Running for a cause

"At 74, he competed in the 40-plus category and won a special award for doing 40 push-ups in a minute. He also achieved a personal best of pulling 110 pounds that day,” notes an article on Rumi Taraporevala who was featured on the cover of harmony — celebrate age in its issue of October 2004.

Taraporevala’s success at the Ironman competition in June 2004 was not surprising since he reportedly does a high energy 45-minute workout alternating cardio and weights at his gym regularly. "Chiselled muscles, clipped beard and a well-traveled accent, there is little that is not honed or toned about Taraporevala — including his sense of humor,” notes the harmony article titled "The ripple effect,” reporting on the rising number of "silvers” at gymnasiums across the country.

Taraporevala (left) gearing to run for the crippled

Having always been a runner, Taraporevala is now preparing for the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon scheduled for January 16, 2005. In the coming marathon he will run to raise as much as he can for the cause of the Society for the Education of the Crippled (Child and Adult) which looks after the disabled from the economically disadvantaged strata of society.

At the 2004 Marathon in Bombay Taraporevala completed the Dream Run despite an injured knee and helped raise funds for Savio D’Souza, the first Indian winner of an international marathon who was promised but never allotted a house by the government for his accomplishments. "Having been a long distance runner in my younger days I was in tune with the threshold of endurance my body could withstand,” conveyed Tarapore­vala, a retired foreign exchange broker who wonders, "Why didn’t we have more of these events when we were younger?”

Fitness, as sums up Taraporevala, "is not about living longer, it’s about living better.”