BackOn the upside of stubbornness
For better or worse, I'm committed to making a dash to the finish for what looks like the impossible
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Allow me to start with a caveat. This piece isn’t about running. It is about a state of mind. Running is only a metaphor. That out of the way, may I get into what transpired over the last couple of days?
Last week, I was in Delhi out of curiosity. In the previous edition of Mint on Sunday, I articulated my excitement about being on stage with the world’s most elite runners, just back after having done 333km in 72 hours across the Himalayas, at La Ultra, the world’s cruellest run. I asked them how in the devil’s name they managed to do it.
The answers that emerged were uniform. That running is as much about mental fitness as chess is about being physically fit. And that above all else, you need to be a terribly, terribly stubborn person.
Consider, for instance, the gentle Polish runner Darek Zwyciezca, who spoke to me through a translator. At age eight, he met with an accident and was in a coma for over two months. Physicians attending to him thought he didn’t stand a chance of walking again. His right side was paralysed and he had lost sight in the right eye as well. The pig-headed kid didn’t give a damn to what they thought. “It’s all in the head," he told me.
The others on stage also shared their experiences, which I thought were incredibly interesting. A computer science graduate decided to run from one end of the UK to another on a whim. Then there was this other man who did 20 triathlons in 20 days. “It’s all in the head," they insisted.
That is why I got back to Delhi this week—this time out of a sense of shame. Having looked myself in the mirror for a week after having met these men, I see a sloth that turned the perfect machine that is his body into slobbering jelly. And he has nobody to blame but himself. Allow me put that into perspective.
Soon after the conversation with these “supermen" last week, I got back to my home base in Mumbai and exchanged notes with Kavi Arasu. Unlike these supermen, he is somebody I can identify with. He heads the learning function at one of India’s largest firms. Much like most working folks I know (me included), he keeps a punishing schedule, is on the road pretty much all the time, has ruthless deadlines to meet and targets to achieve. But unlike me and most other people I know in their forties, Kavi is superbly fit. How does he do it, I asked him.
Turns out, 12 years ago, much like me, Kavi had this moment of epiphany when he looked into the mirror and saw a slobbering mass weighing all of 102kg. Much like me, he had done it to himself.
As is the case with most people, when inducted into the workforce, peer pressure inducts you into a lifestyle as well. Fancy lunches at fancy places, late nights, parties, and ridiculous demands to race to the top of the corporate ladder begin to take precedence over all else. The body begins to crumble. That the soul follows is a given.
All this hit home when Kavi thought it as good a time as any to get an insurance cover. If anything were to happen to him, he wanted his family protected. He took up on the offer from an insurance agent who had been hounding him for a long time. The mandatory medical check-up followed. Soon after, the company flatly refused to cover him. He fell in what they defined as a high-risk category.
This was the kind of slap it took for Kavi to figure he needed to clean up his act. He took to running. It was painful to begin with. His muscles had to learn all of what it had forgotten from its younger days. Today, Kavi lives a full life. I asked him what it took. And he told me much the same thing the “supermen" told me. “It’s all in the head. You’ve got to be terribly, terribly stubborn."
In discarding his lifestyle of excess as he now calls it, he had to take a few tough calls. To cite but just one instance, he took a call to start his day around 4.30am. That meant giving up on late evenings at work and the long conversations with his wife into the night. The early days were tough ones.
Co-workers and friends who had become used to having him on call through the late hours of the night couldn’t put a finger on why he was unavailable post 9pm. It took his wife a while to figure that their days of conversing into the night were a thing of the past. They agreed to disagree.
“I like the solitude mornings and my running offer me," says Kavi. He says it has made him a better leader because he has time to connect with the self, introspect and, most importantly, learn the delicate, but firm art of saying no to things that don’t matter. By now, everybody at his workplace, including his bosses know that it isn’t possible to elicit a response from him past a certain hour because those hours are dedicated to himself. But when he gets into his workplace after he is done with himself, he is a better leader because he is more in the moment than everybody else is.
“There are days when I run for three hours. After having done one hour, I assure you, what I experience is bliss," he says. “I get into a zone in my head and can hear the sound of every thought. Things begin to fall into place and I learn to discard the noise and retain only what is essential. It is meditation."
The conversation with Kavi done, I promptly called my friend Rajat Chauhan, a columnist with Mint and race director of La Ultra. “Do something. Do anything. Bring me back to life," I pleaded with him. “Haul that backside of yours back to Delhi into my clinic," he ordered over the phone. I didn’t wait and booked myself on the next available flight.
Shame was playing on my mind. A year ago, when he tried to get me back into shape, I gave up after a while because I thought it too difficult after a point. But this time around, the conversations with Kavi and the “supermen" kept playing in my head. “It’s all in the head. You’ve got to be terribly, terribly stubborn."
As I write this piece, I’m just done with a round of Rajat inspecting me like he would specimens in formaldehyde jars at the medical school he went to. I always thought at age 42, the muscles in too many parts of my body are weak because they haven’t been used for years. That makes me prone to injury. Years of smoking have taken a toll on my lungs and the breathing is laboured. Add to these years of junk food and alcohol-induced late nights. But Rajat isn’t willing to give up on me.
After having examined me and identifying the weak muscles in my body, he mumbled what sounded like medical jargon to one of the physiotherapists on his team. He, in turn, he put me through a round of floor exercises and weights. An hour later, I got out feeling like a butterfly.
“You feel good?"
“Yeah! Awesome."
“Then why aren’t you doing this everyday? If an hour can make you feel as good, imagine what a few months can do to you."
I turned the other way and looked sheepish.
“The problem with most people like you is you don’t appreciate how beautifully tuned the body is and how much ability it has to regenerate," he offered. “You just have to give it a chance."
“What do you want me to do?"
“We’re at the end of August. You’ll run the Delhi Half Marathon in November this year. We’ll follow it up with the Mumbai Full Marathon in January 2016. And 111km at the La Ultra in Leh next year, same time."
“You’re freaking crazy, doc."
That said, it didn’t take me much to make my mind up. I’ve taken him up on the challenge. I know I stand to gain. For one, going forward, I’ve made up my mind to make “NO" my default answer to every request that comes my way—unless it goes to making me better. Second, I’m now clear I don’t care what contemporaries or peers think of me. I compete only with myself. Third, who and what I am resides with me, in my head. Four, as Rajat keeps reminding me, “If you aren’t living on the edge, you’re wasting space." I refuse to be an also-ran. I intend to run. And, finally, when I’m done with this, I know my two girls whom I dote on now will grow to be proud of me.
“Don’t let me down," I could practically hear Rajat plead with me.
I don’t intend to. I’ve signed up for the Delhi Half Marathon. When registrations open for the Mumbai Full Marathon, I will sign up for that as well. I promise to keep you posted on what happens—whether I fail in my seemingly quixotic endeavour or come up trumps.
Charles Assisi is co-founder and director at Founding Fuel, a digitally led media and learning platform for entrepreneurs. He tweets on @c_assisi
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