Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

Here’s one thing I didn’t realize: how much of a triathlon involves wardrobe changes. It’s like a strenuous version of a Broadway musical. After I peel off the wet suit, I towel dry, put on bike shorts, socks, shoes, and suntan lotion. It is a ten-minute production.

“Phase two,” Tony says as we mount our bikes.

We pedal along a car-less road. It’s been shut down for the race. We pass drugstores, a couple of dentist’s offices, a field with a half-dozen turkeys. We zip through delightfully meaningless red traffic lights. We ride in silence.

Though the silence is broken by frequent calls of “On your left!” Which means some man or woman hunched with their chin on the handlebars whooshes by.

Thirty-three minutes and two sugary blackberry energy packs later, we dump our bikes and start jogging on a boardwalk by the beach.

“I’m not in any hurry,” Tony says. “So don’t feel the need to sprint on my account.”

“I don’t have plans either,” I say.

We plod along without a word. I’ve got a rhythm going—one inhalation for every four steps, one exhalation for every four steps. I’m tired, but not exhausted. I think I may make it. I trained enough—overtrained, in fact. As I say, fear of public humiliation is a great motivator.

I watch the water lapping against the piers. I listen to the cheering bystanders. “Almost there!” says a bald guy who already finished the race and has joined the crowd. I don’t even mind his mild condescension. I’m kind of liking this. I’m finally feeling what Chris McDougall calls the joy of running. I finally have the answer to Tony’s prerace question: “Why?”

We cross the finish line and give each other a bro hug. We walk down a wooden ramp back to our bikes. Tony turns to me: “We did it.”

And I say two sentences that, even as I was saying them, sound strange issuing from my mouth: “It was kind of fun, no? I’d do it again.”

On the ferry back, Tony and I try to figure out whether the triathlon was, on balance, healthy or unhealthy. There were many unhealthy things about it. First of all, there was the postrace pancake breakfast, at which everyone (including me) shoved his or her face full of simple carbs. There was also the lack of sleep, the noise, the three mouthfuls of microbe-filled Staten Island beach water that I swallowed during the swim, and the unknown toxins from the Magic Marker with which our number was scrawled onto our hands and legs.

On the other hand, it had its healthy parts. It spurred me to exercise every day. And as for the pancakes, at least one of my fellow triathletes offered me sugar-free syrup, which is marginally better than Aunt Jemima’s. It allowed me to socially connect with Tony, and for a few weeks there, I had a purpose, however absurd.

When I get home, I drop my pink camo bag in the hall and engulf my sons in a hug. “Did you win?” asks Zane.

“Well, I beat a lot of people,” I say.

He seems pleased.

“But I lost to hundreds of others.”

That he doesn’t like.

(Note: This was not the last triathlon I signed up for. A couple of months later, I paid a hefty, nonrefundable entry fee for the New York Triathlon. I’d be swimming nearly a mile in the Hudson River, biking twenty-five miles, and running six. Training was going well, I was feeling confident. And then, two weeks before the race, Tony sent me this e-mail:

Did you see that there was a fire at a sewage plant on 135th Street? Five million gallons of raw sewage spilling into the river every hour until they fix it. The city is urging all New Yorkers to avoid contact with Hudson River water. I beg you to reconsider.

He didn’t have to beg too hard. There’s the thrill of a challenge, and then there’s 200 million gallons of human waste. I’m currently signed up for next year’s triathlon.

Chapter 25

The Eyes

The Quest to See Better

I LOVE WATCHING THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL documentaries on the body. They’re so delightfully boosterish, they make me feel proud of this heap of bones and sinew. The narrator sells you on the human body like he’s Ron Popeil hawking the latest vegetable chopper. “The eyes can see one hundred million colors! They can focus from infinity to inches in a fifth of a second! In complete darkness, they can detect the light of a single candle fourteen miles away!”

Which really are astounding statistics.

Unfortunately, my eyes aren’t quite as astounding as the ones advertised. They’re flawed. I’m nearsighted and have astigmatism. Which isn’t compatible with my goal of being the healthiest man in the world.

I’ve been trying to put some positive spin on my eyesight. In the past few weeks, I’ve been scouring the literature in search of the advantages of myopia. One study says glasses wearers are perceived as more intelligent and are thus more likely to get hired. No less than 40 percent of people would wear fake glasses to land a job. So careerwise, I’m in good shape. (The study was conducted by the College of Optometrists. It probably won’t be published in the JAMA anytime soon.)

I also read that my flawed vision might boost my so-far-nonexistent art career. In A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman writes about how Cézanne’s fuzzy still lifes and landscapes might be partly the result of his poor vision. (His doctor commanded him to wear spectacles, but apparently Cézanne refused, calling them vulgar.) Degas had even more optical woes. He was both nearsighted and extremely sensitive to light, one of the reasons he might have preferred indoor scenes to landscapes. If Degas’s eyes had been stronger, we might have been looking at banal sunsets instead of his wonderful ballerinas.

So that’s something, right?

To get a more professional opinion on eye health, I consulted Dr. Peter Odell, affiliated with New York Presbyterian–Cornell Medical Center. My last eye exam was an appalling four