A Sprint and a Walk in the South Indian Countryside

Will you join me?

This morning, I waited until sunup to put on workout attire appropriate for rural India — tights to ankles, bra to keep the girls disciplined, kurta to cover upper arms and butt — wouldn’t want to scar some hapless lad for life by displaying too much old lady flesh. I tied on running shoes and was out the door by around 6 am. It’s sprinting day and I thought I’d take you along with me.

Turn left at the end of our lane, then right, and this is what we see:

Through the portal at the beginning of the pathway to the countryside. Today it’s muddy in spots, slippery. Past the stand of trees, there are a four milk cows staked outside a house to the right. And two calves. Keep going and you pass the tuberose and jasmine fields.

At first light, workers are in the fields harvesting flowers or poo, which are used in pooja, Hindu spiritual ceremonies that gets its name from, guess what, flowers. Flowers are a huge part of Indian daily life: for home altars; weddings; funerals.

Certain flowers, like jasmine, are strung and women wear lengths of them in their hair. Fragrant.

The word “poo” refers to flower in general; mallipoo is jasmine; rojappoo is rose and thamarai poo is a lotus flower.

Nice morning. Now that it’s October it’s cooling off some. It’s humid but probably not more than 75 degrees, shooting up to 90 by afternoon.

Past the poo fields, I turn right onto a paved, single lane country road, right again, and then left. And here’s the cloud clad Arunachala off to my right. That’s a cap or pileus cloud on top; I looked it up.

And overhead, a V formation of egrets, which reminds me of something I read about the V formation:

As each bird flaps its wings, it creates an updraft, lessening resistance for the birds following.

Whenever a bird falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to fly alone and quickly gets back into formation, taking advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front.

When the lead bird tires, it rotates back into the formation, and another bird flies in the point position.

The flock gets 70% greater range because they rotate as leader, taking turns breaking up the resistance.

There are probably some lessons in there for me.

For quite a distance, the road is straight, so this is where I begin my sprints. I’ll do ten of them, about 30 seconds each, with enough time in between for my heart rate to come down.

Can I actually call it sprinting? Along with my legs, my arms and upper body are all in, but honestly, it’s not much more than a jog. Still, they get my heart racing and that is what I’m aiming for. I’ve heard about high intensity interval training HIIT for years but until now, haven’t worked it into my workouts.

Give it your all like you’re being chased by a pack of hungry street dogs. I set my timer and off I go. I used to count but the timer goes faster if I repeat a mantra: Om Namo Narayani, or ho’oponopono: I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

Heart racing, my timer chimes and I slow down for a ways. With humidity at about 90%, my forehead and backs of hands bead up with sweat.

It takes me about 20 minutes to finish all ten sets, which gives me that delicious feeling of accomplishment.

When I reach Vediappanur Road, I turn left and continue. Today, I’ll do the route past the quarry, which means I’ll go by the pack of dogs that live at the corner where Vediappanur veers off to the right. Lately, they’ve been pretty calm, but sometimes, they scare me, growling, snarling, barking. Teeth bared.

I pick up three good sized rocks; there’s not that many up at that corner.

My aim isn’t true; I’ve never hit a dog. Just the act of bringing back my arm scares them off.

Onward.

Though I’ve thought it would be great to move to Bangalore, I’m not so sure.

I’d miss this countryside far too much.

Originally published at https://pattylaferriere.substack.com.