Full-time doctor, full-time marathon runner: Kartik Karkera eyes Asian Games gold

Kartik Karkera was 15 when the question was hurled towards him for the first time: do you want to focus on your studies, or do you want to become a runner? Hailing from a middle-class family in Mumbai, Kartik knew that the question was rhetorical. In India, what is often presented as a choice usually has a very clear answer.

Studies, said the bright 15-year-old Kartik, shelving the multiple medals that he had won in school competitions in Mumbai. Like most middle-class children, he chose certainty. He put his head down, cleared his exams, and left for Russia in 2016 to study MBBS.

Running, however, never fully left him.

Kartik lived in Russia for eight years, completing his MBBS and a post-graduation in orthopaedics and traumatology. He passed his Foreign Medical Graduate Exam in January 2024 to be eligible for practice in India, when the same question returned for the second time in his life.

What did he actually want? Did he want to become a doctor, or did he want to pursue his passion of becoming a runner?

Only this time, the answer was not already decided for him.

While working as a resident at the Dr Vasantrao Pawar Medical College and Hospital in Nashik, he started pursuing his old dream of becoming a professional athlete. The work was unforgiving. Hospital shifts stretched endlessly, training sessions had to be squeezed into the cracks of the day, and sleep often became negotiable.

But despite the impossible grind, results soon followed.

INDIAN MARATHON WAKES UP FROM SLUMBER

Running only in his third competition ever, the 28-year-old beat Olympian T Gopi and 2024 Asian Marathon winner Man Singh to clinch the Delhi Marathon in April. More importantly, Kartik recorded his personal best, 2:13:10, faster than the Athletics Federation of India’s (AFI) qualification standard of 2:15:04 for the Asian Games.

What Kartik had done was sudden, almost disruptive. From someone unknown in Indian athletics circles, Kartik had suddenly become one of the fastest marathon runners in the history of India.

Only days after his Delhi Marathon win, Sawan Barwal broke the 48-year-old national record of Shivnath Singh, clocking 2:11:58 in Rotterdam. This meant that in a space of just a few days, T Gopi and Man Singh were no longer the automatic favourites for the Asian Games. Kartik and Sawan had entered the conversation.

The stagnant Indian marathon scene had been woken from its slumber once again.

Speaking to India Today from Nashik, Kartik laughed at the idea that he had become an overnight sensation after his exploits in Delhi.

“People are calling me an overnight success. They do not see the 10 years of hard work that I have put behind this,” Kartik said.

“They do not see the days that I used to cry and call my father that, OK, I think I need to leave one thing. I need to stop. Maybe I need to become a doctor or a runner.”

RUNNING AFTER 36-HOUR HOSPITAL SHIFTS

Kartik Karkera is an anomaly. And it does not take long to understand that.

In a demanding ecosystem like India, it is difficult enough to sustain a career in medicine. Doing so while training as a professional marathon runner is something else entirely, especially in a sport that offers very little financial certainty.

If balancing the two was hard enough, Karkera says that when he returned to India and started working in the hospital, many of his fellow senior doctors were not sympathetic. They simply refused to believe that he wanted to train as a professional athlete while continuing to work as a doctor.

“I still remember I had a 36-hour shift at the hospital, from 8 in the morning to the next day 8 in the evening. At a hospital, you cannot say no, you should not say no. You have to attend patients, there are OTs planned. It gets very hectic.

“But even before entering the shift, I was like, OK, I need to get my workout done in the morning. I would have rather slept well and then just gone, but I did my workout.”

In that inhumane grind, one that resident doctors often face in India, somehow, running managed to stay with him.

Kartik ran at 4 in the morning, ran at 11 at night, sometimes slipping it into hours that were already too full to hold anything else. There were moments when he wondered if it was doing more harm than good to his body, but he also knew what it gave him, a kind of stillness that nothing else did.

For Kartik, running was not an escape. It became a form of stillness, almost meditative in the way it cut through the chaos of everything else.

HOW COVID-19 HELPED KARTIK TURN PRO

The bug of becoming a professional athlete did not bite Kartik in India. The roots of that madness were sown in Russia itself.

“In second year, I was a bit stable. Then I decided, OK, every day I need to give 30 minutes to myself to do any kind of sport, be it running, swimming. I used to shoot as well, some rifle shooting. I used to go to the gym,” Kartik said.

