By the time Sawan Barwal reached the final five kilometres of the Rotterdam Marathon, there wasn’t much left in his head.
His legs were still moving, though they had begun to feel like somebody else’s. The cold wind had picked up, and the water he had poured over his head at a station had turned into an unexpected problem. He had been running comfortably for much of the race, but after 35 kilometres, the marathon had begun to change shape.
Barwal had gone to Rotterdam with a target. This was his first competitive marathon and he wanted to run somewhere between 2:08 and 2:10. The national record of 2:12:00, held by Shivnath Singh since 1978, was also in his mind. But by the time he entered the closing stages, there was little room left for calculations.
“The last three-four kilometres, my mind had completely stopped working,” Barwal tells IndiaToday.in.
“There was only one thing in my mind: I have to go till the finishing line and how I can maintain the pace. While running, we keep challenging ourselves that only a few minutes or some time is left. After that, finish, and then take a rest.”
He would eventually finish in 2:11:58, breaking Singh’s record by two seconds. He finished 20th in Rotterdam, and the performance also secured his qualification for the Asian Games.
But the number on the clock did not immediately make him happy. Barwal had not gone to Rotterdam to break a record that had survived for nearly five decades. He had gone there believing he could run considerably faster.
That is what makes his transition to the marathon so interesting. The national record was not the culmination of years spent specialising in the 42.195km distance. Barwal had spent most of his career as a track runner. The marathon came later, almost as an experiment, after coaches began telling him that his endurance could take him somewhere over the longer distance.
And now, on September 26, he will run his second competitive marathon. This time, it will be at the Asian Games, where he and Kartik Karkera will represent India in the men’s marathon. The target, Barwal says, is no longer simply a number on the clock. It is a medal.
MARATHON WAS NOT THE PLAN
There was never a childhood dream of becoming a marathon runner.
Barwal grew up in Himachal Pradesh and entered athletics almost by chance. He started competing in school and continued because the performances kept coming. He moved through district and state competitions, gradually establishing himself as a distance runner, before joining the Army in 2019. It was there, he says, that he began to understand sport as a profession.
“Actually, there was no particular goal that I had to come into running,” Barwal says. “From school time, when I started athletics, you can say it happened by chance. I came into athletics and continued with it. Performances kept coming, so I continued.”
The medals began to follow. The Army gave him a more professional environment and exposure to senior athletes. By the time he was training at a higher level, his events were largely on the track: 5,000m and 10,000m, distances where endurance mattered, but the race still unfolded within the confines of a 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 try a marathon in October 2025.
He never got there.
An injury a week before the planned attempt forced him to stop. The recovery took months, pushing back what was already an unfamiliar 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 switch was not as sudden as it might appear.
“I did not suddenly switch to the marathon,” he says.
“I had started one year before the Asian Games. But when I first tried for the marathon, I got injured 10 days before it. I had to take a break of around two and a half months. After that, I did another four months of preparation for it. So there was quite a long time for training and preparation.”
There was another reason he felt ready to try. For years, he had trained alongside marathon runners. His seniors would discuss the distance, the demands of the race and, particularly, what happened after 35 kilometres.
That phrase stayed with him.
“The marathon is not easy,” he says. “After 35 kilometres, you understand.”
At the time, however, understanding was theoretical. He had never actually experienced it.
THEN CAME ROTTERDAM
Barwal’s first marathon was supposed to answer a question: could a runner who had built his career around the 5,000m and 10,000m make the jump to 42.195km?
The answer came with an Indian record.
The Rotterdam course was flat, and Barwal settled into his rhythm. He was running at a pace that kept his target within reach. But the marathon has a way of making the final kilometres feel like an entirely different race.
The weather did not help. The cold and wind became increasingly difficult, particularly after Barwal poured water over his head at a water station. The final stretch became a battle simply to remain upright. He stumbled and fell near the finish before getting back up and crossing the line.
Somewhere in those final kilometres, he had stopped thinking about everything except the most basic objective.
“I was just trying to keep my legs moving,” he says. “Nothing was running in my mind about how it was being done.”
It sounds almost simplistic. But for Barwal, it has become one of the most important lessons from his first marathon.
The marathon, he says, is physically difficult throughout. But after 35 kilometres, it becomes a mental race.
