Running for reel or real?

Once a solitary quiet pursuit running has now become something else entirely It is now an aesthetic A lifestyle badge A gridfriendly ritual of sunrise shoes postrun selfies and medal shots With that shift has come a strange tension between running as a deeply personal act and running as a public performance The recent Tata Mumbai Marathon made that tension impossible to ignore For many seasoned runners the marathon route was familiar territory For others it doubled as a content opportunity Phones came out midrun Runners stopped abruptly to record videos Plastic bottles were flung aside despite bins just metres away Some participants were even seen relieving themselves by the roadside because washrooms were overwhelmed What should have been a shared endurance experience often became chaotic disturbing runners who had trained for months to be thereFor Shreyas Lama running at Tata Marathon was a first but found people at the run behaving irresponsiblyIronman triathlete and sports nutritionist Nikhil Kapur remembers a very different running culture He began running seriously in college and later encountered marathoners in 2008 mdash back when the idea of running 42 kilometres still felt niche in India ldquoMarathons werenrsquot that famous back thenrdquo he says ldquoPeople were running because they enjoyed itrdquo Running has always been instinctive to Kapur Over the years distances have changed with age and work but the reason hasnrsquot ldquoRunning completely destresses merdquo he says ldquoThere have been moments where I needed to make sense of issues and running offered me that spacerdquoHe sees the commercial boom around running as largely positive Sponsorships prize money and visibility matter especially for professional athletes The problem begins when performance becomes secondary to perception ldquoThe moment a sport goes mainstream people start experimenting with it for visibilityrdquo he says ldquoTherersquos performance anxiety People want to show others what theyrsquore doingrdquo At mass events like the Mumbai Marathon that anxiety plays out physicallyDelhibased dentist Vinita Jain 51 began running in 2012 inspired by friends Two years later she ran her first half marathon By 2017 she had entered the world of ultrarunning which is any run with a distance of over 50 kilometres ldquoIrsquove never looked back sincerdquo she says Even an injury in 2016 didnrsquot stop her Under medical guidance she shifted to barefoot running inspired by the book Born to Run and ultrarunner Sanjeev Chhabra Today she speaks of the joy of feeling ldquothe connection between my feet and the earthrdquo For Jain running is fiercely personal A dentist mother of two and a working professional she craved something that belonged only to her ldquoI was missing out on something that I would do for myself Running is my escape to being merdquo she saysAs an Ironman Triathlete Nikhil Kapur sees commer cialisation of running positively advising runners to look ahead and ignore the distractionsShe has watched the running ecosystem change dramatically over the past decade ldquoWhen I started it wasnrsquot a big scene in India There were fewer groups and fewer brandsrdquo she says ldquoIt was more about the joy of runningrdquo Today running is more organised more serious and more visible That visibility has consequences ldquoThe downside is people blindly following the bandwagonrdquo Jain says ldquoThey set targets their bodies arenrsquot ready forrdquo She points to frequent reports of young runners collapsing due to heart issues ldquoWe are not paying enough attention to medical guidance especially for people above 40rdquoShreyas Lama 22 who ran his first Tata Mumbai Marathon this year saw running as both a refuge and a reset He began running consistently about a year and a half ago while trying to quit unhealthy habits ldquoIt was the most accessible thingrdquo he says ldquoIf you have ten or fifteen minutes you can just go out and be by yourselfrdquoHe runs without music treating it as a meditative space For someone who consistently posts about his running on social media Lama sees both sides of the sportrsquos social media boom ldquoThis type of commercialisation happens in every sport There was a time when basketball became so famous people started wearing basketball accessories just as a fashion statementrdquo Lama explains Posting progress helps him stay accountable It has also encouraged friends to start running themselves ldquoAt least 15 to 20 people I know picked it up because I spoke about it or posted about itrdquo he says But he is wary of what he witnessed at the marathon ldquoPeople were really making a mess on the streets I think the organisation did a great job Tata as an organisation did a great job to organise it but people were very irresponsible People were stopping midrun to make videos Throwing bottles on the road It affected othersrsquo experiencerdquoSpeaking from years of experience Kapur views this as part of sport itself ldquoRunning teaches you resilience and patience You learn to block distractions and keep movingrdquo And it has always been that simple One foot in front of the other Breath rhythm repetition As it grows more visible the challenge is not to lose that simplicity Trends will pass and algorithms will move on What remains is the road the body and the reasons people began running in the first place