Payal Kamat

Runner.

Govt Affairs @SpotifyIndia

Ex- @WhatsApp @Twitter @Indianpac @Google

Alumna @Lsenews

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

#Karnataka you beauty, Happy Birthday. As a child, growing up, with Bollywood influence & a sense of superiority (false) for the Hindi movie industry, plus with some part of the family living in Mumbai, I used to ask Amma & Pappa why aren't we from a cool place like North India

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@YatharthMishra_ Looks like the two idlis were steamed with different batter each

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@madhukarbk SPB 🫡❤️

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

☺️

[Pooja Shali @PoojaShali]

"My first husband stripped me naked and threw me and my daughters out of the house. Neighbours wrapped me in a quilt and my parents took us away. As I hold this gold medal in Glasgow, my message to every woman in India is to fight back against abuse."

https://t.co/LDRr8meTC1

[Nagarjun Dwarakanath @nagarjund]

Karnataka is set to ban the sale of junk food in and around schools to promote healthier eating among children. The government is working on prohibiting the sale of burgers, pizza and other junk food to school students, while introducing stricter food safety norms as part of a major policy overhaul.

[IANS @ians_india]

Delhi: Journalist Shereen Bhan says, "... I have to say Amrita stands out because she is one of those human beings that you know is authentic. She believes in what she says and she does what she believes in and which is why I've always tried to be there for her in every way possible..."

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@nistula feel better soon 🤗

[Danny @UltraRunner26]

Runners, please stop running with traffic, run against traffic.

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@nistula @heyjudeweston You are glowing 🤗🧿

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@kripalamanna Maanibhatta?

[Nistula Hebbar @nistula]

.@Siddaramaiah, @NitishKumar and the final bow of their socialist politics - a pair of startlingly parallel careers reaching a similar climax- https://t.co/ZOGYcro5nF

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@dp_satish That clear sky and landscape 😍

[Shajan Samuel @IamShajanSamuel]

Eat well. Sleep well. Exercise well.
And still — a health scare can show up uninvited.
Luck matters. Blessings matter.
Discipline improves your odds. It doesn’t own them.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Nike spent ten years trying to break the 2-hour marathon. They named a project after it. They built special shoes. They paid the greatest marathoner alive to chase it. Yesterday, a Kenyan runner finally did it in 1:59:30, wearing Adidas.

Sabastian Sawe used to be a pacemaker. A pacemaker is the kind of runner you hire to set the speed for the first few miles of a race and then drop out before the finish. In January 2022, Sawe got booked to do exactly that at a half-marathon in Spain. He'd never raced more than three miles in his life. He stayed in for the full 13 and won the whole thing. Adidas signed him not long after. Four years later, he became the first human ever to run an official marathon under 2 hours.

Nike, meanwhile, started this whole project in 2016 with a public goal called "Breaking2." They paid for the shoes, the pacemakers, the science labs, and Eliud Kipchoge himself. Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019, but the event was a closed-course exhibition with rotating pacemakers and a pace car projecting a green laser line onto the road. The sport's governing body never recognized it as a real race. It didn't count.

Then Nike's running business cratered. Digital sales fell 26% in one quarter. Their share of footwear sold at Dick's Sporting Goods went from 39% to 32% in five months. On Running grew from $330 million to $1.8 billion between 2020 and 2025. Hoka nearly quadrupled. Roger Federer left Nike for On. Nike's board fired the CEO in October 2024.

Adidas spent the same period building a better shoe. The new Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 took three years to develop. It weighs 97 grams, about 3.4 ounces, lighter than a deck of cards. A Wall Street Journal-cited study found that wearing a shoe 3.5 ounces lighter saves a runner around 57 seconds across a marathon. Sawe beat the third-place finisher by 58 seconds.

Adidas also did something Nike never did for Kipchoge. They wrote a $50,000 check to the official anti-doping body for track and field, asking it to test Sawe more aggressively than any other runner alive. He got tested 25 times in the two months before last year's Berlin Marathon, and Adidas signed up to fund this for the length of his contract. The logic: the moment Sawe ran a marathon this fast, the world was going to ask if he cheated, especially after his countrywoman Ruth Chepngetich got a 3-year doping ban in 2025. Adidas got out ahead of it.

The shoe retails at $500 and is barely available. Adidas's Adizero shoes won half of all major marathon races in 2024. Yesterday in London, four of the top five finishers wore the same Adidas shoe. Yomif Kejelcha crossed the line 11 seconds after Sawe and also broke 2 hours. The top three runners all beat the previous world record.

Nike's only response was an Instagram post. Three sentences long: "The clock has been reset. There is no finish line." That was their entire public reaction to losing a 10-year moonshot to their biggest rival.

[Scott Wortley @Scott_Wortley]

Imagine running 1 hr 59 mins 41 secs for a marathon and finishing second

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@drprveenp Yes :) please do . Let's catch up.

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

For the joy of running 🏃‍♀️♥️

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@guru3ti The on opposite Bapuji Dental ?

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@udupendra 248 !! 🙌

[Payal Kamat @PayalKamat]

@rohlamba @IndianExpress @PrashantKishor lovely!