“Physically, it is a challenge, but after 35 kilometres it is more mentally challenging,” he says. “You have to stay on the course and figure out how you are going to finish the event.”
That is the part he is now trying to train for.
LEARNING TO RUN WHEN THE MIND SAYS STOP
A track runner can measure a race in laps. A marathon runner has to measure fatigue, pace, hydration and the gradual deterioration of the body over more than two hours.
Barwal is still learning that process.
His training now includes three hard sessions in a typical week — a speed session, a long run and a tempo run — with easier runs on the other days. His daily average can be around 30 kilometres, taking the weekly total towards 200km.
“If one day is 40 kilometres, the focus is on how to adjust yourself in that, how to adjust the fluids in your body,” he says.
The long runs are also where the mental preparation happens. On alternate weeks, he can run 40 or 42 kilometres, and towards the end he tries to maintain the required pace. The objective is not simply to complete the distance. It is to practise being uncomfortable and still doing what the race requires.
“We challenge ourselves to maintain the pace and prepare for those last five or six kilometres,” he says. “Because that is more mentally disturbing than physically. More mental effort is needed to see how we can keep ourselves in the race in those last five or six kilometres.”
It is a lesson that came at a cost in Rotterdam.
The national record was two seconds away from being lost to another day. Instead, Barwal held on. For Barwal, however, the two seconds were almost an afterthought.
THE MARGINS MATTER
There is a modern element to Barwal’s transition, too. His preparation is not simply about putting more kilometres into his legs.
“Today, if you talk about sports, more than 50 per cent of sports is working on sports science,” he says.
“How the body works, how you work on lactate — everything now depends on science, and training is also going on that basis.”
Recovery is a particularly important part of that equation. Barwal learned that during the injury that postponed his first marathon attempt.
“If you have not recovered from one session, you cannot do your best in the next session,” he says. “And if you push your body in that condition, there are chances of injury. Your whole plan can get spoiled because of that.”
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 concentrate on sport. He races in the METASPEED SKY, ASICS’ competition shoe, and sees modern footwear as one of the small margins that can matter at elite level.
“If an athlete does 90 per cent, then 10 per cent improvement comes from the shoes and other things,” he says.
In Rotterdam, two seconds separated Barwal from the old national record.
That is the nature of elite distance running. Sometimes the margin between a historic performance and a performance that is remembered merely as good is almost invisible.
SECOND MARATHON IN ASIAN GAMES
Barwal now has something he did not have when he arrived in Rotterdam: experience.
It is only one race’s worth of experience, but it is a significant one.
He knows how his body responds after 30 kilometres. He knows what 35 kilometres feels like. He knows that the final stretch can become less about racing and more about keeping the mind from switching 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. The Asian Games, however, will pose a very different challenge.
India have won only three individual men’s marathon medals in Asian Games history, and all three came on home soil. Chota Singh won gold and Surat Singh Mathur took 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, the marathon has remained elusive for India at the continental Games.
The most recent edition in Hangzhou offered a more contemporary measure of the challenge. China’s He Jie won 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 Rotterdam mark is still outside the top 100 marathon performances recorded by Asian runners in 2026. China’s Pelyou Feng currently holds the Asian record with 2:05:58, set in March.
Barwal, though, is not going to the Asian Games chasing a personal best.
“The Asian Games are there, so mainly the focus will be on medals,” he says. “At that time, the focus will not be so much on the timing. It will depend on how the race goes.”
There is already a number beyond the Asian Games that interests him. Barwal wants to bring his national record down further, with 2:07–2:08 now in his sights. But before that comes a very different test: a championship marathon, where position can matter more than the clock and where the race may not unfold at the pace he experienced in Rotterdam.
On September 26, Barwal will line up alongside Kartik Karkera for India’s men’s marathon challenge. There will be 42.195 kilometres ahead of them, and for Barwal, another chance to find out what happens when the race reaches the point he now knows so well: beyond 35 kilometres, when the legs begin to tire and the mind has to find a way to keep going.
And his mind may once again begin to go quiet. In Rotterdam, that was enough to get him to a national record.In Japan, he will find out if it is enough to get him to an Asian Games medal.
– Ends
