BENGALURU : Everyone knows meeting new clients can be a nerve wracking experience sometimes. But corporate Vaishali Kasture discovered a great conversation starter that can easily break the ice with anyone – running. In fact, her love for running isn’t limited to just being a hobby, it has become an integral part of her identity now. “Whenever someone asks me what I do, I say, ‘I work at XYZ and I am a runner,” she says.
In 1993, post her MBA, Kasture stepped into the banking and finance sector. She spent 25 years at Citi Bank, Goldman Sachs and Deloitte. She is now the co-founder of SounderConnect, a not for profit organisation that mentors women entrepreneurs. A couple of years into her career, she took to working out at a gym to beat the monotony in her life. “In 2002, I started to realise that my life had become two-dimensional.
It was all about responsibilities at home and work. I was in Hong Kong at that time and had just started going to a gym when my friend suggested I accompany her for an outdoor run,” recalls the 49-year-old.
There was no looking back since then. Outdoor running eventually turned into half marathons and marathons, with Kasture running her first 10k marathon in Hong Kong in 2003. In 2004, when she moved to Bengaluru, she found that the running culture in the city was quite different from the international scene.
Despite it being at a nascent stage back then, Kasture never gave up on running. She has participated in marathons across the country including Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Hyderabad and Pune. She is currently preparing for a marathon in Mumbai that will be held in the third week of January.
Kasture says she’s extremely goal-driven and always gives her 100 per cent to any venture she’s taken up, which is probably why she set her eyes on completing the six World Marathon Majors. She started in 2014 and by 2017, she had run in all six locations, which includes Boston, New York, London, Chicago, Berlin and Tokyo.
Her favourite of these was the Boston marathon, which she describes as the ‘olympics’ for an amateur runner. “The race has been going on for over 130 years now. So there’s a lot of charm and history attached to it. Even the trail has remained constant throughout the years,” she says. Her personal best performance, however, was in Tokyo, in 2016, when she completed 42.2 km in 3.36 hours.
For Kasture, running is more spiritual than a physical activity. “Every time I run, I feel more complete,” she reveals. Running and her career, she explains, feed off each other. Just like in the corporate world where one always need sa plan B, running too requires her to have an alternative in case the weather doesn’t pan out as expected. “In running, the last seven kilometres are the toughest. But going through that phase and finishing the race make you mentally strong. And that’s something one can always use in the corporate world,” she says.