First published in ‘The Rundown’, January 2021. Now put together for #100DayChallenge by Sandeep Mall.

This is the first in the series on how to get back to being active again in this Covid has broken us down more psychologically than physically. It’ll yet again be GOYA (Get Off Your Arse) that’ll help us reclaim our true self. No one else is going to come & fix anything for us. We’ve got to become our own best friend.

That was the big lesson that Covid-19 reinforced on me. To be still, silent, and myself.

For the last seven-eight months, I was at the lowest of my psychological abyss. To make matters more interesting, the same happened to me physically courtesy COVID-19. Death doesn’t bother me much. I couldn’t have possibly prepared for the topspin life served to me. More than physical, it further broke me psychologically and then shredded me into the tiniest of pieces. Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, even if applied to humans, would have failed to fix anything because emotionally, I had been disintegrated into the smallest of particles, as if Thanos had just snapped his fingers. 

All of this was necessary, though. I’ve been saying that I needed to restart in life for a while, but for that, I first needed to become one with nature dust. The Vipassana that I had always wanted to do but couldn’t because of my supposed busy schedule was now totally on. I was connecting with myself like never before. I was free-falling like no one’s business, expecting to hit rock bottom so I could bounce back. But I learned, what I had been preaching wasn’t too off the mark. I had been resisting too much, fighting to get back up, forgetting that the whole mind-body gets engaged when one resists something, stopping you from being your natural self. But when you let go, not fighting, you start to float, levitating, letting go of your ego. And nothing seems to matter.

It started with an altered smell for the first 3-4 days. I learned that it was a symptom of Covid-19, but I also how powerful the mind can be and the games it can play with you. I thought I was a hypochondriac because I knew too much. A severe headache followed this. Now my antennae went up, and I immediately sought help. I reached out to a friend who specializes in Internal Medicine. He told me that it looked like Covid-19 even though my test came out negative. 

That is one lesson we all need to keep in our minds. False-positive refers to when you test positive, but it is not. The same applies to a false negative. These happen because of poor specimen collection by untrained technicians, improper transport of the specimen, labs with poor testing equipment and procedures. If you have the symptoms, treat yourself as positive and then take all the precautions. If you don’t have the symptoms, but you think you were exposed to someone with Covid-19, yet treat yourself as positive and again, be careful.

For the same reason, even though I tested negative, but because I had the symptoms, I voluntarily self quarantined in my home-office, so my family wouldn’t be affected by the dreaded viral infection. For a month, I just locked myself in. For the first week, my whole body hurt. I had a fever that would not settle down. I was vomiting all the time, not able to keep anything down. I was miserable. But unlike earlier times when I had fallen sick, I now had no one sitting next to me pampering me. 

The second week I felt fragile. I just wanted to quit on all the medication, but then I knew how this disease could take a turn for the worse. Luckily I again tested negative. For the next two weeks, I was being super cautious and still stayed quarantined. It wasn’t easy. 

Throughout this time, I realized that I am insignificant, but at the same time, the most significant. Some friends randomly asked how I was, but most didn’t even know, not that they would have massaged and called me every day. I would have been and am the same with others too. The ones who were the most affected were my immediate family. That realization was crucial because we end up paying attention in the wrong places. It reminded me of Rocky V, where Rocky spends a lot of his time on the upcoming boxer at his son’s expense, who ends up getting ignored. If you haven’t watched that movie, you’ve got to. 

Please don’t get me wrong. I have some fantastic friends. I have no hard feelings against any friends because they didn’t do anything differently from the way I would have been. I am just stating facts without being emotional here. If I were to die then, friends would have posted on Facebook that I was a decent guy or some such thing. And on the same day shared some joke and other random things too. That’s how we all have become. But to my family, life would have been affected majorly. And to me, I wouldn’t have mattered at all because I would just be gone. No clue where. If anywhere. 

It helped me to put into practice something I had been preaching to my patients and friends for the last few years, be your best friend. For way too long, I had been searching for that elusive best friend outside. I should have been looking inside. If you think about it, if you don’t value yourself enough, why would anyone else oblige? It starts with you. And then it all comes together. 

