Man From Matunga

Death, the big news this week, can come in many forms, but the one that caps a life of sloth is unnec­es­sary and pre­ventable. Cur­rent data sug­gests that more than 1/3^rd of the world’s pop­u­la­tion has taken up vol­un­tary phys­i­cal inactivity…the social con­se­quences of this “couch potato” syn­drome are and will be far-reaching; and more dev­as­tat­ing than those wrought by smok­ing and alco­hol. From an indi­vid­ual per­spec­tive, since most of us, thanks to mod­ern med­i­cine, will live well into our 80s and 90s, we need to be rea­son­ably fit and healthy all the time to make sure that our longevity does not become a curse.

No book puts this in bet­ter per­spec­tive than Gretchen Reynolds’, “The First 20 Min­utes: Sur­pris­ing Sci­ence Reveals How We Can Exer­cise Bet­ter, Train Smarter, Live Longer”.

The field of exer­cise phys­i­ol­ogy is cur­rently on a roll. Researchers these days have access to sophis­ti­cated tools and method­olo­gies that allow them to find answers to all kinds of ques­tions related to phys­i­cal exer­cise. Ms. Reynolds keeps track of these on a reg­u­lar basis in her col­umn in the New York Times and has put these together in her book.

She addresses ques­tions rang­ing from what is the bare min­i­mum one needs to exer­cise (20 min­utes a week) to whether there is a thresh­old beyond which fur­ther phys­i­cal activ­ity makes no dif­fer­ence. And for active run­ners she dis­cusses a host of rel­e­vant issues includ­ing whether we should warm-up or not (ide­ally not, unless you know exactly what to do, which most don’t), how much water to drink dur­ing a run (prefer­ably only when you are thirsty), whether car­bo­hy­drate load­ing before a run helps (not par­tic­u­larly), whether icing helps the mus­cles to heal faster (not really), should we cross-train (yes), what kind of shoes to wear (debat­able), how to run (front foot ver­sus heel-first), etc. The chap­ters are loaded with data, stripped of sci­en­tific jar­gon and inter­preted in the con­text of exer­cise and run­ning for reg­u­lar peo­ple like you and I. A must read!

Last year, I had writ­ten about “Born to Run” by Christo­pher McDougall where he talks about the Tarahu­mara peo­ple in Mex­ico and their run­ning prowess. The book inspired me to switch to Vibrams Five-Fingers and front-foot run­ning and changed my run­ning life com­pletely. I have gone from a slow 8K / hour to a rea­son­able 10K / hour speed, while enjoy­ing every bit of every run. If you run but need moti­va­tion or have never run and want to start run­ning, this is the book that will help.

And then to under­stand what extreme run­ning can do to an indi­vid­ual, and how you can become an ultra-runner (longer than 50 mile runs) while still being vegan, Scott Jurek’s book, “Eat and Run: My Unlikely Jour­ney to Ultra­ma­rathon Great­ness” is great fun. Scott is one of the world’s top ultra-runners and his book is an auto­bi­og­ra­phy that mixes vegan recipes with his per­sonal per­spec­tive on how to run well, using his own expe­ri­ences and travails.

I fin­ished the book in one read over a week­end and I was riv­eted by Scott’s pas­sion and focus. For any­one who has wanted to give up dur­ing the 17th km of a half-marathon, or can’t find the energy to get up on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing to take to the roads, this book is worth the inspi­ra­tion it pro­vides to keep mov­ing on.

These three books should help immensely, espe­cially now that the 2013 Mum­bai Marathon entries are open. Try and read them in the order above…they will make a difference.