Zainab and I set off to run 10k at The High in Ladakh. http://www.thehigh.in/

Zainab had breathing trouble early on, so I gave up running to walk with her. We struggled with a run-walk until close to the half-way mark, where she found her energy and managed to run most of the way back. Zainab kept insisting I should run ahead, but my goals for this year are to (a) remain injury-free and (b) pace Zainab on her runs, so I refused.

We finally finished at 1:38, at the tail end of the runners (only one person behind us, who walked the whole route). I remarked to Rajat and Kunal at the finish line that I felt good enough to run it again, so they suggested I run the 11k half marathon loop. I set off immediately. This loop has a lower gradient than the 10k loop, but with the sun now blazing overhead, it turned out to be a much tougher climb. I ended up walking most of it.

At 11k, the distance marker said 14. This was odd. Where had I missed 3k? Was there a smaller loop somewhere? I was no mood to turn back, and I wasn't running a half marathon. I was only trying to see how far I could go, so I kept going. At 12k, the marker said 15. 13-16. 14-17. 15-18. The markers were consistently ahead by 3k. After 13k (by my Garmin), there were no water stops. There was supposed to be one every 2 kilometres.

At 15k, I gave up expecting a water stop and drank out of a mountain stream. This was hard because my knees had gone stiff. I still have what appears to be Patello-Femoral syndrome in the left knee. I have to stop and massage it every couple of kilometres to ease the pain. When I came to the stream, I couldn't kneel. The knee warned of frightening pain if I dared try. I had to keep the leg straight and outstretched, bending over to reach into the stream with a hand, a bit like the way giraffes spread their legs when drinking water.

There were no water stops for the remaining 5km. No streams either. The course was downhill most of the way, but I found I had no energy left to even run downhill. I walked half, jogged half, until a kilometre from the finish, when the left leg cramped. Had to stop for several seconds to let it recover and walk the rest of the way.

A support car drove by just then. They gave me some juice (relief! helped me sprint the final 100 metres). I told them there were no water stops along the way, so they drove off immediately to fix it. Apparently they had left cartons of water on the way, but someone carried them off. They were short of volunteers to man every station, most of them having been exhausted from the 222 km La Ultra over the previous three days. Rajat later said they should have taken a day's break after the ultra so everyone had time to recover and focus on the marathon.

My Garmin said I had only done 20 km when I finished, but Rajat said they had carefully verified the course length. A couple of other runners concurred with my reading. One other said she got 22 km. We were not sure if the devices accounted for slope. I wanted to finish 21 km by my measure, so I plodded around the field until it hit 21. I was too exhausted to even walk by this point. Even forgot that a half marathon is 21.1 km (and too late to fix that now). My timing by this measure is 3 hours and 42 minutes, but my official time is 3 hours and 29 minutes.

This run is easily the toughest I've ever done, measured by how weak it left me at the end. (Not that I've run much. My first full marathon will be at Auroville in 2012.)