Running the LimeTray Way
The story of how a bunch of (almost?) techies finished a marathon
Last year I had an idea that it would be cool if some of us colleagues could connect over interests aside from our work. I was interested in running and fitness, so I got together a group of 10-odd people who would run marathons together etc. By the time the first scheduled marathon approached, the group had trickled down to just two of us — but we were quite passionate about it! We were both really happy with the progress we were making and decided we wanted to inculcate it as a habit.
The new year started with a lot of resolutions from everyone in the company and we didn’t want to get left behind. We decided it would be cool that since it’s year 2017, both of us together will run for 2017km over the course of the year — of course we quickly realised that running a 1000-odd kilometres per person in a year was easier said than done. In a month you can stretch to 80km which, if you’re consistent can take you to 960km in a year — and this is assuming there are no issues at all! But we had already taken on the challenge so we thought we could power through — to keep ourselves motivated, we set short term goals of running marathons regularly and collecting the medals as milestones.
Everything was rosy and according to plan for the first 3 weeks. Three months down the line, we realised we’ve overcommitted and wouldn’t able to complete the target by ourselves without quitting our jobs and only focus on running — it was really hard to run 80 to 100 kms every month. So like all other projects at LimeTray, we used a smart hack to solve the problem. We went to our team for help (literally hoping to beg for some extra legs (just like our butter chicken)). We hoped that people would be inspired, motivated or even just curious about what we were doing, and maybe decide to tag along!
So we told them we were running marathons and there was one coming up in Amritsar. If anyone was interested we would be happy to go as a team and help them out if they were beginners. Luckily since I knew the city well, I promised them that we’d turn it into a fun road-trip, all about food and travel and just a bit about running. We managed to get a little group together and drove to Amritsar for the marathon — some of us in it to actually run and a few just tagged along for the roadtrip.
When we landed up there on the day, ALL of us ended up running and we all finished whatever distance we attempted!
Ever since, four of us have become a regular running group now (Laxmi, Varshul, Harshit & Arjun) and we’re making sure to run a marathon each month, be it a 10k — and almost every quarter we plan to do a half marathon as well, with the plan that towards the end of a year or so, we will be in a place where we could run one full marathon 42k. We make sure to try and run marathons together as much as possible, and eat out after to celebrate the sacrifice of all the lost muscles and calories. We track each other on Runkeeper as a group to see where we are and how close to our goal. All of this keeps us motivated and keeps us together as a group. Over this period of time we realized one thing -
What can kill you when alone, can be killed as a team
(Please don’t re-use this until I get this copywritten)
I hope more people can be a part of this or the other activities that employees have started. It helps us connect over more than just work and even make new friends.
-Arjun Ahuja
