The Reinvention of Rahm Emanuel

Rahm Emanuel doesn’t sleep much. You can see it in his eyes, perpetually shadowed in dark circles. He gets up often in the middle of the night to check his e-mail and is out of bed at 5:15 a.m. He drinks coffee and scans the morning newspapers on the drive from his apartment near City Hall to the city campus of the University of Illinois. Then he starts his workout.

“I’ll give it to you if you are really that interested,” the 51-year-old mayor of Chicago says, sitting in a City Hall conference room one day in late June. “Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I swim a mile in a 50-meter pool. I do a short chest exercise. Then I run two miles home. Tuesday and Thursday, I do 25 miles on the bike on random level 15, 15 minutes on the elliptical. You don’t want to know this, but I do 100 sit-ups, 50 push-ups, and a weight routine. Saturday, I bike 20 miles outdoors.” On Sundays, Emanuel attends a yoga class, to undo the side effects of his running and biking.