With God’s grace and with prayers of you all, I have completed on 4^th June 2017 my first Comrades ultra-uphill marathon, from Durban to Pietermaritzburg at South Africa, covering a distance of 87km, without any difficulties like cramp, dehydration, and internal injury!

I enrolled into RunIndiaRun, in February 2013 for marathon training. I was already motivated to take part in every dream run from 2006, as part of a social cause to provide education to the downtrodden, underprivileged children of the society at our Milt charitable trust, Mumbai. My Milt friends Shyam Lata, Mayur Nayak, Lakshmanan, Chetan Bhatia, Chetan Timbadia, Uday Karelia, Arunagiri, Dr Ashok Khanvte, used to run 21k / 42k SCMM marathon every year since 2004. I being the secretary of Milt charitable trust used to sit on the fence and run only 7km as I had the fear of not finishing the run due to my heavy weight of 85kg. My friends regularly insisted that I should take part in SCMM half marathon.

Every day at Juhu during our morning walk, my childhood friend Himanshu used to push me a lot to do some work out for my big, fat tummy. In February 2013, my friend Mayur Nayak called me and pushed me to join the RunIndiaRun training along with him. As I was concerned about being overweight, I immediately grabbed the opportunity to enrol for the marathon training.

In 2013 during the initial training, I used to walk and jog. But by looking at my fellow runners, I used to repeat in my mind that one day I will also be able to run like them. As the marathon training continued, I was inspired to run like them. And I’m very proud to share that in the last 4 years, I have successfully completed a total of 18 runs (10k/21k/42k).

I want to thank my family and friends who supported me whole heartedly in my journey of the Comrades Marathon 2017 uphill run at South Africa. This miracle has happened only because of the unconditional love and prayers of all RIR family members and well-wishers.

After my Comrades 2017 achievement journey, all I have to say is:

• Anything can be achieved in life if you work hard towards it.
• You have to keep faith in your mentor and follow his instructions strictly.
• You have to cultivate discipline to follow the regime.
• During any long run you must take decisions as per your consciousness.
• God is always with us in every action. So leave failure and success to him.