This Sunday, when the most strenuous activity many people will do is roll out of bed, grab the remote and settle in for six hours of football, Fauja Singh will be running a marathon. While you're sweating out the point spread, he will be pounding the pavement. Big whoop. Well, Singh is 100 years old and preparing to become the first person-- ever-- to complete the 26.2-mile course at that age.
The bearded Singh, who was already a fuzzy-faced teenager when Larry King was born, has been preparing to set a Guinness World Record as the oldest person ever to finish a marathon race.
Singh took up competitive running when he was a young colt of 89 years and has set numerous records as the fastest 100 year-old sprinter in multiple distances. On Sunday, the India-born, British citizen hopes to add the Toronto Waterfront marathon to his list of accomplishments.
In his last marathon, Singh finished with a time of 5 hours and 40 minutes. That was in 2003 when he was pushing a sprightly 92-- an age when most people are putting a new set of wheels on their Rascal.
Singh's coach attributes his century-old charge's fitness to a light diet of tea, toast and curry.
Too bad. I was hoping he was one of those guys who defied nature by eating red meat and washing it down with a half-bottle of scotch every day.
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