Weight loss

If running is pursued in the right way, then weight loss is imminent. As the intensity and the training volume ramps up; the weight loss increases. It has to increase since it is a biological and mathematical fact.

Racing weight is that perfect weight with which you confidently start a race, and when you possess just the right amount of muscles and fat to take you from the start line to the finish line in the least time possible, with minimum amount of wear and tear.

Racing weight is relative. A person wanting to run an 80 minute half marathon should be a lot lighter than a person wanting to finish in 120 minutes.

Therefore, by using the right amount of training and eating habits, runners tamper with and reduce their bodies- inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre, bit by bit; peeling away layer after layer as race day gets closer.

Forget the elites and look at the top finishers in a semi-big race, you will see featherlight bodies floating to the finish line. All the non-essential flesh would have been chased away. Just the bare minimum retained in order to derive maximum performance without jeopardizing their health.

But in reaching that finish line in a manner which satisfies the runner, the runner has become the opposite of the perception of looking strong.

To focus more on men instead of women, since men lose more weight and look more gaunt and malnourished due to different genetics; the outward appearance of a serious runner is that of ill health and nowhere does he resemble strength and manliness in the manner that society perceives both these attributes.

The serious runner looks frail and weak. He is a waif and gaunt subject in photographs. A sapling which never attained the width of a tree and just continued on a vertical journey. Leaner than the “normal” people in his vicinity.

He is the antithesis of a strapping muscular man. He may be muscular and lean but even on good days, he is the anorexic Conan The Barbarian.

I've seen serious runner friends and acquaintances drop kilograms in a span of a few months and when I see them, I can see the outward frailty and gauntness. They appear weak; weaker than before when they were lugging “normal” weight. This is accentuated by the fact that the face is usually the first to take a hit and those hollow cheeks develop. 

It does not matter if the runner feels more alive and strong than before; his image is weaker.

From the earlier ease of mingling with the cherubic crowds, these runners have allowed their passion to enslave normalcy and turned their bodies into outwardly questionable vessels.

Society wants men to look strong on the outside. Machismo and burliness are rewarded since evolution has programmed us psychologically to obey/fear/respect larger individuals. Never judge a book by its cover is only applicable to inanimate objects. Living beings are first judged by their size, for the obvious reason that no one will sit with a psychological assessment questionnaire to see how good and strong you feel. Looks matter; appearances matter. 

However, if you forget the outward appearance and turn this gaunt runner inside out, the story is entirely different. The outward appearance of frailty is a deception; it belies what has developed inside. Inside, he is a completely different person now. The regular training sessions have callused and transformed a feeble mind into a machine with more willpower, grit and determination than ever before. The outward appearance of loss of strength has been compensated by an inward increase in strength. The mind now no longer accepts the erstwhile limitations and weaknesses. It has been supplemented. It is stronger than ever before. The book has re-written itself with the ink of sweat and effort.

I don't cardio. I don't Gatorade. I drink blood. She loves it.

The last breath

Today morning, during the entire drive to the area where I run, I was indifferent to everything happening inside and outside me. It is a 17 km drive (en route to work) and usually I listen to music or think of work or just look around and observe Delhi and its denizens doing their respective thing. 

Today, I wasn't happy, sad, excited, angry; there was nothing, just silence and indifference. I didn't feel like listening to the radio or to look around. Work thoughts were dismissed as soon as they tiptoed into my brain’s verandah. Then something happened! Just a kilometre away from the spot where I park my car and then commence running, I felt a sudden gush of excitement, elation and then slight goose bumps.

This was surprising because I had planned a fast 10k with about 90 metres elevation gain and there was no reason for me to be excited or happy at that time. I was moving closer and closer to about 40 minutes of decent effort and pain on a workday, but to the contrary, I was overjoyed for those few minutes before my car stopped and I stepped out.

As per Sigmund Freud’s, Pleasure-Pain Principle (or simply Pleasure Principle), humans instinctively perform acts to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We are programmed to act in this manner since our survival depends on it.

Now, think about how many runs are devoid of pain? The pain referred to here is not the pain of an injury or muscle soreness; it is the constant pain induced by effort. Even running slow requires effort and there is some pain, even if the intensity of pain is low. Any human powered locomotion which is beyond a brisk walk for an extended period of time has some elements of pain.

Yet runners go out again and again, and endure the pain in return for something which outweighs the pain. A run is the exact opposite of Freud’s “seek pleasure, avoid pain” principle. A run is all about seeking pain. But it can’t be that simple and that would not make any sense since a run is deliberately repeated and that to in a routine created by the sufferer.

