Annual sports day used to be a dreaded time when Bandra-based (below) Akshada Patil was a school-goer. Now, in 2024, the 27-year-old enjoys her early hour runs in the city, as she leads groups of new runners to finish 5k runs every alternate week.

“Our 10th community run earlier this month saw 110 participants,” she beams. Running, just like Patil’s other life decisions, began impulsively, as she signed up for 42k in the annual Tata Marathon. “I had just started running short distances before lockdown — about two or three kilometers. Signing up for 42k was obviously a huge deal. I didn’t realise this until a friend knocked sense into me,” she chuckles. So, she decided to begin with the Navy Half Marathon (21k). “Training wasn’t easy. I was making all the beginner’s mistakes like sprinting and ending up getting tired easily. I signed up for Guided Runs with Nike, and that’s when my real journey with running began,” she recalls, “As I made friends in the running community, I noticed how the majority of the participants are 35 and above. Many of them started running because they now realised the health benefits of doing so. But it made me wonder what kept people from my age group from showing up at these marathons.”