Red Road: Milind Soman did not refuse a single woman who wanted a selfie with him on Sunday morning. But for a non-negotiable price - 10 push-ups.

" Hobe, sob hobe, keno hobena (You can, why can't you)?" he said to encourage a middle-aged woman to do the push-ups. There was laughter all around when she said in response "Hobe na (I can't)".

From teenagers to septuagenarians, all participants in the second city edition of the women's race, Pinkathon in association of The Telegraph, were tired after finishing their runs. Some of them had run 21km.

But that did not deter them from taking on the challenge thrown by the 52-year-old actor-activist-triathlon champ.

Ritamoni Sharma was among those who accepted Milind's challenge. The 59-year-old weighs 98kg, yet she completed the 5K run.

Sharma, who had represented Assam as a wicketkeeper in her youth, could not complete the push-ups because of her knees but got a hug from Soman for trying.

"Both me and my daughter-in-law like Milind Soman very much. As soon as we saw in the ads that he would be present in the run, we decided to register," said Sharma.

As Milind walked along Red Road after the run, many women approached him for selfies. He was ready but had one condition - 10 push-ups.

The lone exception he made was for Kumari Nivedita, who was carrying her three-month-old daughter Anika in a sling. She had to do 10 sit-ups.

"I found him both kind and strict... kind because he was more than happy to oblige us with a selfie and strict about the 10 push-ups," said Nivedita, who works in Banglaore but is in Calcutta on maternity leave.

Soman has co-founded the race, organised in eight cities and is "India's Biggest Women's Run", to get more women to adopt a fitter lifestyle for themselves and their families and spread awareness about health challenges such as breast cancer.

He said only 5 per cent of the runners in India were women eight years ago, compared with 60 per cent in the US.

"The race is growing and we are happy with the growth in certain segments like the 10K in Calcutta, which means more women are taking to serious running and practising running," said the man who held the national swimming championship (senior men's) title for four consecutive years from 1984.

Now, he doesn't have an "exercise regimen" but just runs on and on when he feels like it. "Fitness has never been an issue for me because I was into sports," he said, before adding with a wink that his weight had been constant from 80kg when he was 19 to 52kg now.