#CountyChampion- Mayuri- International Champion for irish Motor Neurone Disease
I arrived in Ireland in 2017 to attend the University of Limerick and ended up staying back for a couple of years. This is where I discovered my love for the outdoors.
Having come from India, I always avoided strenuous physical activity by blaming it on the heat. I was consistently underweight and unhealthy. I desperately wanted to make changes but didn’t know where to start.
After I moved to Co Clare in 2019, one of my closest friends, Claire Varden, came to the rescue. She was extremely outdoorsy and encouraged me to start running as a new year's resolution in 2020. I started jogging on the Ennistymon-Lahinch road. It was a nightmare starting out as I regularly got shin splints and was not recovering properly because of my incorrect eating habits.
Claire made sure to pull me out of bed even on days I wanted to give up. I started seeing a difference in the way I looked and felt and running became an integral part of my daily routine.
Claire was also the one who introduced me to the Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon. She had been associated with Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association (IMNDA) as she had lost her mother to the disease over a decade ago. I was running a comfortable 5K when she made me fork out a tenner and register myself on the website. It was the best thing I did for myself last year. The online registration gave me a much needed push to practice harder. We opened a fundraising page for IMNDA and collectively raised over €4000 online and offline. I was blown away by the generosity of the Irish people (particularly the Clare folk!) and I am eternally grateful to everyone who believed in my efforts.
I feel that running is what made me more resilient and willing to take on new challenges. It also helped with my confidence. I could never repay Claire for her perpetual attempt to keep me on the right track, or apologise enough for all the complaints she put up with. Her efforts motivated me to help others who may need a push to achieve results. Vhi WMM helped me realise the Power of Me and use it to make positive changes in my own life as well as the lives of others.
I ran the mini marathon on 4th October, 2020 and completed it in 1 hour and 7 seconds. That morning, I drank enough Prosecco at breakfast to reverse years of being a staunch teetotaller. It remains one of my top favourite memories.
The best piece of training advice I ever received was that carbs are friends! Unless you’re eating enough carbs, you wouldn’t have the fuel to sustain a consistent running habit. The one piece of advice I would like to give is that if you put on your running gear early in the morning, you will end up running at some point during the day no matter how lazy you feel!
This year, I am running the marathon in India where I currently work. I will be donating to the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association and would encourage others to do it too. This money goes into assisting families of people who suffer from the disease as well as for research purposes. Here is a donation link to their organisation: https://www.givengain.com/cause/20781/campaigns/22414/
