just before noon. A distance of 33K done in a little less than 8 hours.
After gulping down two tasty Masala dosas, we started our walk back. We decided that we will stick to Kanakapura road this time and not brave the trail, especially in the dark. Luckily, all of us were in good shape and so it was more of just putting in the time to get home. One thing that we did not realize that time (and thank God for it) was that, the return journey was almost a complete ascent. When we looked at Strava after the walk, it is apparent that from 40K to 65K (when we reached our apt complex), it was all up. So, armed with this ignorance, we started the walk back. Sriram regaled us with a lot of his stories, Bennet did some sprints in between and we just kept chugging along. As the time wore on, we were already earning for some good dose of sugar. As luck turned out, we just were unable to locate any Nandini outlets for some chocolate milk. When we finally spot one close to Kaggalipura, we felt unadulterated joy. Chocolate milk had never tasted so good. Once we got the sugar dose, Sid was so elated that he remarked that "We can do anything (that earlier looked like) impossible now".
The stretch between Kaggalipura and Konanakunte cross was clearly the most demanding. The elevation was brutal. We were starting to tire a bit. We were all hurting as well. Sriram and I had blisters in our foot. Bennet had a back pain and Sid was feeling stiffness in his legs. So, this was one determined walk. A real test of grit. When we stopped at A2B for one more bite, we were happy to have come so far. There was no turning back now, literally and figuratively.
When we reached our apartment complex, we had done 65.6K. When we started the walk, we thought we should do close to 75K. Then we decided to hand ourselves a 5K discount and finish at 70K. This meant that we had to walk the remaining stretch inside our apartment complex itself. I tried my luck to convince folks that we can stop early -- 66 is a good number, symmetric and all. No luck. Then I tried to propose 67K as 67 is a prime number. No luck. The problem with all these runners is that they are so strong mentally that borders into adamancy 😀 They said it is going to be 70K and nothing short. As this effort lasted 15 hours, Garmin died for all of us except for Sid. Since a run never happened if it does not exist in Strava, we were dependent on Sid to tag us. He jokingly warned us that tagging will happen only for folks when they complete 70K. As a result, we now had to walk about 3 laps just to complete 70K and get our Strava entry. The last stretch inside the apartment complex reminded us of this Mohammed Ali quote - "I don't count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.”
Sriram had ordered medals for us as a surprise gift and after we finished 70K, we just hung medals on each other to bring an end to the momentous day. It was close to 9PM, a good 17 hours since we started. 15 hours of moving time. Satisfying, to say the least.
There were a couple of things that dawned on me during this exercise. The first one is the renewed admiration for ultra marathoners, the kinds who do 100s of miles or 24 hours of running etc. Leave the physical challenges, I am more perplexed on what goes on their minds? How do they mentally prepare themselves? The second was that my respect for those slow marathoners who run/walk and finish marathons in 6.5, 7 hours rose by several notches. Running a marathon in under 4 hours is one thing. But to have the resilience and mental strength to walk and complete a marathon, often when the sun is shining in its full glory, is extremely commendable. Walking for a long time is way, way harder than running one (assuming that you are able to).
By the end of the walk we still were not able to find the answer to the "why" question that we had asked ourselves 100s of times. We probably do not even want to know the answer, if one existed at all. At the end, nothing else matters than just having gone through this journey.
We do not know if we will ever do another long walk like this again, but this one will be etched in our memories for lifetime.
July
Customer: We need you to undertake this project. It is called Project Chennai.
Us: It is easy peasy. We are busy with other things now, but we will do it later, say in October.
Mid October
Customer: Status please? Are we on track for October?
Us: We thought hard and long about this. For your use case, we need to do only Mysore. Chennai is an overkill. We have 10 people and will do by the month end.
Customer: OK.
End October
Customer: Status?
Us: We know the right thing for you. Mysore is too much of a cost. You should be happy with Kanakapura. We will have 7-8 people, do not worry.
Actual deadline
Customer: Are we set?
Us: Given the time pressure and availability, we are downgrading from Kanakapura to Kanakapura road and it will just be 4 people. That should be sufficient. We are 100% sure that this is the ideal solution for you.
Now, as software engineers, have we not heard this conversation before? 😀
