Get, set, go: how urban Indian women are running to reclaim their lives back

When do you know it’s time to pull out those shoes and start running? 

“A good place to start is when you realise you’ve been running away from yourself for years,” says 43-year-old Eswari Andipannan, a Chennai-based IT employee.

Andiappan loved the outdoors as a child. “There were farmlands five minutes from my home in Kumbakonam where I grew up. I ran into them every time my mother nagged me about something for too long,” she says. 

“But my obesity, which stayed with me until my first child was born, followed me like a raincloud of underconfidence and self-loathing. I learned to negotiate for happiness within four walls—through marriage, family life, shopping, and automobiles,” she tells HerStory.

But her second born—a daughter with special needs—catalysed her journey to becoming the first woman from Tamil Nadu to complete the Ironman Triathlon in 2016. She finished 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km of cycling, and 42 km of running in 20 hours and 30 minutes. 

"My daughter’s birth propelled me to dig deeper to find joy and purpose, as I realised nothing external was going to give me this. One day, when I was driving back home, I heard a radio advertisement about the Wipro Chennai Marathon, and I thought, this could mean something,” says Andiappan.

“There are clubs you can’t belong to, neighbourhoods you can’t live in, schools you can’t get into, but the roads are always open.” Sports brand Nike’s slogan cannot be more true for urban Indian women who have taken to the roads to break out of a multitude of mental, physical, and cultural barriers placed on them. 

These students, mothers, and working professionals have found a sisterhood of allies, cheerleaders, and role models in groups like Runner Girls India (Bengaluru), Mumbai Runner Girls (Mumbai), and the United Sisters Foundation (that organises Pinkathon marathons).

Bengaluru filmmaker Vrinda Samartha captures this spirit in her 2017 documentary Limitless, featuring stories of eight women from across India who run every day to transform their lives. 

Among them is a Dharavi-based domestic help, who started running with the support of the family she was working for and even made money from the marathons she ran. The documentary also follows a pregnant woman and a new divorcee, as they run to keep up with the pace of their lives and build a new future.

Only 8.81% of the world’s marathon runners are Indian women, says Run Repeat—an organisation helping athletes find shoes that work best for them. 

For many women, the effort to maintain a consistent running regimen often involves waking up before dawn while accommodating domestic responsibilities too. 

“Women getting out on the roads to run isn’t new. It also doesn’t say much about the challenges they face. A major chunk of the domestic load is still theirs to take care of. Some fight to run wearing the clothes they want and many fear for their safety on the roads,” says Ashok Nath of India Amateurs Runners Trust, which commissioned the film Limitless. 

In September 2022, Chennai-based gynaecologist Dr Erika Patel became the first woman from Tamil Nadu to complete one of the world’s longest and oldest marathons, Comrades, in South Africa. The marathon spans 89 kms linking Durban and Pietermaritzburg in eastern South Africa.

Patel started training for the marathon in 2019 when she was pregnant with her son, under the supervision of South African coach Lindsey Parry who trains expecting mothers. She continued training until the week before her “uncomplicated healthy delivery” and was back on track a week after. 

As a gynaecologist, she is busting myths about working out while pregnant. “When women run, they avoid hypertension, excessive weight gain, and radically increase the chances of a normal delivery.” she says.

Meanwhile, her running group member Sita Viswanathan, wife of Ram Viswanathan—Founder of the Chennai Runners group—is busting myths about running for cancer patients and survivors. 

Viswanathan, 56, says she was never into fitness, and had reservations about stepping out wearing running clothes. But in 2012, she gave her first shot at a half marathon at IIT Madras for fun and slowly began running on weekends. The rest of the week, she managed the house.

Viswanathan had finished a couple of half marathons and a full marathon in Chicago before she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2017. She had a meticulous running routine—wake up at 4 am, join her running comrade and strength trainer Divya Harishankar, and cover close to 10 kms every day before returning home in time to make breakfast and go about her day.

However, all of it came to a halt when her cancer treatment began. She lost 50 kgs, her joints felt brittle and hurt excruciatingly, and her hormone therapy left her with terrible mood swings. “I never thought I would get back on the road again,” she says.

But the disease made her more committed to running than she had ever been. “Erika proposed that I get back slowly but steadily. Last August, I started training under her for a beginner’s run, and in January this year, I signed up for a half marathon, which I finished in three-and-a-half hours.” 

On any other day, Viswanathan would have nailed it in less than three hours. “But I felt more focused and exhilarated than ever because this time, I wasn’t just running for myself, but for every woman who had survived cancer or was undergoing treatment.” 

“I was running so that more of them joined me like an army to make sound lifestyle choices and live fearlessly,” says Viswanathan.

For Kolkata resident Shalu Bajaj, running became a spiritual anchor when she had nothing else left. A squash player since childhood, Bajaj started running in 2018 at the peak of a mental health trauma, supported by a community of runners. 

“I had been a chain smoker for 16 years and drank every other day. Needless to say, it took quite a toll on my husband and sons. I was going for therapy, taking medication, trying to play squash, but nothing was enough,” says the 49-year-old.

“Most ‘runs’ were walks interspersed with a bit of jogging when I started. It was very hard to do this over and over. But without realising it, I started running more, and my need to smoke kept declining. Eventually, running gave me a high that nothing else could,” says Bajaj. 

Out of sheer desperation to transform her life, Bajaj ran her first ultra-marathon without training in 2019 in Kolkata and stood first. During the 2020 lockdown when she was undergoing menopause, she voraciously studied the science behind running and became a certified ultra-marathon coach, mobility specialist, and sports nutritionist.

Bajaj has been clean for four years and runs thrice a week in the mornings. She says strength training and nutrition are as important as running.

“This is true especially for Indian women going through menopause who are invariably protein deficient. I was on hormone replacement therapy through menopause and proteins became important as they are responsible for building enzymes, hormones, and body chemicals,” she says.

When she’s not running, Bajaj does strength training and travels the world solo—which she says has stemmed from her confidence from running. “Until I started running, I never travelled alone,” says Bajaj, who ran the Abbott World Marathon Majors at Berlin in September 2022 and in London this April.

“Everything I am today, I owe to running. I intend to run till my last breath, and I want to take care of every aspect of my body and health so that I can do this,” she says.