Saturday, September 3, 2011

Unbroken:is Louis Zamperini


After months of non picking up a non-fiction novel for reading, New York bestseller ‘Unbroken’ was my pick, the reason I picked was couple of them:

Author: Laura Hillenbrand, her previous work was ‘Seabuiscuit’ (check link its one of my best movies)

Subject: The story is about survival and how much a person experience in his life time - Louis Zamperini

As a Kid: he made sure that the whole town ‘Torrance’ has stories to narrate relating to his mischief.

As a Teenager: he started running, that’s when he realized what he wants to achieve and where he wants his name listed (As a best Miler – race of one mile), he wanted him to list as Olympic Medal winner.

Olympic Stint: Louie dream of participating in Olympic came true, at the age of 19 when he was competing in the finals of 5000meter race (Athletes peak performance age is 24-29) he finished only 7th but something will make him famous, the last lap of the race, the race winner took 69.2 seconds but Louie finished the last lap in 56seconds, and Louie final time was 14.46.8
The record is Unbroken, fastest one mile run (a mile run is a 3 lap race with timing 61.2, 58.9 and 59.1 seconds) Louie is still 3 seconds faster.

World War II: He enrolled himself, becoming a bombardier for B-24 (Bombardier, is the guy who is located at the tip of the plane and identifies the target and makes a drop) he was in many bombing and rescue missions.

POW: In one of the rescue mission his plane crashed in Pacific ocean, he and his 2 other fellow survived in a raft sailing almost 2000miles, later being captured as a POW

Life after War: A hero back home, life followed him ever y where.

He was a torch bearer for 1984 Summer Olympics.

In his sixties he was still clocking less than 6 minutes a mile. At age 81 he took Skateboarding

And still rocking strong at age 92

Whereas yesterday running my 5k run on thread mille took well over 26 minutes, and my best 1 miles run timed, 7.15 minutes, were Louie clocked under 6 minutes well in his 60’s, I am a long way to beat him at his age on a mile run.

1 comment:

Joe said...

Motivational read... nice one...