Towards the end of a run, in the last few kilometres when you know that the run is about to end, do you start thanking your stars that it will soon end and when it is over you are relieved that the pain has stopped. There lies the answer for seeking pain- the relief afterwards. 

Relief is what a runner seeks. Relief is not a prolonged emotion like happiness. Happiness takes time to be processed, understood and felt. Happiness could continue for hours or days or months. Relief arrives immediately and leaves you immediately. Relief is the precursor to happiness and feels like an espresso shot of condensed momentary happiness. Relief is the sigh that you emit immediately after crossing a police barricade without being stopped when you’re driving drunk. Relief is when you enter your boss’ door and realize that you haven’t been summoned for a reprimand. Relief is the sigh that you emit when you get a message from your bank and see that it is a credit alert and not a debit alert. Relief is when your kid manages to catch the school bus. Relief precedes happiness and is a swift bird which flutters across your mind and then vanishes. 

That relief, momentarily tramples your woes and makes you forget them. Maybe that splash of self induced amnesia from life, just when you finish, is the reason why we run routinely. Relief is a momentary escape from life before you reach the U turn and come back to reality.

In modern life, relief is hard to come by. Even happiness, mostly has to be willed. We have to program and re-program ourselves, to be happy, to think happy thoughts, to appreciate the small things in life, to take things as they come, to not worry and be happy etc. (all other mumbo jumbo from self help books to be inserted here).

Running provides relief; after every run. That last laboured breath, right before finishing is- the sigh of relief.

Superman needs relief too. Unfortunately he only flies.

Rats and Jaggery will save your lungs....maybe

In my previous blog, I wrote about the polluted air in India and specifically the bigger cities, and how running in that toxic air is akin to doing deep meditation in a smoking lounge at the airport. I may be being a tad melodramatic with that example but maybe not!

In US Military there are three levels of bad situations and they have their own deserving acronyms:

1. SNAFU- Situation Normal: All Fucked Up

2. TARFU- Things Are Really Fucked Up or Totally And Royally Fucked Up

3. FUBAR- Fucked Up Beyond All Repair or Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition

As per the data that I have seen at (1) http://newdelhi.usembassy.gov/airqualitydataemb.html; (2) http://www.cpcb.gov.in/CAAQM/mapPage/frmdelhi.aspx?stateID=6; and (3) http://aqicn.org/map/india/), in Delhi and other major cities, the air quality is hovering somewhere between TARFU and FUBAR. China's air is definitely winning the race to FUBAR.

                     Meanwhile in China. Awww....the pre-slow death selfie. Panda masks make suicide pleasant

If you need more information or a glimpse into our future, then give these short articles about China, a read.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/16/beijing-airpocalypse-city-almost-uninhabitable-pollution-china

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/10/china-pollution-levels-hit-20-times-safe-levels

                    Nothing to look here...move on people....just a few more years and you can play Superhero Nurse in Delhi too

Ok, now that I've yet again ruined your mood, allow me to help you clean your lungs (hopefully).

I have been told many stories, in my younger years, by my parents about how jaggery is consumed regularly in Haryana by men and women since they are using a choolah, working in the fields, dealing with crop produce, working with hay or sieving wheat grain. 

They supplemented these tales by stories of jaggery being doled out as rations to workers in factories and how the workers' lung functions were not compromised to a grave extent by consuming jaggery. I have heard from DTC bus drivers about jaggery consumption and believe me, those angry Haryanvis know their science. Science is all that they think about when they're waiting for hours in Delhi traffic.

While researching on the internet about jaggery and its benefits on lungs, I found this research article on the website of National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine. Guess who wrote this? Two Indians (Anand Sahu and Ashok Saxena). Good men! Our Saviours (fingers crossed!).

But first, some condolences. My heart goes out to the rats (albino rats to be specific. No, I'm not racist. Sahu and Saxena chose the vanilla rats!). These rat heroes, were first injected with coal and silica dust and jaggery, and were later killed on the 30th, 60th and 90th day of the experiments and then their lungs were taken out and meticulously studied and then the dead rats were sold to a Chinese person...sorry, digressing, the article does not comment on the consumption of the rats but, yes, rats are a delicacy in China.

