Runningmonkeys

Rather than continue the debate on whether India’s youngest marathon runner, 5 year old Budhia Sing should be allowed to run, I thought I would write about something more constructive.  I get sick of reading the same old stories re-hashed by 1000 sites worldwide and I am always on the lookout for a new angle.  I have my own opinions about parents and pressure, sport and money and the responsibility of the first world to the third world.  However, as runners, we can all learn an important lesson from this 5 year old and his running. 

What can we learn from the situation, that will help us as runners?  The part of the story that impressed me the most was that Budhia Singh’s coach/adopted father is not a runner.  He has not trained as a coach of runners and in fact he seems to lack even the basics of running common sense.  Instead he runs a Judo Dojo, and I have no reason to believe that he doesn’t do that very well.  From this experience he has assumed that he has the necessary knowledge and experience to train his boy in this most unconventional way. 

Nobody is training boys this young to run, not even professional coaches or ex-champions.  He is a pioneer!  And this is where it all falls down.  I believe this pioneer, is training the boy using a whole lot of guess work, old wives tales and stubbornness.  He is doing things that nobody has done before and I believe that he is doing it badly. 

Regardless of whether someone of that age should be training over the distances that Budhia Singh runs, the thing that will break him is lack of knowledge about running reality.  This is where any athlete can come unstuck.  If we want to perform, whatever we do to our bodies has to be based on more than a hunch or convenience.  When we hear a supposed expert telling us something we have to listen critically.  We have to develop a discerning mind that can weed out the garbage from the solid training advice.  We have to be able to put together all of the available information and decide for ourselves if it is true.

One example from the case of Budhia Singh is that his coach/father doesn’t let him drink during any of his long runs.  He believes that the boy will run faster if he doesn’t drink.  Now from some twisted logic, I am sure that this makes sense to them, but is it really true?  The reality of running is that if you run 60+ kilometres in hot weather you are going to lose a lot of water through sweat.  If you lose too much water you will slow down, and if you keep losing water you will eventually die.  In this case, guess work and old wives tales mean nothing.  We are talking about real life and real death.

When we look at the details though, this is not so much different from a lot of the fashionable health information that circulates our world.  Over here in Japan we are on the tail end of another world tour of the sweat suit concept.  Telemarketers and conventional retailers are all trying to promote tracksuits made of black water proof material as an aid to weight loss. 

Everyday I see people out walking and jogging in these sweat suits, convinced that they are going to lose weight by wearing them.  And they will!  But the weight that they will lose is all water and unless they want to die, eventually they will have to drink something to replace it.  Sure their body weight goes down in the short term as they gradually dehydrate themselves, but they are not reducing their body fat any more than by wearing normal clothes. 

On top of all of this, they look like idiots.  Running along with steam pouring out of every gap.  Plod,plod,plod…pant,pant,pant…drip,drip,drip.  But no magical loss of body fat.  If only they listened to logic and science rather than marketing and make-believe.

How easy is it to spot dangerous myths that other people believe to be true.  However when we, ourselves, believe a myth, we are often too convinced of it’s truth, to see the error. 

To help us all out, can you think of any dangerous myths that are currently popular in running circles?  Where do you think a lot of runners are going wrong?  Have your say by leaving a comment below.

Thanks

Tom