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It’s nearly two years since I came to Salem from Coimbatore. There are many reasons why I miss Coimbatore. One of them was brought home to me this morning.

Back home on a weekend visit, I wanted to keep up my recently resumed^1,2 exercise regimen.

I have been walking in the morning with a group of friends, including Suresh on a 400m athletic track in an Engineering College in Salem.

(This is a picture of some other 400m track that I found on the net)

The track is available for use by outsiders between 5:45 AM to 7:15 AM. I walk about 5 to 6 kilometers (13 to 15 laps) depending on how early I reach the track. We usually maintain a speed of 6 kmph. Suresh usually does 10 laps and heads to the pool where he swims his usual 60 laps (x 25m). The other regulars (Raja, Manoj & Pathy - who don’t blog, so I can’t link to them) do about 20 to 22 laps of walking and only go swimming once a week. I don’t know swimming. So I stick to walking.

Before I left, the groups’ plan for Sunday morning was 25 x 25 (i.e., to do 25 laps each of walking & swimming at least).

So I had to do something here at Coimbatore.

I went walking in Race Course and was amazed. The Race Course walking track, which is an institution in itself, has been transformed in the past year or so.

Here is the newspaper article which chronicles the transformation.

Though walking alone, which is so boring and painful, I could do 4 laps (10 km) in 104 minutes. The tiled track was good to walk on compared to the hard earth with ruts and bumps on the athletic track in Salem. The entire 2.5 km oval pathway is lined by trees and small stretches of flower beds. Very refreshing and pleasing in the early morning hours.

And of course, as everyone who knows would agree, there are some fringe benefits as in the good looking, health conscious girls of Coimbatore.

Before you ask: No. My wife wasn’t there. And she doesn’t know

Footnotes:
1. To be honest, ‘recently resumed’ should be put in perspective. The last time I tried out an exercise regimen was about the time I started to blog (about 14 months ago). The exercise regimen was aborted after about 10 days and a loss of about Rupees 1500 as Gym fees, which in a moment of uncharacteristic optimism rashness I had paid in advance for a 3 month package. Thank goodness I stuck to blogging at least. It is very probable that my body and mind couldn’t handle two projects in tandem gestation, so one had to be aborted. Prior to that I have vague memories of walking in the Coimbatore Race Course in the initial few weeks after I got married. And that of course was in the last century! My childhood is to be blamed. I had been a bookworm and an ‘outstanding’ sportsman (as in I stood outside the game/track/field) and a born spectator all through my school days. Old habits die hard!
2.The other reason is that I didn’t want the other members of our exercise group to gloat about what they achieved in my absence.

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