122 123 under pressure under pressure What nutrients are essential before starting to run, and which ones should be integrated at the middle and at the end of the path? Diet must be balanced. In training every other day, the zone diet – 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein and 30% fat – is perfect. Breakfast is the fundamental moment of the day. There must be a bit of everything, proteins included. For those who run very early in the morning, and want to do it fasting, my advice is to run or walk for 10 km, not more. From posture to concentration. How do you train your mind to run? What feeds runner's mind? When I run, I think better and faster. I solve problems related to my work as to daily life in general. Blood circulation, oxygen and endorphins used and generated by running are a panacea for the mind not only while you are training, but also afterwards. A general well-being of which you can no longer do without. Do you listen to yourself or to music during the run? Can running become a form of meditation? I always prefer to listen to myself - a bit because I run through the streets and safeness is important; a bit because, if you go out with friends, chatting is very enjoyable and relaxing. While running, where do you let your mind go? As a professional athlete, mind always dreams the competition, its simulation. An athlete feeds on competitiveness, he cultivates it every day. Now that I've stopped competing for a few years, I still like to go out three or four times a week. While running, sometimes I organize my work, some others I do not think about anything. In every case, running is always regenerating. What can a runner betray? Which obstacles are not normally foreseen and instead they almost systematically occur? Sometimes climate is an annoying variable, in winter season in particular. Some people do not like cold, neither wind, nor the lightest rain. I've always enjoyed running in cold as in heat, and today sportswear is so sophisticated that, even if thin, it can keep the runner warm and dry even after a lot of kilometers. «Organisation, strategy and results». What can be practical in helping a runner's mind, be it a runner or a person who simply wants to get back into shape? It takes a journey made of small steps, achievable goals. A sportsman needs an intermediate goal every day, dreaming of the big blow that can be the most disparate. A distance reached, a number on a scale, a time, a competition; everything is motivating. Japanese writer Haruki Murakami states that «Writing a book is almost like running a marathon, motivation is essentially of the same nature: a silent and precise inner drive, which does not seek confirmation in any external judgment3». Is that so? What book do you recommend to a runner? I would like to recommend Open by Andre Agassi4, which tells the story of a great talent forcibly pushed to the sport that, slowly, becomes aware of himself. It seems to me the perfect book to keep in mind that sport is important, it's good, but that's not all. We have reached the finish line. What changes in body, and what in mind, of those who have started running again? Change is in the appearance, certainly leaner, and in the discipline of the person. When you do sport, you can autoregulate faults and excesses – for instance, you can eat out several times a week, but you perfectly know how far you can get, and how many times you can 'sin'. The same applies to sleep, to rest, to work: those who run know that they need to stock up on energy to spend in case of need. It is clear to me: ‘running’ is a bright metaphor for ‘living’. 3 What I talk about when I talk about running [tr. Philip Gabriel, ed. Knopf, 2008] is a memoir by Haruki Murakami written between the summer of 2005 and the autumn of 2006, in which he writes about his interest and participation in long-distance running, particularly in marathon. Murakami started running in the early '80s and since then has competed in over twenty marathons, some ultramarathons and a few triathlon competitions. [The english edition's title was inspired by Raymond Carver's collection of short stories entitled What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, 1981]. 4 Andre Agassi, Open. An autobiography, ed. Three Rivers Press, 2009
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