Team Motiv8 athlete Vipin Gupta had a fabulous comeback to full marathons, crossing the finish line of the Berlin Marathon 2022 in a smashing time of 3:23, his first full marathon in 3 years, and a PB of more than 1 hour.

Spurred on by his trademark motto “Abhi nahi to kabhi nahi” (“now or never”), he has showed tremendous consistency and focus in the last 24 months to get within 3 minutes of a BQ (Boston Qualification) time for his age group. This motto is a great call to action for everybody in the post-Covid era, as the past 2 years have showed us the fragility and ephemeral nature of human life.

Speaking about difficulties faced during training, Vipin said:

“I was doing my first full in more than 3 years, so every now and then, I was having doubts whether I would be able to train and then race properly.”

Commenting about the most difficult thing on race day, he said:

” My line-up was in Corral H, which was the last one and way at the back. So during the initial few kms, I had to dodge and weave among other runners to maintain my target pace. Sometimes, I even ran on the sidewalks. Due to the crowd of runners, it was also difficult to have access to water from aid stations while maintaining my pace”

On keeping up his motivation during the training phase, Vipin said:

“I had worked hard and trained consistently in the lead-up to the training cycle for Berlin. I saw no point in letting myself get slack in the actual training cycle. There will always be excuses, but I cannot let them defeat me. That in itself was the motivation”.

About his first thoughts on crossing the finish line, Vipin said:

“The possibility of a BQ was always there at the back of my mind, but ultimately I missed by 3 minutes. But then I said to myself that so what if BQ did not happen. I would have regretting if I had not chased the BQ. I got a huge PB of 1h6min and that made me super happy.”