Papa, running and the shoes-story

The good news for the day is that papa got a promotion. He now is a scale three officer. The bad news for the day is that papa got a promotion. Now that he is a scale three officer, he will be sent to a bigger branch, away from home. He works in a public sector bank. The new branch could be anywhere, definitely away from the house that he built few years back. There is quite a possibility that his new posting could even be in a different state altogether. Let me not speculate. Let me just wait. For the next news.

The weather here is so perfect (not just in the morning but during any time of the day). The economist, who was working in Bhopal before she was sent here, keeps telling me it’s humid here in Bhuv. I keep telling her that she should see Chennai. 😛

My fourth day in Bhuv. Hmm. I finally ran. Forty minutes. Must have covered a distance of about 8k. Yesterday, when I had some free time, I browsed through the Google map of Bhubaneswar, located my guest house on the map, and traced a route for myself on the National Highway no. 5 (NH5). My guest house is very close to NH5.

When I finally ran today, I ended up exceeding the marked route. Why? Because I had given myself a total running of time of 40 minutes, but ended up crossing my marked boundary in only about 12-15 minutes. I guess I had miscalculated the distance on Google map. So I just kept running away from the guest house after reaching NH5 till I had finally run a good twenty 20 minutes and then returned in almost the same time, completing a total of 40 minutes of running time.

I so want to buy some cool gadget that tells me my speed and all that when I run. These running accessories should come one by one. Thank God, I finally have at least my own pair of running shoes. If you have been a regular reader, and have kept a track of my running escapades, you might be surprised to know that I got myself shoes only after coming back from Andaman, that is in June. Papa gifted them to me after having seen me run 10k in Andaman with his own eyes. 🙂 Before that, I simply used to put on any available pair lying in the hostel-wing and hit the road in insti. The wing was always full of shoes, some new, some discarded. Man, I have run so much on borrowed pair of shoes that now when I get into my new Reebok, I almost feel like a King. A prince may be.

In this context of borrowed shoes, PD, a branch-cum-hostel junior and a good friend deserves a special mention. They were PD’s shoes that I used for a long long time. I never knew that they were his when I started running long distance back in September last year. I always thought they belonged to Tak, my batchmate cum hostel mate, who had a room next to PD. Every time I would cross Tak in those shoes, I tried my best to walk past him as fast as possible, before he could realize that I was in his shoes. And every time I walked pass PD, I would only smile at him and he would smile back at me. I never knew why I always got such a broad smile in response.

It was only after a few good months, and I guess some time in the beginning of this year, when PD finally told me, smiling, that they were his. I was so shit embarrassed, but smiled back. From next week, I could be seen in another junior’s shoes. 🙂  Thanks PD for triggering my running career. And wherever those shoes are, tell them that I miss them.