Nobody taught us that doing something hard for yourself is allowed.
I grew up in the same story most urban Indian men grow up in. Study hard. Get the job. Perform. Provide. Be responsible. These aren't bad lessons — they're just incomplete ones. Nobody in that story teaches you how to be honest about how you're doing on the inside.
I looked fine. By most measures, I was fine. Delhi life was doing what Delhi life does. But there was a weight I couldn't name and wasn't sure I was allowed to name. Men don't, typically. You carry on. You perform. You show up.
"There's a version of you that's been waiting for permission to try something that seems unreasonable. I gave myself that permission — almost by accident."
What changed wasn't a decision. It wasn't a dramatic moment. It was more of a stumble — the kind that turns out to matter more than the deliberate steps.
I signed up for a duathlon not fully knowing what I was getting into. Then I podiumed.
The HR26 was an Olympic distance duathlon in Delhi — run, bike, run. Not a triathlon. No swimming. Which was fortunate, because at that point I could not swim. I was there because some part of me said yes before the sensible part could object.
I finished on the podium in my age group. I did not expect that. That was the moment the sport stopped being something I was trying and started being something I was doing.
"I didn't know what I was capable of until a race told me. That's a strange way to find out — but it's the most honest way I know."
What the podium gave me wasn't confidence in the athletic sense. It was evidence. Evidence that the gap between who I thought I was and who I actually was, was larger than I'd assumed. I wanted to keep testing that gap.
The next step was learning to swim. Then everything changed.
I arrived at Ironman 70.3 Goa with a fever and a stomach infection.
I didn't know if I'd start. I spent the day before race day on medication, horizontal, wondering if the whole thing was a mistake. My body had chosen the worst possible moment to give up on me.
I started anyway.
The swim was hard. The bike was harder. The run was a negotiation between what my body wanted to do (stop) and what I'd decided I was going to do (finish). The finish line at Goa is where I understood something I'd been trying to think my way into for years.
"You can do hard things. Not because you're built for it — because you choose it. The body follows the decision, not the other way around."
Community got me to the start line. Stubbornness got me to the finish. Both of those turned out to be things I needed to know I had.
Running 42 km through Mumbai at 5am teaches you something different.
The Tata Mumbai Marathon happened in between the triathlons. A full marathon — 42.2 km through the city before most of it wakes up. There's something about running through a city that's still asleep that strips everything back. No performance. No audience. Just the road and how honest you're willing to be with yourself about how much further you can go.
Each race was teaching me the same lesson in a different language. The lesson was always: you're more capable than the version of yourself you've been living as.
Ironman Western Australia. 3.8 km swim. 180 km bike. 42.2 km run.
I'd read every warning about the marathon at the end of an Ironman. Every account said the same thing: you think you know what you're in for, and then you get there and you don't. They were all correct.
After swimming 3.8 kilometres and cycling 180 kilometres, your legs are not legs anymore. They are a separate negotiation. The marathon at the end of an Ironman is less a race and more a sustained conversation with yourself about what you actually believe about yourself.
I crossed the finish line in Western Australia with the Indian flag. It was the hardest and the best day of my life — in that order, and simultaneously. That's the only way I can describe it. The hardness and the bestness were the same thing.
"The miles don't just build your body. They build the version of you that knows — from actual evidence, not hope — that you can finish hard things."
I applied for Ultraman. Now we wait.
Ultraman is 515 km over three days. A 10 km open-water swim. 421 km on the bike. A double marathon to finish. It is not an Ironman with extra distance — it is an entirely different test of what a human body and mind can sustain.
The application is submitted. I don't know if I'll get in. But something shifted when I pressed send — the same way something shifted when I first signed up for that Delhi triathlon without knowing how to swim.
There will be a fundraise — for mental strength, for the idea that hard things are one of the best ways to build it, and for making that accessible to more people who've never been told they're allowed to try.
I'm not a coach. I'm not an elite. I'm a regular person from Delhi who found something that works, and I want to go as far as it will take me.
Follow the Ultraman journey →Follow the honest version.
No training plans. No supplements. No transformation content. Just the real account of what this does to a person — and why it's worth it.
Updates when something worth sharing happens. No noise.
✓ You're in. I'll be in touch when there's something real to say.
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@the.singing.triathlete