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
