INDIA: Running around the clock

NEW DELHI (Business Standard), June 8, 2008: By Gargi Gupta P.V. Iyer has completed 12 marathons, runs 12 km/day, and is 78 years old. P.V. Iyer is 78 years old, an age when most have lost much of their zest for life owing to illnesses and not having anything to do. But not this retired air marshal, who leads a busy and full life surrounded by children and grandchildren, shuttling between Pune, Delhi and Lucknow. His secret? Running. Iyer runs every day, notching up a daily mileage of 12 km. He gets up at 4.30 am and is out, burning up the asphalt near his home in Pune by 4.45 am. It takes him about an hour and a quarter to do his round, after which he goes to a gym, four or five days a week, for a half-hour of light weight-training and stretching. "The muscles tend to shorten a bit after running, and you need to stretch. Also, while running takes care of the cardiovascular fitness, which is very important, you also need to look at building muscular strength, flexibility and power," he says. By 7 am, Iyer's back home to join his wife for tea and breakfast, set for a day of lounging about, reading and odd tasks like teaching his granddaughter how to drive. "I have kept to a steady weight of 56 kg for a long time now. I can eat well and my heart and lungs are in super shape. I have no ailments," says Iyer, although he says it's a chicken-and-egg question whether he's fit because he runs or he runs because he's fit. Iyer wasn't an athlete in his youth, although being in the Indian Air Force he led a fairly active life. "It was my wife, a tennis champion in her youth, who was more into sports. I guess some of it rubbed off on me." "The running bug" as Iyer calls it, bit him quite late in life, when he was 47 and the IAF laid down running a mile in seven minutes as one of its criteria for physical fitness. "I began by jogging 100-200 yards a day, slowly increasing the distance so that within a few weeks I was running a mile." Iyer hasn't stopped since, gathering many accolades and achievements along the way. "I was selected by Milkha Singh to represent India in the Asian Veterans Tournament in Singapore in 1981, where I won the gold medal for the 5,000-metre race," Iyer recounts one of his proudest moments. To date, Iyer has run 12 full marathons of 42.195 km, his greatest feat of endurance being the 200 km Indian Air Force run between Delhi and Agra in 1985. "I was 56 then, and it took two days for us — we were 300 athletes in all, including such names as Ranjit Bhatia, who represented India at the Rome Olympics, and Dev Lahiri, who was an Oxford Blue — to complete the distance. When we reached the Palam grounds on October 8, Air Force Day, there was a band to welcome us and I handed over the Air Force flag to then Air Chief Marshal La Fontaine." Iyer's kept to this regimen every day these past 30 years, missing at most 10 days because he was ill or injured or travelling. He's run on trains, on ships, even on a railway platform when the train he was travelling on stopped at one — no wonder he was called the "running marshal". Iyer is also the author of Run and Discover Your Strength, besides a number of newspaper articles on running, and running in old age. Running marathons at 78 might seem fantastic, but P.V. Iyer is not an isolated phenomenon, in the world or in India. Rahul Verghese, who says he gave up a corporate career to promote running and now has a website called runningandliving.com, adds a few names — Buster Martin, a 101-year-old Brit; Baba Fauja Singh, the expatriate Singh in London who took to running in his 80s and is something of a celebrity, having endorsed Adidas shoes and running gear; and Delhi's 75-year-old Ashis Roy, ex-air force like Iyer, but part of the medical corps, has completed 82 marathons. "There are several people who have started running full marathons after reaching 40 — Sunil Chainani in Bangalore who is now in his late 40s has run over six marathons. I am 47, started running at 41 and have run 24 marathons across the world. The running culture is picking up in India," says Verghese. The marathons in Delhi and Mumbai have a senior veterans category for runners aged 55 and above, many senior citizens participate and some even go on to complete the gruelling feat. For example, 63-year-old Bibekanand Tripathi, a veterinary surgeon from Cuttack who's a regular on the international marathon circuit, and Gangadhar Mehta, a 74-year-old businessman from Mumbai who's a regular participant at the marathon. Copyright: Business Standard Ltd.