To save you from the trouble of reading the entire article, the synopsis is the following:

"Because industrial workers in dusty or smoky environments seemed to experience no discomfort if they consumed the sugar cane product jaggery, experimental studies were undertaken to observe the effects of jaggery on dust-exposed rats. Rats with and without a single intratracheal instillation of coal dust (50 mg/rat) were orally gavaged with jaggery (0.5 g/rat, 5 days/week for 90 days). The enhanced translocation of coal particles from lungs to tracheobronchial lymph nodes was observed in jaggery-treated rats. Moreover, the jaggery reduced the coal-induced histological lesions and hydroxyproline contents of lungs. The lesions induced in omental tissue and regional lymph nodes by a single intraperitoneal injection of 50 mg each of coal and silica dust were modified by jaggery (0.5 g/rat, 5 days/week for 30 days). These findings along with the preventive action of jaggery on smoke-induced lung lesions suggest the potential of jaggery as protective agent for workers in dusty and smoky environments. - Environ Health Perspect 102(Suppl 5):21 1-214 (1994)"

Another interesting line from the article is, "Enhanced translocation of dust particles from lungs and peritoneal cavity to TLN (tracheobronchial lymph nodes) was observed. However, the TLN are the site of immune-cell proliferation, and the enhanced translocation of particles following jaggery treatment may be due to the induction of some immune response"

If you do read the article (link at the bottom) then it is, obviously, all mumbo jumbo science like, but my two inputs for runners are the following:

1. The article talks about coal and silica dust. The rats were injected with coal and silica dust by Anand and Sahu. To connect the coal and silica dust to the air that we breathe while running and living (pun-ny), I compared the size of the coal and silica dust in the experiments to the PM 2.5 size and they were comparable. To recap the previous blog, PM2.5 level determines whether the air that you breathe is SNAFU, FUBAR or TARFU. What this means is that, we can apply the outcome of the experiment to humans without allowing Anand and Sahu to play their science games on you. You do realise what they would do to you on the 30th, 60th and 90th day, respectively.

2. You must be wondering how much jaggery to consume to become like the rats who passed with flying colours in the experiment? The rats in the experiment were given 50mg jaggery per rat and these rats were really small (140-150gms each). So .50gm per 150gm lab rat means that jaggery equivalent to about .33% of your body weight has to be consumed. So a 65kg human has to consume about 22gms of jaggery per day. So let us aim for these small doses of jaggery and hope for the best!

If I'm here, then I will update this blog in 15 years (fingers crossed yet again and I hope the fingers don't drop off by that time due to the toxins inside me).

Article link- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567304/

The future of running in big Indian cities

“Nature... She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.” 

                                                                                                         Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have you ever wondered where you will be running in 10, 20, 30 years from now? Will you be still running on your regular road route in Delhi? Will you see the sunrise and hear the birds chirp and wave your hand at the regulars at the park? Will you be in some other State like Mumbai or Bangalore and running there? Do you picture yourself maintaining the same running schedule as you are today? Will it feel the same way as it feels today or will there be changes?

If you have or have not wondered, then let me enable you in picturing how grim and bleak the future for running (worse for cycling) will be in India, with emphasis on the metropolitan cities.

Let us start one by one with the main factors that will affect your running in the future in metropolitan cities or bigger cities:

Traffic and parking

About 1400 new cars (add more numbers for other vehicles) are sold and added everyday to Delhi roads. 

In 2002, the number of cars per 1000 people in India was about 15. In 2011 it was 18 per 1000 people. By 2030, it is projected to be 100 per 1000 people.

Now, what do we do with cars when we don’t drive them? We park them (anywhere). When a car is parked, it occupies as much space as its size and a little more. A parked car actually enjoys its own real estate which cannot be used for anything else for most of the time. In fact I would classify a car as moving real estate because of the space it occupies.

The government is and will be unable to provide new roads and parking space. Imagine today’s traffic and parking problems and now multiply it by 5 and that is just 15 years away. This is without considering the trucks, buses, autos etc.  Keep multiplying by bigger numbers for post 2030 because incomes will grow and there will be an increase in the rate of car purchases. Picture yourself running around and about these parked cars or escaping their zig zag traffic.

In May 2013, the Economic Times reported, “Experts who have used forecasting techniques to understand the extent of the traffic distress in the future say that in seven years every single inch of road space available in the city would be occupied by a vehicle leading to traffic jams that could last for days. At the office of the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS), a joint venture between the Delhi government and IDFC, which is trying to work out traffic solutions for the city, a senior transport specialist says that the apocalyptic future has already been seen. "It's here," she says pointing to a page on a thick report on traffic projections for the future.”

We have been taught to run against the traffic while running on roads. I’d like to see people practice running against the traffic in the year 2030 because I’ve never seen actual humans play Temple Run!

