Vinay Sharma – How running changed my life

Friday just went by, so did our latest edition of Terrace talks and we had a very special guest with us. It was Vinay Sharma, the CTO of Printo. He spoke on how running and sprinting had an impact on his life and how it can be related to life on the whole.

Vinay told us how he was introduced to running and what impact it had on his life once he started running.

It all started when his colleague asked him to participate in TCS 10K event that happens annually. Vinay happily agreed without a second thought and went to the event without prior training.

It was only after he completed his 1-hour 45-minute long run when he found himself fatigued and running a temperature then he understood how hard it is to run even such short distance.

But Vinay never gave up, rather he used this incident to his advantage. He enrolled into a gym, became regular and after three months ran a 25 KM event successfully in a span of 3 and a half hours.
In spite of successfully completing the event, he continued to feel like something wasn’t right  He started limping and when it did not stop for 3 months he decided it was time to see a doctor. The doctor was a sport’s specialist. He advised Vinay to meet him the next day at a park early in the morning. Next morning, the doctor introduced him to his, now mentor, Mr Santosh, who was a regular runner and used to train people for marathons and long runs. After meeting Mr Santosh, he was asked if he would run more such events and without a thought Vinay said yes and since then, he has never looked back.

This led to him training rigorously every month to run in every event possible. He started with 25K runs and year by year he ran 50K, 75K and 100K runs and today he targets to run 150K and shows unprecedented dedicated towards it. Today his continued dedication towards running has shown us, if you think you can do, you can actually do it, you just have to work towards it and be patient with the whole process. Running, to him, isn’t just a mere activity. It’s where he learnt how working towards something holds an unprecedented value, how hitting a roadblock doesn’t mean it’s the end, how motivation plays a massive role in nurturing us, how positivity is of utmost importance, etc. He emphasised on the life skills it teaches us and how we can apply it in everyday life.

The things that highlighted the talk and stuck with us were

• Endurance running can teach how to tackle mammoth tasks in life or in office. Take it one step at a time, break it down and handle it with a subtle pace rather than rushing into it.
• Before rushing to any life decisions, talk to everyone who might be affected by your decisions and think before you act.
• Once you have made a decision stick to it no matter what. Commit to it wholeheartedly.
  Be optimistic about it and never give up. It does not matter if you are slower than the rest, just keep going.

In short Vinay ended with something that sums up the whole experience into one sentence and really has changed his life entirely.

“Running is like any task in life, once you start it be persistent and achieve targets slowly and steadily, build your own pace and put in the needed effort”