Marathon was never Plan A for Sawan Barwal. He is now chasing Asian Games history

When Sawan Barwal reached the last five kilometers of the Rotterdam Marathon, there was not much left in his head.

His legs were still moving, though they started to feel like someone else’s legs. A cold wind picked up and the water he had spilled on his head at the station turned into an unexpected problem. He ran comfortably for most of the race, but after 35 kilometers the marathon began to change shape.

Barwal went to Rotterdam with a goal. It was his first competitive marathon and he wanted to run somewhere between 2:08 and 2:10. He also had in mind the national record of 2:12:00 held by Shivnath Singh since 1978. But as he entered the closing stages, there was little room left for calculations.

“For the last three to four kilometers, my mind completely stopped working,” Barwal tells IndiaToday.in.

“I had only one thing in my head: I have to go to the finish line and how can I keep the pace. When running, we keep telling ourselves that there are only a few minutes or some time left. Then finish and then rest.”

He eventually finished in 2:11:58, beating Singh’s record by two seconds. In Rotterdam, he took 20th place and his performance secured him qualification for the Asian Games.

But the number on the clock did not immediately please him. Barwal did not go to Rotterdam to break a record that has survived for almost five decades. He went there believing he could run significantly faster.

That’s why his transition to the marathon is so interesting. The national record was not the culmination of years spent specializing in the distance of 42.195 km. Barwal spent most of his career as a runner. The marathon came later, almost as an experiment, after coaches began telling him that his endurance could take him somewhere longer.

And now, on September 26, he will run his second competitive marathon. This time it will be at the Asian Games, where he will represent India in the men’s marathon with Kartik Karkera. A goal, says Barwal, is no longer just a number on a clock. It’s a medal.

THE MARATHON WAS NOT PLANNED

Sawan Barwal made his marathon debut only in 2026 (Photo: ASICS)

It was never a childhood dream to become a marathon runner.

Barwal grew up in Himachal Pradesh and got into athletics almost by accident. He started competing in school and continued as the shows kept coming. He went through district and state competitions, gradually establishing himself as a distance runner before joining the army in 2019. There, as he says, he began to understand sports as a profession.

“I didn’t really have a specific goal that I had to run,” says Barwal. “Since my school days, when I started athletics, you can say it happened by chance. I came to athletics and continued with it. Performances came, so I continued.”

The medals began to follow. The army provided him with a more professional environment and contact with senior athletes. By the time he was training at a higher level, his races were mostly on the track: 5,000m and 10,000m, distances where endurance mattered, but the race still took place within the stadium.

The marathon was different.

The first serious suggestion came from AFI coach Scott Simmon in 2023. After the 10,000m at the 2025 Asian Championships, the idea became more concrete. Barwal discussed it with his army coaches and Reliance and the plan was to attempt the marathon in October 2025.

He never got there.

An injury a week before the planned attempt forced him to stop. The restoration took months and pushed back what was already an unknown transition. He eventually returned to training in January 2026 and competed at the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee before arriving in Rotterdam in April.

Looking back, Barwal says the change was not as sudden as it might seem.

“I didn’t suddenly switch to the marathon,” he says.

“I started a year before the Asian Games. But the first time I tried the marathon, I got injured 10 days before. I had to take about two-and-a-half months off. Then I prepared for it for another four months. So it was quite a long time to train and prepare.”

There was another reason why he felt ready to try. For years he trained alongside marathon runners. His seniors discussed the distance, the difficulty of the race and especially what happened after 35 kilometers.

That sentence stuck with him.

“The marathon is not easy,” he says. “After 35 kilometers you understand.”

At the time, however, the understanding was theoretical. He never actually experienced it.

THEN CAME ROTTERDAM

Barwal’s first marathon was to answer the question: could a runner who had built a career on the 5,000m and 10,000m distances jump 42,195km?

The answer came with an Indian record.

The track in Rotterdam was flat and Barwal settled into his rhythm. He ran at a pace that kept his target within reach. But the marathon has a way of making the last few miles seem like a completely different race.

The weather didn’t help. The cold and wind became increasingly difficult, especially after Barwal poured water on his head at the waterworks. The last stretch became a struggle to stay upright. He tripped and fell near the finish before coming back and crossing the line.

Somewhere in those last few miles, he stopped thinking about everything but the most basic goal.

“I was just trying to keep my legs moving,” he says. “I didn’t have anything in my head about how it was done.

It almost sounds simplistic. But for Barwal, it became one of the most important lessons from his first marathon.

The marathon, he says, is physically demanding throughout. But after 35 kilometers it becomes a mental race.

