Long distances, planned properly

The Deccan Cliffhanger is the closest thing India has to a proving ground for ultra-distance cycling: 646 kilometres, Pune to Goa, ridden straight through with a support crew and an unforgiving time limit.

What an ultra actually tests is not fitness. It is the quality of your planning under fatigue — nutrition timing, crew handoffs, when to push and when to protect the legs for the climbs still ahead. It is the same skill as running an operation, compressed into thirty-odd hours.

Beyond organised racing, most of the riding has been self-planned: routes chosen, logistics solved, and then simply ridden.

Vadodara – Kutch – Vadodara crosses one of the emptiest landscapes in western India and back. The Sabarmati-to-Dandi Salt Ride retraces the route of the 1930 Salt March — history under the wheels rather than in a book.

Triathlon is the counterweight to ultra-cycling. Where an ultra is a single sustained effort, a triathlon is three disciplines that each punish neglect of the other two. Training for both forces a schedule that has to be planned properly or it simply falls apart.

Working with Saucony meant representing the brand to a running community I was already part of, which is the only way that role works honestly.

The Vadodara Saucony Run was the practical side of it: an organised event, built from the same playbook as everything else — route, permissions, volunteers, timing, and getting several hundred people home safely.