“It was a dream of our family to be here helping him.” Sarvagata’s sister is beaming with enthusiasm as she runs beside her brother on this the 9th day of the race. The sun is low and golden in the sky and the air is still and clear. It just may be as beautiful a morning as the race will see all summer. The irony of all this is that in fact Sarvadhara (Sarvagata’s sister) is currently committed to leave later in the day for Chicago. She flew in from the Ukraine just last night and came immediately here, only to arrive by fate, just as her brother was going home for the night.
So on this most exquisite morning she is getting the briefest opportunity to share with her brother the 3100 mile race experience. Absorb somehow, in the few fleeting hours she has left, the vast and limitless world her brother and 9 others now inhabit.
This is for her an incredibly special moment because in fact, Sarvadhara has never ever even seen her brother running in a multi day race before. She, like most people have only seen the race via the internet. Tried to make some sense of something, that on a computer must be incredibly difficult to even begin to follow or even comprehend.
For most people, the moment you have taken even a few steps here on this loop, then you may actually begin to see and feel the world the runners are completely immersed in. For a moment at least it is possible, to more deeply appreciate the reality the runners inhabit every second of their day. Every hard slab of concrete here has after all, felt millions of footsteps pass by for the past 15 years.
Things have happened ever so quickly for the Ukrainskyi family. Even Sarvagata himself did not know for sure that he would come and now neither his sister or his wife will be able to help. Sarvhara says, “I am not a little sorry I won’t be here, I am a lot sorry.” With the few hours she has left she says, “Now I am trying to come into this.”
She has followed his experiences previously in the 10 day race via the internet. “You know it is like a miracle. When I look at this from the internet I don’t believe in this. 3100 miles in 52 days is just impossible. When I look and don’t think, I just feel proud of humanity, and gratitude to the Supreme that this is possible for human beings to do this.”
When she arrived last night she had been traveling non stop for more than 24 hours from the Ukraine. “I was so happy to see him, and all of this, that all my tiredness just flew away.
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[audio:http://perfectionjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/sister1.mp3|titles=sister]
Long before the runners show up Vajra has gone around the course picking up any and all bits of trash that may have been tossed on the ground.
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The first to come is always Pranjal.
Purna Samarpan with some last minute laundry drop off.
Start
Day 9
Just a few months ago Pradeep a 32 year old first time runner from the Netherlands was running very well in the 10 day race in Flushing Meadow. For him it was truly a breakthrough performance. He was able to complete a personal best of 560 miles and thus became a potential candidate to run the 3100. His improvement over his previous race was almost 150 miles and really demonstrated that he had trained seriously for the event. Almost certainly when he finishes 10 days of running here he will have completed more miles than he has ever run before.
When asked about this he, like many others, is not really aware of their current mileage. He says, “all I know is that I have 4 laps today. Yesterday he had a great day and completed 110 laps. “Any day that I reach 60 miles it is like things have come together.”
“The first 3 days I made it over 60 miles, because of course you have more energy, then I started to feel some injuries…. almost injuries. I wanted to prevent that so every 3 hours I would take a break, and I would stretch almost every lap.” Doing this he quickly realized he was loosing too much time. “If you want to run 60 miles you can’t take much more than 2 breaks. You can’t waste too much time on anything. From yesterday on I really feel that injuries are getting better. So I am skipping breaks, and running a little faster, and taking a little more risk.”
I ask him to explain the obvious contradiction that it is possible to get better when you are doing the very same thing that caused the problem in the first place. “It is amazing how fast injuries heal here during the race. I would say that they even heal faster if you keep moving. Of course you shouldn’t be pushing. That is why I haven’t been running in long stretches the past few days. Just to avoid making anything really permanent.”
On paper at least Pradeep has never been able to average 60 miles a day in any of his previous races. This is the average mileage he requires in order to complete the 3100 miles before the cut off. From the start he was encouraged to simply use the first 2 weeks here to adapt to the course and see what happens. He was told to just do at least 50 miles a day, and Pradeep says, “that did take the pressure off.”
“I am just trying to learn new things every day here. If I reach 60 miles some days I am really happy. Who knows? Everybody says that in the second half of the race you speed up. If I don’t get bad injuries in the first half and don’t loose too many miles maybe I will make up and actually finish.”
“It is a really tough course. The toughest of any our races I would say. It is pretty steep, even though most people wouldn’t believe it. He believes that there is likely a change in elevation on the course of between 4 and 5 meters. “So if you do 6,000 laps, 4 meters rise, that is 24,000 meters. That is 3 times like climbing mount Everest.”
“The concrete is also new for me. I really didn’t know what to think. They said the concrete is 10 times harder than the asphalt. I never really felt the difference before. Now if I run on the asphalt it is like walking on grass. The concrete is so hard your feet get really painful.”
“This 3100 mile race offers me a different consciousness. It is really really beautiful. It is funny. It feels like it is very deep and very vast inside all the time. Even though on the surface you can’t enjoy it because there is pain and you have to concentrate on so many things. Your inner door, it feels as though it is almost constantly open. Then, even though you might not be able to dive in. It is a very pleasant feeling.”
“In the very beginning, when I dreamt of doing the race, say 10 years ago. I guess it was more that you are young and you think that you can do anything. Maybe it was more on a surface level that I wanted to do this race. Slowly it began it sink in what it actually meant.” He says that it was while doing the other multi day races that slowly began to understand that maybe this was something his soul wanted him to do.
He literally had only 3 weeks to find someone to replace him at the health food store where he works. He is extremely grateful to all those who are supporting him back in his home in Den Haag.
There was a marathon going on yesterday across the street and many visitors in town to celebrate fathers day. I ask if any of this helped him do so well because of it. “Definitely everybody was getting some energy.”
“It’s really really tough. Many people don’t realize that we get a really strong connection with the other runners. We know what they are going through. Many of the spectators don’t really know. At the same time it is a fulfillment of an inner purpose. It feels very very special, so it is worth every bit of it. In that sense I wouldn’t want to be any where else than here. I know by 10 o’clock tonight when everything hurts and my feet are hurting. I have moments when I might rather lie in the grass than pound the concrete.”
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[audio:http://perfectionjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/pradeep2.mp3|titles=pradeep]
Atmavir still retains a lead of 10 miles over Ahprihanal. But Atmavir felt the heat yesterday and Ashprihanal ran 71 miles.
Todays poem recited by Atmavir.
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[audio:http://perfectionjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/atmavir1.mp3|titles=atmavir]
Enthusiasm Awakeners
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[audio:http://perfectionjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/parvati6.mp3|titles=parvati]
He who cries for perfection
At God’s outer Door
Will receive illumination
At God’s inner Door.
Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 60, Agni Press, 1983.
Beautiful interview – thanks again for your amazing and inspiring posts, Utpal, sharing so much of the inner aspects of this unimaginable race with the world. After the 6 day race in April – which I was inspired to attempt also thanks to this blog – I can relate even more. Good luck to all the runners – and special greetings to Surasa (and Purnasamarpan)!