BENGALURU: When the annual Ironman Copenhagen kicked off in the last week of August, city-based
entrepreneur Nirupa Shankar was the only Indian woman participant at the arduous triathlon. Consisting of a 3.8 kilometre swim, a 180 kilometre cycle ride, and a full marathon distance of 42.2 kilometres, the Ironman is one of the most extreme endurance sports that challenges physical and mental fortitude. Yet in her very first attempt, Shankar managed to finish the gruelling event within 14 hours, 47 minutes and 41 seconds, at an impressive average pace of seven minutes 56 seconds per kilometre.
For Shankar, who currently serves as the joint managing director of Brigade Group, the finish line brought immense relief rather than a sense of triumph. “At the end, when I finally reached the finish line, relief washed over me. I was just happy to be done. I had my husband and sister there, and their support felt good,” she adds.
As a mother of two, Shankar took up running nearly five years ago after her first child. She had promised to ‘gift’ herself the ability to do a full Ironman by the time she was 40. Soon, she was part of a joggers’ club and was introduced to endurance races. “I did a sprint distance, which is a quarter of the distance of a full Ironman. After that, I had my second child and took a break. But in the last few years, I picked it up again and started doing incremental endurance races – first a double sprint, then a half Ironman just last year,” she remembers.
But despite her previous experiences, Shankar was racked with a lot of self-doubt about her ability to finish the event. “I would actually get teary-eyed at the possibility of doing the event. The maximum time I had done in an endurance event prior to the event was around eight hours, and I didn’t know whether I would be able to endure nearly twice as much time. And you cannot practise for such long distances either. So many things could go wrong – what if I get a cramp, or my bike gets a puncture or I fall off the bike? There were definitely a lot of jitters before the event,” says Shankar, adding that once she started, however, the rush of adrenaline took over, helping her focus on the race.
As a full-time entrepreneur, Shankar didn’t have the luxury of training for the event like professional athletes. Instead, she had to make time for a rigorous training regimen amidst her work schedule. “Compared to most others, I was a little underprepared, because I had done just a few months of training, putting not more than 14 hours per week into training. Most people who do Ironman triathlons train for years,” she adds.
As such, Shankar’s goal at the gruelling-yet-prestigious event wasn’t to compete against other athletes. Rather, it was to prove to herself what she could do. “In Europe, people start cycling and swimming from a very young age. I only started to cycle a few years ago, so my confidence on the bike was nowhere near what they had. Only around 10-15 per cent of the participants were women, and the whole event was intimidating. I’m a decent runner, but during the swimming and cycling phases, people are very aggressive, almost swimming over me and overtaking me.
I would just let them pass and do it at my own pace. I wasn’t competing against anybody, rather I was pushing myself to give the best I could,” she adds. With one Ironman finish under her belt, Shankar hopes to set her eyes on improving her performance in the future. “Now that I know that I can do the distance, I want to improve my performance – getting faster and stronger. I can’t do too many events because of my workload, but I’ll pick an event every year and work towards that,” she signs off.
Despite several counselling her against doing the Ironman Copenhagen, an extreme endurance sport, Nirupa Shankar, joint MD of Brigade Group, decided to ‘be a little mad’ and take the challenge head-on.