ULTRA-MARATHON. After 4 deserts, it’s the Golden Quadrilateral now

What moves someone to set a world record?

Pune-based Michelle Kakade says it was only logical that with three entries in the Limca Book of Records — longest treadmill run by an Indian, first Indian to join the 4 Deserts Club after completing the four desert ultra marathons, and highest number of desert races by an Indian — she aim for a world record with the Great India Quadrilateral Run, across the 6,010-km highway network that connects major Indian cities across several states.

Along the way, she wants to give the world other messages: She wants people to dissociate “women” from “weaker sex”, she wants women to nurture some unique aspect of themselves, for themselves, and keep fit long before the doctor comes knocking at the door.

“I’d probably give a 20-year-old a run for their money,” says the 47-year-old Kakade, who was here recently on the Chennai-Bangalore leg of her 57-city marathon which she started in Mumbai, in October last year.

What does it take to set a world record for running this marathon? The Guinness Book of World Records lists the evidence to present in support of the record claim. There is a witness log book. At the railway stations in 15-16 major cities on the route, the runner has to take a picture of herself against the name of the station, the clock there and the platform. She should also preserve the platform tickets.

Her Garmin GPS watch logs the starting and ending of the route taken, apart from recording videos of the time and location every one hour. “Guinness gave me 230 days to finish the task and I’m well within the time limit,” says Kakade, who expects to finish the run in 190 days. The record she is attempting to set is ‘Fastest time to travel the Indian Golden Quadrilateral on foot (female)’.

Every day, Kakade runs a 35-km stretch of the route. This means “living like a nomad, day to day”, often not knowing where she will rest that night or even if she will find accommodation.

She has a team of seven, including a physiotherapist, and three vehicles, to help her on this run — do recces of the route, find places to stay, provide medical aid, manage her running gear and meals.

She expected to spend about ₹50 lakh on this run with the help of her businessman husband Anil Kakade, but it looks like expenses will touch ₹1 crore. Kakade wanted to raise awareness for causes supported by NGO Concern India and has tried crowdfunding her run, but has met with little success.

Among other arduous challenges, Kakade has run the Gobi March (China), Marathon des Sables (Morocco) and Atacama Crossing (Chile). She has been running since the age of 35. On a Stanchart marathon early on in her running career, her curiosity was piqued by a German woman carrying a huge backpack. Talking to her got her contemplating the desert runs, where one has to carry their own supplies of food, sleeping gear, toiletries and other essentials. Then a friend died young, which “got me thinking about how soon I would actually do them”, and set her on their course.

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