New York, July 17 (ANI): Indian American Sanjay Gupta is an award-winning, world-traveling journalist, a practicing neurosurgeon, and a best selling author, and this weekend, will compete in his first triathlon.

He is also using the creative headspace that comes with distance training to work on a medical-themed novel.

“I can follow the same diet and get the same amount of sleep, and some days I tear it up and some days I feel like I’m going to drown when I swim and like I have a flat on my bike. Mental toughness is really critical,” the New York Daily News quoted him, as saying.

Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent and creator of the network’s 2010 anti-obesity initiative “Fit Nation,” will compete with more than 3,000 athletes in Sunday’s Nautica New York City Triathlon.

The body-battering event requires racers to complete a trio of grueling feats: An Olympic distance 1,500 meter swim in the Hudson River, a 40 kilometer bike ride on the West Side Highway and finally a 10 kilometer run that finishes in Central Park.

Gupta, 40, who has been training for six months - juggling sessions between trips to report on the Haiti earthquake, family time with his wife and three young daughters and performing surgeries at two Atlanta hospitals - says the effort is equal parts mind and body.

“Thinking you can do it gives a level of confidence that cannot be overestimated,” he said.

Triathlon competitors hit the water Sunday at 5:50 a.m. and Gupta, will be there with a team of “Fit Nation” viewers to power through the challenge. (ANI)