The limitless man

It’s only been around 10 days since Milind Soman won the ‘Ironman’ title in Zurich after completing a 3.8 km swim, a 180 km cycle ride and a 42 km run in 15 hours and 19 minutes. The model/actor-turned-marathon runner-turned-triathlon athlete raises his hand for a high five the moment you congratulate him for the article he wrote after his big win.

Assuming that Soman has been answering the similar queries ever since his return, we tell him that we will be bothering him some more to which he quickly responds with, “Bug me please. I haven’t done that many interviews actually. I just returned day before yesterday and I’ve written two pieces about it.”

Taking part in the triathlon, considered to be one of the world’s toughest race, was one task he decided to take up before turning the big 50 this year.

“Since last year I was looking for a challenge that I should take up to make it special. Everybody talks about your 50th year and start asking you what you’re going to do for the big day. Somebody then suggested the Ironman of which I had a vague idea. I looked it up and found it exciting. I then decided to go for it and I just did,” Soman shares.

The first half-marathon he participated in was back in 2004 in Mumbai. It was only in 2009, that the 49-year-old was able to complete the entire marathon. The triathlon, he agrees, was rigorous but his run from Delhi to Bombay in 2012 (over 1,500 km) was much “tougher because it was for over 30 days, and during that period you have to maintain and sustain the mental energy”. 

“Physically you get better as you do more but mentally you get bored. It gets monotonous and you lose both the interest and the incentive to do it. It’s easy to maintain it for 15 or 30 hours but definitely not easy to maintain for 30 days. It’s tough. I remember what I went through in 2012. The triathlon was fun because it is something you can easily prepare for and I keep telling people that anybody can do this,” says Captain Vyom-turned-Ironman.

“But in terms of difficulty,” he further adds “is in the preparation. When you finally do the event it’s not tough. The preparation is tough because there are certain hours that you have to devote every single day and for a long period of time. To make sure that you can train regularly, is tough”.“The duration of the first training programme which my friend Kimberly Shah, a professional athlete, sent was of 35 hours per week. This is not doable for anybody who has any other kind of life. I asked for another plan and she gave me a 25-hour one which, again, was something I couldn’t do. I knew that I had to devise something for myself and came up with a plan of two-and-a-half hours or two hours a day, with a longer session on Sundays, which added up to a 13 or 14 hours per week. I started training from April 15 and trained for about 80 days. I was already very comfortable with the marathon running and swimming but not with the cycling and, of course, doing the whole thing together,” Soman shares.

Twenty-five days into training, Soman decided to do a full distance on May 9 to see his level of fitness. “For me, to go through the entire race and see how I feel mentally was very important. I took 15 hours to complete the race that day but I didn’t cover the last 12 km of the running, thinking it’s just a few more kilometers so I need not do it. Now this is the game your mind plays. I almost lost the incentive saying this is easy and stopped training for 10 days. I knew I was being stupid but then I forced myself and started it all over again. I was regular in the last month,” he tells us. 

“Zurich can get as hot as Delhi. In fact, I was there five days before the event, on the second or third day it was about 34 degrees which is uncomfortable but on the final day everything was brilliant. The water temperature was perfect and the landscape was beautiful. I faced no issues with the cycle. Once that was done, I enjoyed the run, talked to people, stopped to take photographs and finished the race,” says the ‘Mantastic Man’ of the Old Spice ad.

“I give credit to my mom for inspiring and encouraging me to take sports seriously. She was a professor of bio-chemistry and at the age of 60 when she retired she started trekking. Today, she is 76 and participates in a 100 kilometer trek. She does that every year and has inspired my sisters to join her. They’re all above 50. The kind of encouragement I had as a child to continue sports was brilliant. like any other family, my people asked me to stress more on studies rather than swimming. But, my mother said, ‘He enjoys it and should balance both studies and sports’. Those 13 years of my life played an important role in shaping my life and mind,” he adds.The Pinkathon ambassador was in town to announce the 3rd edition of SBI Delhi Pinkathon which will have over 10,000 women participating in the run on September 6 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

“From this year, in our registration form there is a box which you can tick if you want to be trained and then we put the women in touch with running groups close to their homes,” Soman informs.