Designer Namrata Joshipura has run more marathons than you could imagine

Acutely aware of the race’s sexist history, Joshipura wanted, as a woman, to add another woman finisher’s name to the Boston Marathon’s history as much as enjoy it. “The Boston Marathon is truly a love story for me. I had turned 50, so it was a landmark year,” she recalls. Hospitalised in April 2021 for two months with long COVID, the designer left the hospital barely able to walk. “Boston is the Mecca for all running enthusiasts. It was the race I had started running for in the first place. So, I returned to training slowly and ran the pandemic-delayed Boston Marathon in October later that year,” Joshipura remembers with a smile. “For me to be running the same route that women fought to earn a place on the starting line holds a very special place in my heart. This is one race I’d definitely run again.”

The 54-year-old designer has also run plenty of races in India, including the half marathon at India’s oldest and biggest event, the Tata Mumbai Marathon, which she credits as the country’s flagbearer race that kicked off the running movement in India. “In the early days, there weren’t too many women running alongside me when I went out training. There are many more women running today but more work is needed to encourage women to take up running. From making women believe they can do it to ensuring better infrastructure and safety, steps should be taken to increase their participation,” Joshipura notes. Though she finds the running scene for women in India stronger today compared to when she started, women still make up only 19% of runners in India. But the statistics are not all discouraging. As per official numbers, the inaugural Tata Mumbai Marathon in 2004 had only 88 women register for the full marathon and 420 women for the half (21km). By contrast, for the 20th edition of the race on January 19, a whopping 15,711 women, including 1,203 for the 42.195km race and 2,631 for the 21km, have registered across various race distances and categories.