Don't sprint the marathon

Don't sprint the marathon is not the 'run-of-the-mill' self-help book targeted for all and sundry, but is aimed at overzealous and ambitious parents who relentlessly push their children towards 'success'. The author, V Raghunathan, painstakingly explains that, for most part, all the small things in life do not matter in the long run and it is the attitude and the innate passion that made people like N.R. Narayanamurthy and GM Rao  stand out from the rest.

As the blurb on the back cover says, the title of the book does sound very obvious and intuitive,  but then as one of my colleagues, Patrick Marion, mentioned to me once - Knowing does not mean doing.  To that end, I do believe that this book is worth a read for all parents of school doing children.

While I did enjoy the small anecdotes and examples of the numerous 'achievers', I do have my complaints. It clearly appears to me that a lot of the messages intended for the audience get repeated over and over again in the book. The real-life stories apart, this book could have been condensed to less than 50 pages instead of the 170 odd pages as it stands now.

My take on this book - Pick this up from a library and read it; clearly not required for one's personal collection.

What I talk about when I talk about running

When I came across this book in my library, and noticed that the blob contains keywords "running" and "memoir",  I had no choice but to pick it up.  Having been running myself and jotting down memoirs of the same, I could not have resonated more.

And the book did not let me down. There were several instances/episodes in the book which I felt could have been typed by myself instead. I will try to list a few of them. Before that, I would like to mention one point -- this review is unlike others in this blog,  I have added a lot of my personal take on the different episodes, unlike others where I have just tried to be more objective.

The first is the author's observation towards the end of Chapter 3, where he says that even after 20 odd marathons, his feelings during the 26.2 mile race have been more or less the same -

• good feeling for the first 19 miles, 
• then the period of pain and frustration, 
• and finally (once the race is completed) forget the entire pain and get pumped for the next race and do things all over again.

I have not run 20 odd marathons, but in the half a dozen I have run till now, I have had exactly the same feeling.
The author goes to great length to dispel the wrong notion among non-runners that runners run because they want to live longer -- he reiterates that runners actually do run because they rather want to live life fuller. Another chord struck right there.


While reading the author's description of both the Athens - Marathon run and also his Ultra (100k) run, I could clearly visualize his feelings,  pain and the relief at the end of the run. I do not know if I will ever attempt a 100K run, but if I do, I really hope that I do it like what he did, a smooth sailing after the 40mile (65K) mark. Nevertheless, it was just great reading those memoirs.



Similarly, the author expresses his anguish at his failed attempt in completing a marathon and blames it on three reasons - Not enough running, Not enough running and Not enough running. I had an almost identical feeling with my failed KTM run.

I liked the quote "Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose". I do not know if there could be any other statement that I agree more :)


The author describes talent, focus and endurance as necessary elements for a successful writing (and possibly other) career and long distance running teaches more than abundantly in those areas. True.


The author lists the following as some of the lessons that he has learned from long distance running.

Some lessons from Running:

• How much can I push myself?
• How much rest is appropriate?
• How much is too much
• How far can I take and still keep it decent and consistent?
• To what extent should I be confident of my abilities and when should I start doubting myself?

It just makes so much sense to me, to the extent that I could even call these as obvious. Though I must add that one keeps raising these questions over and over again and still manages to get more and more relevant answers with each run.

Needless to say, there are a few things where I differ with the author. For completion sake, I list a couple.

• He keeps saying that he does not care about times. While time may not be the the most important element, I doubt if he really just did not care about timings. 
• He says that he gets the runners physique, just by running 5-6 times a week. I do not know if this an universal truth. Even in my peak mileage, I do not think I got any physique, leave alone runner's physique :)

Just before concluding, there is one other episode that I should mention, that kept me pondering for a while. The author admits to succumbing to what he calls as "Runners Blues" after he completed the Ultra and sort of moved away from running for a long period of time. While one part of my brain says that this is non-sense, the other half can clearly see the "sense" of this all. As I mentioned earlier, I do not know if I will ever attempt 100K, but it would be interesting to see what happens to me after such a run, if I attempt one at all and survive!

At the end of the book, the author just concludes saying that he just wanted to be known as a person who never walked. Great thought and a good way to the book.

VALKYRIE the plot to kill hitler - Philipp Von Boeselager

I just completed this book  and I should admit that I was pretty disappointed. The book titles Valkyrie, the plot to kill Hitler, but makes just a passing reference to this plot. No details have been provided on the plot and the book clearly fails to meet the expectations in that front.

The book is in fact the memoirs of Philipp V.Boeselager and in itself a good read to understand the conditions from a German WW2 soldier. The bravery of the soldiers waging a losing war in inhuman conditions, fighting against a Red army who had no scruples sacrificing their civilians to exhaust opposition's ammunition, the bravery of captured soldiers not spilling the beans and revealing co-conspirators even in the face of severe Gestapo torture -- the book is replete with such touching episodes.

On the plot to kill Hitler and the role played by the author and his friends, I tend to fully agree with the assessment  this article. In particular, I agree that one gets a felling that a lot of details have been willingly left out of the book, thereby reducing its 'authenticity' value. In addition, the high moral value and claims by the author seem a bit superficial. For example, the author keeps mentioning that he was not well informed about the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the early 1940's and that his focus was only on carrying out his military responsibilities. This is a pretty difficult argument to buy. In short, I do feel that the moral claims in this book are questionable -- one gets a feeling that something is amiss and theory pretty unconvincing.

In summary, this book is a decent read as long as the expectations are set correct - the reader should not expect to get details on the Valkyrie plot, but should just read it as memoirs of an German soldier in WW2 and leave it at that.