Nitendra Singh Rawat has steadily started training in athletics, at the Army Sports Institute. Nitendra Singh Rawat has steadily started training in athletics, at the Army Sports Institute.

The constant sound of gunfire always got the better of his nerves. Nitendra Singh Rawat wasn’t necessarily on the frontline, but being posted near the edge of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (POK), there was always fear. “The terrain too was difficult, and it was cold. But then I was afraid of the havoc at work just a short distance away. It was scary,” recalls the armyman.

Three months at the border nonetheless, was enough to ignite in Rawat a fear-driven love for running. “If I did well at sports, I’d be posted at a place where I could train and compete. If not, I’d be at the border. Running was the only way for me to get away from there,” he says. That was in 2008. Seven years later, Rawat, an infantry Havaldar of the 6th Kumaon regiment, would run 42 km within the 2:19 hour mark to qualify for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

Back in October last year, the now 29-year-old had travelled to Mungyeong, South Korea, to compete in the marathon event of the World Military Games. It was to be his first ever official long-distance race (he had practised that distance once before during a training session). It was there that he clocked 2:18:06, just 54 seconds ahead of the qualification mark, to book his Rio berth. It was the ninth best timing on India’s all-time runners’ list and the best sub-2:19 in three years.

Ever since he moved to Pune after the three tense months in Kashmir, Rawat has steadily started training in athletics, at the Army Sports Institute. Initially, however, it was the middle distance events that he pursued. “I used to train on the track. But it wasn’t long till I realised that I had good endurance, but terrible speed. I was quite slow,” he explains. Subsequently, his attention moved to long distance marathon running.

But there was some convincing his coach needed before he could make that change. Trained by Surinder Singh Bhandari, the athlete would constantly pester his mentor to let him go for long distance races. His opportunity came eventually, in early 2015. “Without really warning me, he took a chance and made me run about 32 km in one go. I ran steadily, at a decent pace and without slowing down. So the coach figured out that there was a possible talent I had in marathon running,” he says. “That chance opportunity was how I actually got into long distance road races. That’s what I had wanted,” he adds.

The irony in Rawat’s persuasion of making the road race his own is the fact that he never quite liked running while growing up. Hailing from the Garur village in the Bageshwar district of Uttarakhand – approximately 1500m above sea level – the mountain man did most of his youthful running chasing stray cattle at his parents’ hillside farm. That was until he joined the army 11 years ago.

Compulsory fitness training in the defence required early morning runs, an aspect he took some time to warm up to. “The only reason I’d try to do well in those training sessions was because if I was too slow or lazy, I’d get a solid beating,” he says, laughing. But a split shin injury soon brought his sports training to standstill, inciting the posting to the border. “They told me straight that if I can’t train as an athlete, there was no reason for me to be there,” he mentions.

Yet, now he has found reason to be involved in the national camp. He spent three months last year training in Dharamsala, followed by the five-month long national camp at the high-altitude training facility in Ooty, all in preparation for the Mumbai Marathon and then the Olympics.

Speaking ahead of the Mumbai event at a posh city hotel, he recalls the horrors of his stint in Kashmir. It came as a result of him not performing his required duties as an army sportsman. Yet, he smiles broadly when he starts talking about his ponytail. “I was allowed to grow it at the camp. It’ll be cut once I get back from the Olympics. There are strict disciplinarians in the army and I don’t want to defy them again,” he concludes.

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