Sari-clad marathoner eyes comeback
Despite multiple setbacks, Jayanthi Sampathkumar hopes to run the marathon again next year
Hyderabad: For 45-year-old Jayanthi Sampathkumar, running marathons has been all about embracing her love for sari. She is one of the few marathon runners from the city who started her running journey wearing a sari and has continued to train and run in the nine yards fabric. While Covid-19-induced lockdown did force her to take a break from her sari-clad marathon running routine, Jayanthi is keen to get back on the running track by next year.
Her first tryst with running a sari happened in a 2017 marathon. Since then, there has been no looking back.
“I have always believed in the concept of wearing sari for everyday use and being in the corporate world I never stopped wearing sari even for my international client meetings. When I started my fitness journey in 2016 along with my family, I wanted to challenge myself to run wearing a sari. So, I started training in different forms of sari from the usual six yards to nine yards style. Finally, I zeroed on the Tamil Madisaar style with some tweaking which worked best for me,” says Jayanthi who has worked with Microsoft for more than a decade and is now with Google in Hyderabad.
Her last marathon was in 2020 February – just before Covid hit the world – and since then her training and running have slowed down. Currently, the sari-clad marathon runner has been practicing 10K runs near her home and has been able to maintain that level for some time now. Other than preferring only handloom cotton saris which she purchases from different exhibitions and even gets customised from weavers, Jayanthi also runs in minimalistic sandals instead running shoes.
“While I would love to run barefoot, the stones and pebbles on the road do not allow that. So I researched around the running community and found these minimalistic sandals that are the closest to running barefoot,” she says.
The Guinness World Record holder for the fastest marathon runner in sari in 2017 is keen to get back to her training and run the marathon next year. “I do want to get back to the marathon, but I also don’t want to push myself too much. In 2019, I had a bicycle crash, and post that after a few months, I started training again in June 2019, and then I got hit by Chikungunya. However, after a full recovery, I did get back to the marathon in February 2020 and then Covid happened. So, I feel too much running has impacted my health and I want to take it slow now,” says Jayanthi.
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