Guest column | A walkathon with no losers

By waking up at unearthly hours and walking whenever and wherever possible, I managed to push myself into the top three spots a week before the Walkathon was scheduled to end

To add some excitement to our lives while working from home, the organisation that I work for recently organised a walkathon, wherein all employees were encouraged to walk as much as possible. At the end of the month, people with the highest number of steps from each department would be declared winners. Exciting prizes were up for grabs, not just for the winner, but for additional feats as well, such as the employee with the best improvement every week. Having taken a break from my fitness regime after a vacation, I decided to embrace this opportunity and put my best foot forward to win some very lucrative prizes, aiming to hit two birds with one stone – getting fit, and being rewarded for it.

In the month that I dedicated myself to the Walkathon, my mental health improved drastically, and so did my productivity at work. (Keshav Singh/HT)

But as luck would have it, I contracted a viral infection after the first two days of the walkathon. When I recovered a week later, I resumed the fitness regimen that I had chalked out so that I could indulge during a trip to Sri Lanka the following month, but the thought of the walkathon did not come to me. I honestly believed that I had lost precious time and there simply was no point competing for the first prize. But since our steps were being measured directly from our phones, upon a colleague’s insistence, I checked how I was faring in the walkathon and owing to the personal fitness regime that I had adopted, I was in the top 10 in my department despite missing out a week due to my bout of bad health. A cocktail of emotions flowed through me as I found myself confused, surprised, shocked, excited, and above all, motivated to compete for the top spot again. It suddenly gave me an adrenaline rush to compete in something after so long and I felt excited to commit my heart and soul into winning the walkathon.

By waking up at unearthly hours and walking whenever and wherever possible, I managed to push myself into the top three spots a week before the Walkathon was scheduled to end. As it so happens, when competing for something, the human mind tends to focus on things that go wrong. Sadly, I had succumbed to these thoughts, while preparing to get into engineering school. But this time around, I consciously reminded myself not to focus on what could go wrong, but on focusing on just doing my best to win the walkathon. This was the first time I realised the importance of Lord Krishna’s words of wisdom to Arjun from the Mahabharata- “Just keep working, and don’t worry about the results.”

After the walkathon culminated after a month, I managed to secure the second position in my department, but it was decided that the prize would be given only to those who had come first in each department. Hearing this, I should have felt sad, but instead, I felt extremely happy and realised that had I known that there would be only one winner from each department, I probably would not have even participated in the walkathon – the odds just did not favour me. But this quest for walking the most number of steps in my department took me a step closer to my fitness goals. More importantly, it helped me shed my lethargy and inertia that had set in for a month.

In the month that I dedicated myself to the Walkathon, my mental health improved drastically, and so did my productivity at work. As I discussed these points with a friend, he pointed out a glaring aspect that I had completely missed – I had managed to secure the second spot despite starting almost a week later than everyone else because of my illness. I realised that even though I had “lost” the walkathon, I had actually ended up as a winner in so many other things thanks to it. In this walkathon, there were just winners, no losers!

rishabhkochhar92@gmail.com