At first, it was only that, 30 minutes for himself.

There was no thought of becoming a professional athlete. MBBS was still the main journey. Running was the side thing, the passion, the hobby.

Then Covid arrived.

“In 2020, when Covid came, my university wasn’t working. So I was like, OK, now I have got a lot of time in my hand. Let’s run.

“Also, there were no exams. Most of the things were online. So I had a lot of time in my hand, and I was just staying near the 400 metre track of our university.

“So for one year, I did all my runs there. I did 20ks around the track, 25k, and then all my workouts every day, morning, evening. I was just there alone, just doing a lot of kilometres.”

That empty 400m track changed everything.

There were no crowds, no races, no audience. Just kilometres, repetition, and a growing belief that maybe this was not just a hobby anymore.

“Then that year actually helped me a lot to progress. Then that year I thought, OK, I think I am talented. I think this is my thing. I can be very, very good at this. I just need to be very consistent.”

It was there, in that lonely rhythm, that Kartik stopped being a doctor who liked running and started becoming a runner who happened to be a doctor.

In 2021 and 2022, he became Russian university champion in the 1500 metres.

Success brought attention.

A sponsor from Moscow, Denis Nikiforov, noticed him and introduced him to 2004 Athens Olympic champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy. Under Borzakovskiy, Kartik says, his proper professional journey began. He learnt how to train like an elite athlete. He learnt how to use professional equipment. More importantly, he learnt how far he could actually go.

Medicine helped too.

Kartik had completed his post-graduation in orthopaedics and traumatology on a university scholarship and had worked with the Olympic Committee in Moscow. He spent time with doctors treating professional athletes, understanding recovery, injuries, workload, and how the body breaks and rebuilds itself.

“Knowledge is power,” he said.

“I have studied a lot, and then I have put it on myself. Eventually, I have got results.”

By 2023, he was already making noise in the Moscow running scene.

“In 2023, I was sixth overall in the Moscow Half Marathon. For me, it was a very good result. I did 1:05:52. Still remember it.

“They had the podium till 1st to 6th place, and then I just made it to the podium with the top athletes in Russia in the country.

“Just while leaving, there was a half marathon in Moscow, and I won it just before leaving the country.”

RETURN TO INDIA AND ASIAN GAMES DREAM

It is ironic that Kartik left India for Russia burying his dreams of becoming a professional athlete, and that Russia ended up sharpening that very dream.

But returning to India meant starting from zero again.

No one knew him here. The races in Moscow meant little in Indian athletics circles. There were no guarantees, no immediate support, and no certainty that the gamble would work. But he returned anyway, because he wanted to do something for his country, for himself.

Since completing his mandatory one-year bond period at the hospital, Kartik has created the same kind of stir in India as well.

This year alone, he won the Tata Mumbai Marathon in 2:19:55, and then the Delhi Marathon in 2:13:10, leaving behind some of the best marathon runners in the country.

In the previous edition of the Asian Games, the gold, silver and bronze medals were won between the 2:13:02 and 2:13:39 mark, which already makes Kartik a genuine medal contender.

The 28-year-old ASICS athlete believes that in good conditions, he can shave off two more minutes from his timing. That would make him a serious contender for the Asian Games gold, a medal that has eluded India since 1951.

So how ready and eager is he for the Asian Games?

Sitting in Nashik, consulting patients online between training sessions, Karkera says he still does not know if he will be selected for the Games. No official communication has reached him yet, and the final list for selection is expected only by the end of May.

For now, the marathon doctor remains in Nashik, waking up before sunrise, training on roads that have now become more familiar to him than hospital corridors. His mornings begin with coffee, bananas and beetroot juice; his afternoons are spent consulting patients; his evenings return to training again. Much of what he earns still goes back into funding the dream.

There is still no certainty about the Asian Games. The official communication has not arrived yet, and the final list for selection is still awaited. For now, all he can do is train, wait, and trust that the work he has already put in will count for something.

But he also knows what it took to get here, the years in Russia, the empty 400m track during Covid, the 36-hour hospital shifts, the nights when he called home wondering if he needed to give one of his lives up.

At 15, India had asked him to make a choice between studies and running. Like most middle-class children, he chose certainty.

More than a decade later, he is trying to prove that the question itself was wrong.

He did not have to choose. He could have been both.