It’s everywhere, everywhere you may go. Like a hunter tracking the hunted, a predator following its prey, a serial killer stalking its victim, it lies in wait, ready to spring when you least expect it. Temptation waits patiently at every corner, ready to spring up on you, to trap you in its clutches. And if you’re a runner then hey you’ll have to face the brunt of it.
Face it, when you enter a mall, the Nikes and the Adidas, the Skechers and the ASICS, they call out to you, beckon you to come hider and check out what we have in store for you. So what starts as just browsing ends up into buying, what was meant to be window shopping turns into a fulls scale shopping. So you end up buying things you need not necessarily need. You end up buying an additional pair of shoes to add to the collection you already have at home, under the pretext you needed one for different terrains. You add to all your running gear which now exceeds even your daily clothes. And if you don’t see anything you like, then you grumble on the lack of variety for us poor men. And god forbid if you may find yourself in a Decathlon, then you’re like a kid in a candy shop, high on candy, a sugar rush, candy crush.
You promise yourself you’ll not race every week, you’ll spend time training, improving, getting physically and mentally stronger. But the lure of a scenic route, the temptation to add to your medal, to add to the bibs pinned on your soft board, a new profile pic, pics and posts to flaunt on FB and Instagram, and if nothing else then its peer pressure, you end up signing up for a race, and then the next one, till your running on every Sunday, a Serial Racer (if I could dare to borrow this term from Bijay, or was it Ram! Hey Prabhu main Buddha hote ja raha ho).
Ok, so you have signed for back-to-back races. You again promise yourself that you wouldn’t race, you would take it easy, no stress, no sweat, easy, peasy, enjoy run and go injury free. You even start in a nice and steady pace, soaking in the experience, cheering and smiling. But then someone who you know is slower than you, overtakes you, and then your inner competitor awakens, the inner beast is now awake. You start upping the ante as if to say “ruk abi tuje Bata who, how dare you overtake me.” So you find yourself racing, rather than taking it easy. You end up racing, what you promised you would not be tempted to do so. And this could even happen when your training.
And if the race was not well organised, didn’t live up to your lofty standards, the you crib and grumble, swear you will never run the race again. You go home, relax, open your mail, and there’s it is, another race wala mail, and it seems tantalising, something you’ve never done before, something your friends will be doing, and the serial racer takes over you and you sign up for another one.
So in the end you are left with a hole in your pocket from all those purchases and registrations, and a pray on your lip... “Dear Lord, lead us not into temptation, of sports apparel manufacturers, race organisers, peer pressure, serial racing, but deliver us from burning holes in our pockets, amen.”
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