“Physically it’s a challenge, but after 35 kilometers it’s more mentally challenging,” he says. “You have to stay the course and figure out how you’re going to finish the event.”

That’s the part he’s trying to train now.

LEARN TO RUN WHEN THE MIND SAYS STOP

A track runner can measure a race in laps. A marathon runner must measure fatigue, pace, hydration and gradual deterioration of the organism over two hours.

Barwal is still learning the process.

His training now includes three hard workouts in a typical week—a speed workout, a long run, and a tempo run—with lighter runs on other days. His daily average can be around 30 kilometers, so the weekly total is around 200 km.

“If it’s 40 kilometers a day, we focus on how to adapt to that, how to adjust the fluids in the body,” he says.

Long runs are also where mental preparation takes place. He can alternately run 40 or 42 kilometers and tries to maintain the desired pace towards the end. The goal is not just to complete the distance. It’s training to be uncomfortable and still do what the race requires.

“We’re challenging ourselves to keep up the pace and prepare for the last five or six kilometers,” he says. “Because it’s more mentally worrying than physically. It takes more mental effort to see how we can stay in the race in those last five or six kilometers.”

It’s a lesson that came dearly in Rotterdam.

The national record was two seconds away from being lost the next day. Instead, Barwal held on. For Barwal, however, those two seconds were almost an afterthought.

SPREADS MATTER

Sawan Barwal (Courtesy: ASICS)

Barwal’s transition also has a modern element. His preparation is not just about putting more kilometers in his legs.

“Today, when you talk about sports, more than 50 percent of sports are sports science,” he says.

“How the body works, how you work on lactate – it all comes down to science now, and training is based on that as well.”

Recovery is a particularly important part of this equation. Barwal learned this during an injury that delayed his first marathon attempt.

“If you haven’t recovered from one session, you can’t do your best in the next session,” he says. “And if you push your body in this state, there’s a chance of injury. Your whole plan can go awry because of it.”

His partnership with ASICS is another part of his preparation. Barwal has been associated with the brand for three years and says its support has been important both in terms of performance and allowing him to focus on the sport. He races in the METASPEED SKY, ASICS’ competition shoe, and sees modern footwear as one of the small margins that can matter at the elite level.

“If an athlete does 90 percent, then 10 percent of the improvement comes from shoes and other things,” he says.

In Rotterdam, Barwal was two seconds off the old national record.

That is the nature of elite distance running. Sometimes the line between a historic performance and a performance that is only remembered as good is almost invisible.

SECOND MARATHON AT THE ASIAN GAMES

Barwal now has something he didn’t have when he arrived in Rotterdam: experience.

It is only one race’s experience, but it is significant.

He knows how his body reacts after 30 kilometers. He knows what 35 kilometers is like. He knows the final stretch can be less about racing and more about keeping the mind off. He knows what happens when the weather changes and the body is already exhausted.

Most importantly, he knows what the marathon is asking of him. However, the Asian Games will present a completely different challenge.

India have won only three individual men’s marathon medals in the history of the Asian Games and all three have come on home soil. Chota Singh won gold and Surat Singh Mathur won bronze at the inaugural Asian Games in New Delhi in 1951, while Hosur Kukkappa Seetharan won bronze at the 1982 Asian Games, also in New Delhi. Since then, a marathon has remained elusive for India at the continental games.

The latest edition in Hangzhou offered a more modern scale of the challenge. China’s He Jie won the gold in 2:13:02 while India’s Mann Singh finished eighth in 2:16:59. Barwal’s national record of 2:11:58 is comfortably inside that winning time, but his mark in Rotterdam is still outside the top 100 marathon performances recorded by Asian runners in 2026. China’s Pelyou Feng currently holds the Asian record of 2:05:58, set in March.

However, Barwal will not be going to the Asian Games chasing a personal best.

“The Asian Games are there, so we will mainly focus on medals,” he says. “We won’t focus so much on the timing at that time. It will depend on how the race goes.”

Outside of the Asian Games, there is already a series that interests him. Barwal is looking to lower his national record further, now targeting 2:07-2:08. But before that comes a completely different test: the championship marathon, where placing may matter more than time, and where the race may not unfold at the pace it experienced in Rotterdam.

On September 26, Barwal will line up alongside Kartik Karkera in the Indian Men’s Marathon. There are 42,195 kilometers to go, and another chance for Barwal to see what happens when the race reaches the point he now knows so well: 35 kilometers when the legs start to tire and the mind has to find a way to keep going.

And his mind can begin to quiet again. It was enough for a national record in Rotterdam. In Japan, he will find out if it is enough for a medal from the Asian Games.

– The end