Running for reel or real?

Vinita Jain has been running marathons barefoot for the past eight years

Once a solitary, quiet pursuit, running has now become something else entirely. It is now an aesthetic. A lifestyle badge. A grid-friendly ritual of sunrise shoes, post-run selfies and medal shots. With that shift has come a strange tension between running as a deeply personal act and running as a public performance. The recent Tata Mumbai Marathon made that tension impossible to ignore. For many seasoned runners, the marathon route was familiar territory. For others, it doubled as a content opportunity. Phones came out mid-run. Runners stopped abruptly to record videos. Plastic bottles were flung aside despite bins just metres away. Some participants were even seen relieving themselves by the roadside because washrooms were overwhelmed. What should have been a shared endurance experience often became chaotic, disturbing runners who had trained for months to be there.

For Shreyas Lama running at Tata Marathon was a first but found people at the run behaving irresponsibly

Ironman triathlete and sports nutritionist Nikhil Kapur remembers a very different running culture. He began running seriously in college, and later encountered marathoners in 2008 - back when the idea of running 42 kilometres still felt niche in India. "Marathons weren't that famous back then," he says. "People were running because they enjoyed it." Running has always been instinctive to Kapur. Over the years, distances have changed with age and work, but the reason hasn't. "Running completely de-stresses me," he says. "There have been moments where I needed to make sense of issues and running offered me that space."

He sees the commercial boom around running as largely positive. Sponsorships, prize money and visibility matter, especially for professional athletes. The problem begins when performance becomes secondary to perception. "The moment a sport goes mainstream, people start experimenting with it for visibility," he says. "There's performance anxiety. People want to show others what they're doing." At mass events like the Mumbai Marathon, that anxiety plays out physically.

Delhi-based dentist Vinita Jain, 51, began running in 2012, inspired by friends. Two years later, she ran her first half marathon. By 2017, she had entered the world of ultra-running which is any run with a distance of over 50 kilometres. "I've never looked back since," she says. Even an injury in 2016 didn't stop her. Under medical guidance, she shifted to barefoot running, inspired by the book Born to Run and ultrarunner Sanjeev Chhabra. Today, she speaks of the joy of feeling "the connection between my feet and the earth". For Jain, running is fiercely personal. A dentist, mother of two and a working professional, she craved something that belonged only to her. "I was missing out on something that I would do for myself. Running is my escape to being me," she says.

As an Ironman Triathlete, Nikhil Kapur sees commer- cialisation of running positively, advising runners to look ahead and ignore the distractions

She has watched the running ecosystem change dramatically over the past decade. "When I started, it wasn't a big scene in India. There were fewer groups and fewer brands," she says. "It was more about the joy of running." Today, running is more organised, more serious, and more visible. That visibility has consequences. "The downside is people blindly following the bandwagon," Jain says. "They set targets their bodies aren't ready for." She points to frequent reports of young runners collapsing due to heart issues. "We are not paying enough attention to medical guidance, especially for people above 40."

Shreyas Lama, 22, who ran his first Tata Mumbai Marathon this year, saw running as both a refuge and a reset. He began running consistently about a year and a half ago while trying to quit unhealthy habits. "It was the most accessible thing," he says. "If you have ten or fifteen minutes, you can just go out and be by yourself."

He runs without music, treating it as a meditative space. For someone who consistently posts about his running on social media, Lama sees both sides of the sport's social media boom. "This type of commercialisation happens in every sport. There was a time when basketball became so famous people started wearing basketball accessories just as a fashion statement," Lama explains. Posting progress helps him stay accountable. It has also encouraged friends to start running themselves. "At least 15 to 20 people I know picked it up because I spoke about it or posted about it," he says. But he is wary of what he witnessed at the marathon. "People were really making a mess on the streets. I think the organisation did a great job. Tata as an organisation did a great job to organise it, but people were very irresponsible. People were stopping mid-run to make videos. Throwing bottles on the road. It affected others' experience."

Speaking from years of experience, Kapur views this as part of sport itself. "Running teaches you resilience and patience. You learn to block distractions and keep moving." And it has always been that simple. One foot in front of the other. Breath, rhythm, repetition. As it grows more visible, the challenge is not to lose that simplicity. Trends will pass and algorithms will move on. What remains is the road, the body, and the reasons people began running in the first place.