Running for Retrak: Week 12

I come from India and work as an IT analyst in Brussels. My job gave me a great opportunity to work in Brussels and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. This is my second stint in Brussels and I have been here for the past year, though I was here for a couple of years back in 2007.

Running was a distant dream for me a few months back! In my line of work, the only physical exercise I had was the trip to the coffee machine and maybe lifting the weight of the lunch tray. Apart from the occasional football at weekends or an infrequent gym visit, there was no exercise whatsoever. So, I had initially thought of running as a means to get fit and decided to register for the Brussels 20km to set an ambitious goal to start with. Then I came across an article about Retrak online, got curious and visited the Retrak website, which was inspiring. I was very impressed with the work done by them for the betterment of street children in Africa. Some of the kids’ stories on the site were truly moving. I was convinced that this simple idea to combine two things which I was passionate about was a no-brainer. I mailed Retrak hoping there were still places on the team and they were very prompt to reply and gracious enough to include me at the last minute.

I’ve never run for charity before. But I did do the 10 mile run in Antwerp recently just to check if my heart would stop beating after eight miles! Thankfully, the great atmosphere and the wonderful crowd were enough to get me over the line. I hope to do more such events in the future.

So far, training is going well, I just try to do a couple of medium to long runs every week and maybe a couple of days at the gym. I run alone at the moment but it would be great to run with others as well. Though my current pace may force me to run with a few octogenarians just so I can keep up!

I’ll certainly keep going once the 20km is over. A marathon is the ultimate goal, but that seems pretty distant now so I will take it one step at a time and see how it goes.

Badri and I are running the Brussels 20km at the end of May in aid of Retrak. You can sponsor us here and here. Thanks so much for all your support so far.