Pollution

Delhi has won an award recently. An award from WHO for the dirtiest atmosphere out of 1600 cities. The WHO recorded an annual average concentration of PM2.5 of 153 micrograms per cubic meter in Delhi. The WHO considers the measurement of PM2.5 to be the best indicator of the level of health risks from air pollution.  Overall Indian is at 134 micrograms per cubic meter and Canada is at the other end of the spectrum at 11 micrograms per cubic meter. So you can imagine what we are breathing and especially as runners, the amounts of pollution entering our system.

In May 2013, the Economic Times reported, “According to Basu, the massive growth in vehicular traffic has ensured an increase in sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide; and at least 10% of the population in Delhi shows signs of lung-related conditions such as bronchitis and asthma. This means that there are 16 lakh people in the city who would be suffering from asthma and acute bronchitis at the same time. At least 10% of these would need nebulisers or non-invasive ventilators to just ensure that they get access to oxygen. Most of the traffic policemen who serve in congested areas such as Chandini Chowk are all in bad state; they cannot breathe properly, lungs damaged.”

According to a press release on 21 September 2015 by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, about 6,50,000 people die every year in India due to air pollution. As per Times of India (17 September 2015) Delhi will record 31100 death in 2025 and 52,000 deaths in 2050 due to air pollution.

Population

India is already the second most populated country in the world and by 2025-2028 it will become the most populated country by overtaking China. 

Government mandated population control will most likely not happen in India due to obvious reasons and our societal and customary norms will continue to support procreation. 

On top of the ever-growing population, the general human tendency to provide the best for our own children and the consequent demands from children will lead to more cars on the roads. When your own kid is concerned, is the time when the curtain of bullshit unfurls and the general concern for humanity and society takes a backseat. We are genetically programmed to be selfish and support our own, even if that means that directly or indirectly others are at or will be at a loss. I know of no parent with means who will willingly not buy his child a car, even after knowing that another lego block was added to the ridiculous block by block mess that we have gradually created.

This steadily increasing population and incomes will add significantly more cars and other vehicles on to the roads.

What I foresee for running:

1. Road running will become a peril due to increased traffic and pollution. Road running will lessen significantly. Running with masks will be a common sight.
2. More people (walkers and runners alike) will flock to neighborhood parks and forested areas, consequently making these places extremely crowded and unsuitable for your workouts. Keep in mind that these parks and forested areas will not have the problem of cars but the air over there will still be polluted so your masks will be on. In places like Mumbai where there are hardly any parks, I can imagine the problem being more extreme.
3. Gyms will make a killing due to increased treadmill running. We will wait in line for our turns to get on the treadmill. The bigger gyms with more treadmills will benefit with higher patronage.
4. Treadmill sales will soar and there will be more treadmills stationed at homes.
5. It is unnatural and it feels unnatural to run regularly on treadmills and therefore, treadmill manufacturers will have to devise ways to make running on treadmills more realistic and surreal for runners. 
6. Air purifiers will be installed in gyms and homes since the polluted air will be everywhere. Sheila Dixit was not wrong in installing 16 air purifiers in her house. She obviously knows more than you and me about our air!
7. Races will mostly be organized outside the metropolitan cities in cleaner areas.
8. Runners will train on treadmills or on roads while wearing masks and then travel to the hills or other cleaner places for running races which are organized there.
9. Some runners will shift some workouts or maybe shift lock, stock and barrel to other sports like football and basketball to get a workout outside on a playground (traffic free).
10. There may be relocation to smaller cities to continue running outside in a semi-safe/safer environment. For instance, if I have enough savings, I plan to move to my village in Haryana when the shit hits the fan or if I don’t have the requisite savings then find a job in a cleaner city.
11. There will be negligible newbie runners. Running as a sport will not be taken up actively due to the omnipresent and imminent hazards to health and life!
12. Some will quit running altogether!

I don’t even want to delve too much into the plight of cyclists because it is a sport which requires even more open space and longer duration (which means more time in the pollution and traffic) to get a decent workout. Mostly cyclists will be constrained to remain inside on turbo trainers and it won’t make a difference if you have a carbon frame or a wrought iron frame since they won’t be going anywhere!

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Do tell me that I’m wrong. I’d very much like to hear that :-)

Next instalment of this blog will be on what could be the future of running companies (keeping in mind the above).

And if you are imagining how you will look while running in a mask, then you will definitely not look like Bane

You’ll look closer to this guy instead