The year of searing squash

Strava’s end-of-year report suggests that 2024 was, quite possibly, my year of searing squash.

Summarizing the numbers:

• I was on a squash court roughly two out of every three days.
• There were days when I played twice within a 12‑hour window.
• If I had swapped those 212 hours of squashing with running, I would have logged a 3,000+ km running year — easily a high‑water mark.

The first time I became squash‑obsessed (a few decades ago), my Montreal uncle sat me down and said:

“You are doing it all wrong. You’ve got to play a sport you can grow old with. Can you play squash in your 70s and beyond? You cannot. That’s why you should play a game like tennis.”

I rejected his advice instantly, as any self‑respecting nephew would. But my mind flashed to John — an elderly gentleman who would occasionally show up at our club to duke it out with the regulars. John occupied the T and barely moved. If a shot could be reached with a lunge, he took it; otherwise, he let it go. Drop shots were religiously ignored. He simply could not move. I told my future self that if physical decline ever led me to a John‑like situation, I would give up the game.

The other day, the good biwi (who is intimately familiar with my obsessions) asked:

“Why can’t you be a normal guy and double down on yoga or meditation instead of bashing that poor ball?”

After watching me pound roads and trails for the better part of two decades — and with our unambiguous entry into the vanaprastha ashram stage of life — it was an eminently fair question.

The short answer for why I am “bashing that poor ball” is karmic in nature. Some desires must be consummated before they can dissipate. Others are sustained merely by habit; if suppressed long enough, they eventually dissolve on their own. After 15+ years of running (and starving squash), the last two years made it clear that the desire had not dissipated at all. It needed to be consummated.

The rest of this post is the long‑form answer to her question, broken down into:

• Why not yoga and meditation?
• Why did my primary obsession shift from running to squash?
• If I must play squash, why so obsessively?

Why Not Yoga and Meditation?

I took up yoga seriously during the first year of COVID and stayed with it for three years. I was genuinely surprised by how much joy a non‑locomotive activity could provide. Still, yoga remained an additive — a meaningful enhancer, but not something that could become my primary outlet for physical exertion.

Meditation is something I have dabbled in for decades, sampling four different schools without lasting success (my best attempt lasted seven months). Two years ago, I resolved to finally “fit” meditation into my life. That experiment has been a spectacular failure. From my current vantage point, meditation — like yoga — is an additive habit whose time has simply not arrived.

Why Running → Squash?

After 16 years of continuous, joyful obeisance (and the occasional curse) to the running gods, you would expect me to carry running into my doddering years. Perhaps not.

I have two possible answers. You, the reader, may decide which one you find more persuasive.

Answer #1

We do not choose obsessions; obsessions choose us. One weakened, and another tightened its grip.

My relationship with running can be expressed as:

f(running) = f(running as a way of life) + f(racing performance)

The first component reached a glorious steady state within the first few years and could not be meaningfully optimized further. The second had a great run during the first decade: strong early gains followed by jagged progress later. Some of that jaggedness came from shifting goalposts — most notably, moving from marathons to ultras. That switch delayed the eventual realization that I had plateaued.

I had long assumed that my overall satisfaction from running was not heavily dependent on racing performance. That assumption turned out to be false.

I was half‑joking when I wrote my breaking up with running post, but it became a self‑fulfilling prophecy with a two‑year gestation.

A footwear decision in 2011 (to pitter patter) paid dividends for years, including a few magical seasons when nearly everything I touched turned to gold (see Exhibit A and Exhibit B). As all good things do, that phase eventually ended. Bangalore’s deteriorating roads accelerated the decline, placing even the lifestyle joy of running under strain. Switching to Vibrams failed to resolve my callus issues, and 2023 became the year of the final lesson.

A few months later, after bombing another race — this time a 10K — I half‑jokingly wrote about breaking up with running. Who would have thought it would foreshadow my eventual retreat into the arms of squash?

Answer #2

Imagine a variant of Ludo. In this version, the coin closest to Home depreciates if you starve it of moves. Ignore it for two or three consecutive turns, and it retreats by a square. The optimization problem changes completely.

Anyone seriously pursuing more than one sport is playing this version of Ludo. If you are juggling three or four coins, either the pursuits are trivial — or you are a rare decathlete.

In my case, I am playing with two coins: running and squash. I have allowed the running coin to depreciate while investing heavily in the squash coin. Progress in squash typically comes in ones and twos. Sixes are rare; fours are few and far between. When they do appear, they are often followed by a negative number — an injury.

To explain why I leaned so heavily into squash, consider:

f(squash) = f(pure enjoyment) + f(mastery)

The enjoyment component has always been satisfied. I enjoyed squash as a clueless beginner at Beldih Club. I enjoyed it during my Decathlon Club days, when my backhand was embarrassing and my stamina poor. I enjoy it now, even as I cringe at my court movement.

If enjoyment were the only factor, I would have remained engaged but not obsessive. What changed was the mastery component.

If I Must Squash, Why So Obsessively?

The desire to improve was always present. What changed was my willingness to follow a structured process and put in sustained work — largely through solo and two‑person drills. These sessions, my time in the “squash lab,” were initially just a means to an end. That end, rather pompously defined, was to win an age‑group tournament in the not‑too‑distant future.

Reality intervened a few tournaments later. While this old dog was learning new tricks, the slope of improvement was shallow enough to demand a lifetime. The surprise was that I enjoyed the lab work itself. Progress there was discernible — at least to me. It did not reliably translate into match wins, but I began stealing the occasional game from better players, and my average game duration against regular partners crept upward.

Net‑net, the joy of solo drill sessions became the primary feedback loop fueling the obsession.

The Searing Year Ended on February 15

If 2024 was my year of searing squash, 2025 was the year I got seared — three times.

Episode #1
On a slippery society court, pushing a little too hard against a better player led to an awkward fall and a hairline fracture in my right thumb. Two months off the court followed, along with a missed Bengaluru Masters and considerable soul‑searching.

I returned with two resolutions: to intensify solo training and to avoid playing matches on the society court until the flooring was fixed.

Episode #2
Against better judgment, I resumed back‑court drill games on the same slippery surface. On August 19, I slipped and twisted my right ankle, resulting in a grade‑2 ligament tear. Five weeks of recovery, followed by an overseas trip, erased whatever momentum I had rebuilt.

Episode #3
A stubborn fingernail infection that refused to resolve itself led to another three weeks of downtime.

It feels appropriate that Strava’s 2025 year‑in‑review now sits behind a paywall. Last year was about gallivanting around town, playing anywhere and everywhere, against anyone — voluminously. This year? You have already endured my account of its texture.

Swami Chinmayananda’s commentary on Bhaja Govindam offers the perfect closing message — to me, and to my squash:

Hurry is unknown to all creative expressions in nature — the sun rising, the moon setting, the blossoming of buds, the arrival of fruits, the germination of seeds, the foetus in the womb, the bird in the egg. None hurry; each takes its own time to grow and emerge. If the seeker attempts to hurry and double the march toward the goal, haste becomes waste on the path of Truth. Sankara offers this loving warning: Please perform with care… with great care (avadhanam mahadavadhanam).