Reaching a milestone, running strong

Two months after a hysterectomy operation, this Nungambakkam resident wins a half-marathon in the senior veterans-women category

Nungambakkam resident Kavitha Shanmugham’s birthday this May was more celebratory than usual. One could imagine the customary greetings being spun out longer and more effusive than usual. And the gifts probably came with price tags more impressive than ever before. Kavitha had reached a milestone — her fiftieth birthday — running, one might add.

But the greatest gift for this milestone birthday had been kept on hold — and nobody had a clue about it. It was not just a gift, but a fitting guerdon for years of persistent effort. And it arrived two months later, on July 21, when she left the competition well behind her, in the senior veteran-women’s half-marathon. The contest was part of the larger annual Dream Runners Half Marathon (DRHM), conducted every third Sunday of July to usher in the post-summer running season.

Kavitha’s timing was noticed in running circles — two hours and 15 minutes — not a record in the category, but impressive nevertheless. Kavitha says, “This is however not my personal best — which is two hours eight minutes. That does not take anything away from winning this half-marathon: this victory would be etched in my memory for the circumstances in which it arrived. It was my comeback run. Only two months before this half-marathon, I underwent a hysterectomy operation.”

Kavitha is a regular with Run T Nagar Run (a chapter of Dream Runners) following its schedules through the week with the conscientiousness of a studious student.

“I am a late entrant to marathon running. In 2015, I did not know what a marathon was,” says the homemaker. An enabling atmosphere at home (her husband Easwar would join the Dream Runners chapter along with her) meant she found out what it was, not superficially, but from start to finish line.

“At school, I was an athlete, competing in 100 metres and 200 metres, but that was not going to compensate for the long gap, nearly three decades,” says Kavitha.

She followed the rigorous training regimen at RTR; she still does.