There was a misconception Sawan Barwal had heard before he started running marathons.
“Running 2:12 or 2:13 was very difficult for Indians.”
For someone who had spent most of his career on the track, it might have been an observation worth ignoring. Instead, Barwal took it as a challenge.
On Saturday morning in Nagoya, in only his second competitive marathon, the 28-year-old went out and showed just how quickly that perception could change. Barwal won the Asian Games silver medal in 2:11:37, breaking the national record he had set in Rotterdam earlier this year. Japan’s Ichitaka Yamashita won gold in 2:10:49, while China’s Peiyou Feng took bronze in 2:12:13.
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“This is for India. The medal was important. In the end, the Japanese seized the opportunity and raced away. I did try,” he said after the race.
It was more than a silver medal. India had waited 44 years for a men’s marathon medal at the Asian Games, since Hosur Kukkappa Seetharan won bronze at the 1982 Delhi Games.
And Barwal had now broken the national record twice in the same year. The first time, in Rotterdam, he brought down Shivnath Singh’s 48-year-old mark of 2:12:00, running 2:11:58. In Nagoya, he took another 21 seconds off his own record.
The remarkable part is that Barwal does not see 2:11:37 as the limit.
His coach Surender Singh believes he can break 2:09. Barwal himself has already set his next target at 2:07 or 2:08.
“I think after the Asian Games, I can target 2:07 or 2:08,” he had told IndiaToday.in before the Asian Games.
For now, though, the medal mattered more than the clock. The race, as it turned out, demanded exactly the kind of patience and mental strength Barwal had been warned about.
His seniors had told him that the marathon really begins after 35 kilometres.
Barwal had spent much of the race at the front, leading from around the 10km mark to 35km before Yamashita made his move. Feng, who arrived in Nagoya as the Asian leader this season after running 2:05:58, could not reproduce that form and eventually settled for bronze.
Barwal, meanwhile, stayed in the fight.
He covered the final 7.145km in 22 minutes and 13 seconds, holding on to silver behind Yamashita. It was a fitting response to the advice he had heard so many times: the marathon starts after 35km.
“I had heard from seniors that marathon is not easy. You realise it after 35km,” Barwal told IndiaToday.in. “After 35km, it becomes more mentally challenging. You have to stay on the course and figure out how to finish.”
HOW DID SAWAN BARWAL START MARATHON?
That was hardly the language of someone who had spent his childhood dreaming of becoming a marathoner.
Barwal is an Army runner from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh who spent most of his career on the track. Running was almost an accident at first. He took it up at school, continued as the medals came at district and state level, and joined the Army in 2019. It was only later that he began to understand what professional sport could offer him.
It was only much later that the marathon entered the conversation.
After the 2022 Asian Games, which he missed for a combination of injuries and other reasons, he and his coach discussed trying the distance before the next edition. He began training alongside marathon runners and seniors at Reliancespending much of his preparation at altitude camps in Kannur and Bengaluru.
The switch was not sudden. It took shape over time, and his first attempt was delayed after he suffered an injury 10 days before the planned race. He eventually returned in January and began a four-month build-up for Rotterdam.
He went to the Netherlands in April with little competitive marathon experience and a national record that had stood for 48 years.
Shivnath Singh had run 2:12:00 in 1978. Barwal broke it on his debut with 2:11:58.
Even then, he felt he could have gone faster.
The national record had been in his mind before Rotterdam, but so had a bigger target. He believed he could eventually run around 2:10 – perhaps even 2:09. The fact that he had managed to break one of Indian athletics’ longest-standing records did not make him think the ceiling had suddenly disappeared.
If anything, it lowered it.
“When I ran the first marathon, I had little experience,” he said. “5km and 10km fatigue is different. Marathon is 42km. It was completely new for me.”
HOW DID SAWAN BARWAL TRAIN FOR THE TOUGHEST PART?
There was another piece of advice from the seniors that stayed with him: prepare for the last five or six kilometres.
So Barwal did.
His training often included 40km or 42km runs on alternate weeks. He would run 40-41km at roughly 10-20 seconds slower than his intended marathon pace, teaching his body what it felt like to keep moving when fatigue had already set in.
His typical week could involve three hard sessions – speed, a long run and tempo work – with easier 20-25km runs on the other days. His weekly mileage was around 200km, with the long run forming the centrepiece of the programme.
But the hardest part, he knew, was not necessarily the legs.
“In my first marathon, in the last four-five kilometres, there wasn’t much going through my mind,” he said. “I was just thinking that my legs should keep moving.”
By the final three or four kilometres, he felt his mind almost stop.
“There was only one thing in my mind: I have to go till the finishing line and how I can maintain the pace.”
That same mindset carried him through Nagoya.
There were 19 runners in the field and Barwal was the only one who entered with a personal best. Several of his rivals had faster times on paper. Feng, in particular, had a 2:05:58 season-leading mark. Yet Barwal calculated the conditions, stayed with the pace-setting group and ran his own race.
The marathon was something he wanted to try. Two races later, it is beginning to look like something he might have been built for.
– Ends
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