For that, I needed to get up and reclaim myself. Before I fell sick, I put together online squats and fitness challenges to move folks from all walks of life and all kinds of fitness levels. As part of the Squat Squad and Squats Uni-V-Arse challenge, I had managed to do a thousand of them. I was in top shape. And now I was scared and unable to do even two. Leave alone proper squats; it was a challenge to sit down on a chair and get up immediately. 

By now, stories of long Covid and cardiac impact were coming out. Even though I was lucky to have mild symptoms, that was playing on my mind too. I felt fragile climbing even a single flight of stairs. In February, I ran 20 km on ten consecutive days, each time in under 100 minutes. 

How was I going to get to my previous fitness levels before motivating others to get moving? 

I realized that it was going to be a slow and steady journey. There was no other way around it. Now, you would not expect this coming from the man who has been putting together arguably the world’s most challenging and cruelest race for the last decade, La Ultra - The High. You need to understand that the reason for our success in Ladakh has been keeping the basics in place and at all times keeping safety first. 

Being a Sports-Exercise Medicine doctor who is an advocate of Get Off Your Arse, I recognize that physical activity, exercises, and sports will play a vital role in addressing Covid. But that doesn’t mean that we become oblivious to the pandemic. Then how do we go about it?

I want you all to stay active, do your exercises and run or maybe even cycle, but at all times, maintain these three basics precautions. At all times in public, please wear your face masks, wash your hands with water and soap repeatedly, and maintain social distancing. When you are running in groups, please maintain 6 feet gap between each other, avoid group photos, and definitely no handshakes. 

You might want to argue with me, but let me be brutally honest with you. No, we don’t know enough about this virus, the infection it causes, and how it spreads. But I would rather be cautious and wrong than someone who, in his bravado and trying to prove himself right, gets hundreds and thousands of people killed.  

Being active is important for both mental and physical well-being, to improve your immunity, and more so when you have co-morbid conditions like chronic diseases - Diabetes, heart diseases, cancer, etc. This recommendation comes with a word of caution. I would suggest that if you have had symptoms of Covid, please get back slowly to your exercises but slowly. Don’t be in a rush to get back your pre-Covid fitness levels. Keep the intensity of your speed workouts low and your running sessions not as long as you were earlier doing. The same applies to your strength training and other exercise sessions. Please keep the intensity low. Please don’t look for your personal bests during these times. When your intensity of exercise is high, and you haven’t rested enough, your immunity will be lower. This could lead to higher chances of you getting infected with Covid and its symptoms appearing. At times not following this simple advice could be the difference between life and death. 

It is a good time to pick up exercises for people who have previously been inactive but keep the progression slow. When you exercise, your rest in between sessions is important to recover fully and gain the most. I have been organizing 33 days Run & Bee camps where I try to get beginners or even season runners to connect with themselves. It is important for us all to realize that running is barely about running the way most people look at it. It is about getting to know yourself better, becoming better than what you were yesterday. In this Covid era, it is more important than ever to do this. A good by-product is that people become better at running too. But again, it is important to keep focusing on one baby step at a time, working on the foundation, something today's instant gratification society doesn't have enough time for.

The most important thing to understand is that you need to take ‘care’ but not be ‘scared.’ There needs to be that delicate balance. Humans generally suffer from ‘immortal-till-I-die’ syndrome, but during these times, we need to be immensely careful as our bravado can kill our loved ones too. But then again, we need to get our loved ones to move too. So let’s all pledge to spread our healthy infectious habit of being active, but with caution.

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi we had put together Dandi March in it’s new avatar, a 25 days walk-run commitment, in which participants from 175 cities from 25 countries took part. This time the cause wasn’t the oppressive British salt law or freedom, but YOU.

Most people loved discovering their true self. Now by popular demand we have decided to take it further. Starting from 14th April you have to commit to one of the five distances to be done over 33 days:

• 111 km, i.e. at an average 3.36 km a day

• 222 km, i.e. at an average 6.73 km a day

• 333 km, i.e. at an average 10.09 km a day

• 444 km, i.e. at an average 13.45 km a day

• 555 km, i.e. at an average 16.82 km a day

Not that you have to do the same distance every day and not take a break over these 33 days. Details are coming out soon.

Keep miling and smiling.

(Main photo by Raul Varzar on Unsplash)