The Final Corner
One step forward.
“Wait, where do I pin this, exactly?”*
Harish held up his numbered sheet in confusion. He smiled politely as a guy in an organizer t-shirt and track shorts pinned it on his torso for him. This was the first time he’d ever registered for a marathon, and needless to say, he was excited about this. Everywhere around him, he saw Sportsfete Organizers running around and wondered if they had gotten any sleep at all in the past few days. They all looked so dedicated, so invested in their jobs, that it was quite eerie that they had the energy to do anything else at all. His CTs had just gotten over and he needed something to lift his spirits up- the Marathon seemed like an easy way to do that. All the talk it was getting about being the most inclusive and crowd-pulling event in Sportsfete had finally gotten through to him.
He tightened his shoelaces and put on his earphones as the participants gathered at the start line. People were everywhere- it was like the entire college was here. He was getting squished by the crowd, and he didn’t hear the gunshot over the loud noise of the group of people next to him. People around him started to move, and he pushed and pulled as he struggled to make his way through the opening bustle and onto the main road. And just like that, the Sportsfete Marathon 2018 had begun.
Harish had never been considered athletic in school. He had never signed up for the athletics team, because he thought it would be a waste of time to try. He had never taken up a feat like this, and he had no hope of finishing it, but he knew that he wouldn’t care as much if he didn’t finish it either. The hype created and the excitement built for this event gave him a reason to try it out.
He wasn’t a fool. He knew that he had to start slow, though he could only barely resist the urge to sprint, what with all the energy he had. He took long strides as he turned around the corner and headed down the straight long road that led to the Jade ground. He had all the energy in the world, and he was going to use it slowly. By the time he got to the shopping complex road, people were already tired and were taking a pit-stop at the water bottle stand, and it looked like these people wouldn’t try to finish at all. It would have been very easy for him to join them, but he diverted his attention towards the more active runners and continued to move on with an intention of staying motivated as long as his body can cope with.
As expected, things kept getting harder for Harish towards the end of the second lap and the beginning of the final one. He noticed how his friends who had split with him after the first quarter were now reunited but no words were spoken between them. Not because they didn’t want to, but because they couldn’t. Their exhaustion didn’t let them speak.
When the commentators at the sidelines announced that the first place had been secured, it had been 56 minutes since the start. That meant that he only had 28 minutes left to finish, but he was only on his second lap. Harish was not going to let it end like this. He picked up his pace and put more energy into each step, and he realized that running alongside him, was a freckled face that felt familiar somehow.
It was the boy in the organizer shirt who had pinned the marathon bib on him earlier, and it looked like he’d joined the marathon too. Harish made eye contact with him and immediately turned away. Both of them ran parallel to each other till the end of their second lap when the other boy took one of his earphones off and smiled. “Harish, was it?”
Somehow, having someone run alongside him gave him a sense of competition that he hadn’t had before. He would dart past a crowd of people, and only when he felt good about how fast he was going, Aditya would catch up to him, maybe dart past him. Harish would then proceed to run faster, and before they knew it, the two of them were at the final corner of the last lap. They were past the Orion road when the Organizing Committee member at the sidelines announced that there were only 5 minutes left for them to finish the Marathon.
Chest heaving, his lungs almost giving up on him, Harish put every bit of the energy he had remaining and mustered some more when his knees almost buckled. He ran the final stretch, almost blacking out as he zoomed past the people who had given up at the last minute. He felt determined- he did care if he didn’t finish the Marathon now. It meant much more to him than it ever had that he should complete what he started. His insides screaming, he made it past the finish line.
He went up to his department seniors, who were all on the floor, completely exhausted. He almost went up to them when he spotted Aditya nearby, almost flat out lying on the road. He walked on over to start a conversation, but Aditya said something first.
“Would have been nice if we had finished on time, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“What did we run all of that for, then?”
And as he looked around him, his department and classmates laughing together, and then at Aditya, on the floor, drenched in sweat but smiling regardless, Harish realized the answer to that question.
This year, Sportsfete urges you to not just read, double tap and share stories and posts about Amazon fires or inundated coasts, but reach out, take action and make a difference.
Run the Sportsfete Marathon. Spread the word.
Create a climate of change.
*This article was written by Gokul Krishna and edited by Syed Maaiz.
