Runner of the fortnight - Neelakantan, Run TNagar Run
For most people, ‘retirement’ means a relaxed life of giving rest to the tired legs. However, here is someone who decided to be more active than ever. Neelakantan, a charted accountant and company secretary professional with high flying organisations like SpiceJet Airlines and Sun TV, hit the runway after retirement. Yes, he started running and participated in his first event at the age of 59.
A regular walker all his life and a body builder during his college days at AM Jain College (Chennai), Neelakantan was always convinced about the benefits of regular exercise regimen. However, at the peak of his career, due to excess work schedule and travel, he had to miss all that. As a result, he gained abnormal weight along with BP and acidity. That was certainly a no-no for someone who was an athlete during school days (Wesley High School, Royapettah, RKM schools, T Nagar) and a cricketer later.
As he was planning his post-retirement exercise activities, his Bangalore based co-brother recommended ‘running’ and introduced him to the Run-TNagar-Run chapter of Dream Runners. He took to running in July 2018 and made some stunning turnaround in his health parameters.
Starting with Coimbatore Marathon in Oct 2018, he has done multiple 10K, 6 HMs including the Tata Mumbai Marathon and one 25KM Yercaud Hill run too. He has clocked a best time of 2:32 in HM.
Since March ’20, he is practising Heart Rate based run(MAF/aerobic) along with cycling as cross training, without skipping even a day. In this period of nearly 180 days, he has lost about 10kg of weight and normalised his BP too. Overall, he has shed about 20kg of weight ever since he started running. Not surprisingly, this has motivated his family and they too are keen to start running.
Neelakantan credits this transformation to his sustained efforts and the motivation from his fun-loving, running team RTR.
He believes any day is a good day to start as long as ‘keeping fit’ is our goal. He says, “once we are regular and start enjoying the benefits of any activity, we can find time to achieve the same”.
He is raring to take on 2021 with renewed vigour and determined to run more marathons across India.
Wishing Neelakantan many more successes in his running journey and hoping that others too get inspired by him to join in.
SAthya NArayanan
Dream Runners.
#LetUsRunSoTheyCanWalk #RunClean #RunResponsible #SheShouldRun