Perfection Journey

Luis Rios is not the kind of guy who talks about himself very much.  So you really have to be up on these kind of things to even know that today is his birthday.  People at the 6 and 10 day race tend to be more aware of this special day because he has spent at least the last 14 of them right here, circling around the loop of the Self Transcendence race.  I know they had a birthday cake for him sometime earlier in the day, because a couple of small pieces of chocolate cake are still sitting on his table when I came this afternoon.  I also suspect that he probably politely, but awkwardly stood shuffling back and forth on both feet as a group of running friends and camp people sang  him Happy Birthday. He probably didn’t give a speech and maybe didn’t even smile very much, though I know inside it touched him and made him happy that they cared.

He turned 64 this year and his only concession to age is to simply skip the 10 day race and instead run the 6.  I don’t know if he got any presents but he is probably pretty happy with his 3 day total of 167 which puts him in 10th place in the men’s category.  I went out with him on the course for a short while and didn’t even bother to try and interview him.  The fact that he is still here and enjoying multi day races and still moving steadily along says of Luis all that needs to be said.  He enjoys company and he has good friends that he can count on.  The fact that he never misses these races means that the Self Transcendence races can always count on him as well.

What the younger runners might not know is just how really good a runner this scrawny man from Brooklyn really once was.  How also he has somehow maintained now for many years a daily and very disciplined training program.  How dedicated he is and just how big a heart somehow fits into a guy who can’t weigh more than 150 lbs.  I can’t say for sure when was the first time he ran a Sri Chinmoy race but in 1986 (26 years ago) he was good enough to win this 24 hour race with 138 miles.

What is interesting about this photo is who else is in it, namely Ted Corbitt one of the legends of distance running who himself even ran this race when he was 82 years old completing 303 miles.  In light of this, there really doesn’t ever seem to be an end to Luis being a part of multi day running.  The only real end in sight is the finish line now just 3 days off.  After that is a short ride back home and then to head back out on to the long roads of Brooklyn again the next day.

Continue reading “Day Eight: The Next Dream”

“At first I thought, well it is just 6 days it is a bit more than half of a 10 day race.  But then (a loud pause)…., It is going to be fine.”  Jayasalini Abramovskhikh has been a fixture of the 10 day race here in Flushing Meadow for the past few years and simply because of vacation time conflicts she had to pass up the 10 day this year and instead select the 6. But sometimes silence and a look can communicate  much more than just words can do.

“Then I said it is 2 days, plus 2 days, plus 2 makes 6.  I had some confidence that it would be good.  I will enjoy it. I try and enjoy every second of being here.  But the second day of the race this year, I never had in any races,……it was really tough for me.”  She describes that just into her 2nd day it felt more like she had already been running for 6.

“I think this is an experience that you can never predict and you can never plan.  The Supreme always has his own plan for you.  And all you need is to just accept whatever experiences you get.  And accept it as cheerfully as you can.  So I try.  This morning was really not easy.  I was crying and crying and then God’s grace descended and now after a break I feel better, physically and emotionally, so I am happy.”

For most working folks locked into a 9 to 5 lifestyle the world of ultra endurance sports may be several time zones beyond comprehensible.  Making a living and paying the bills is a struggle that most of us feel is one of the unfortunate givens in order to stand in line with the rest of humanity.  Yet right now there are more than 70 runners circling a loop in Flushing Meadow who have turned away from all the conventions of the so called normal world and are subjecting themselves to a physical and mental struggle that is incomprehensible to most and intolerable to nearly all.

“In general it was a feeling that nearly everything hurt.  When you start feeling sorry for yourself, that you go through all this pain.  Then once you try to get rid of this feeling, and just enjoy.  Even if it is pain, it will go away.”

“When I try and concentrate on something else, for example breathing.  When I try to get energy and power from everything around.  Then at midday there was a beautiful beautiful rainbow.  I have never ever seen such a rainbow.  I think this morining was difficult for everybody, and when we saw this rainbow.  Everybody was staring and looking at the sky, and got so much joy.  It was such special blessings.”

Jayasalini says that she has no mileage goals for this race, but describes that she had a powerful inspiration yesterday, “to stay in a good consciousness.  I try not to be attached to this mileage, to the results.  For me the point is to stay in the moment, and not to think of the past or the future.  Just do this, one step after another.”

Click to play interview

[audio:http://perfectionjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/jayasalini.mp3|titles=jayasalini]

Continue reading “Day Seven: The Supreme’s Own Plan”

“I came here thinking that I wanted to try new things.  I wanted to find challenges that I can’t overcome.  I am always looking to test my limits, and I was very excited about trying a multi day.  I have always been pretty comfortable in doing high mileage in training.

In training for 100 mile races I am always running over 150 miles a week.  I run doubles and sometimes triples, and after running some of my 100 mile races I have felt extraordinarily good the next day, almost fresh.  So I figured a 6 day may be something I am just built for.”

When the 6 day race started yesterday Michael Arnstein, simply slipped into a higher gear than everybody else and literally left the other 35 runners behind.  It was almost as though he had entered some completely different event then the rest of the field who were, for a time at least, simply sharing the track with him.

Yet a multi day race is rarely conquered by raw power.  Nature as well stepped into the mix and unleashed 2 inches of torrential rain accompanied by powerful gusts.  It was a wake up call for any who thought the race would be easy,  throughout the long stormy night it certainly wasn’t. Michael ran hard for the first 12 hours and then took a break.  One so long that for any other athlete it could have been the stuff that breaks dreams and hearts.

Yet now it is late on Monday afternoon and Michael is still here.  Like the old fable of the tortoise and the speedy hare Michael for now, finds himself far back in the field.  I don’t know how far the gap was earlier in the day,  but for now he is nearly 40 miles behind the leader.  An insurmountable distance if mathematicians and statisticians ruled the universe.  They don’t thankfully and this rabbit named Michael Arnstein has successfully pushed back whatever devils or discomfort that pulled him away and has once again fully entered the race.

By entering the 6 day race he has absolutely found a new challenge that does not yield an inch to the timid or the foolish.  He has made short work of the many 100 mile races he has run, and he may as well in the next few days, figure out and conquer the 6 day event here.  If he doesn’t he has at least pushed back a challenge in his first day that maybe he has never had to confront in his young running career ever before.  He was pummeled by adversity and picked himself up and simply come out and gone back to work.

Continue reading “Day Six: Learn From The Experience”

Few first time visitors to New York would ever consider visiting a soggy windswept Flushing meadow park a priority, for even a minute, little alone spending 6 days here .  Yet starting from today, a 58 year old Scottish runner named William Sichel and his friend /support crew Allan, just might be carving out a new piece of Scottish sporting history here.  William is an enormously gifted and experienced  multi day runner.  His list of records is impressive and yet there is one record, the Sottish 6 day record that has remained tangibly illusive to him.

One should always be challenged to break records and as a rule they all, no matter how grand, are expected to fall to each new generation.  The Scottish 6 day record however has proven to be so far out of reach, beyond  more than most could ever have imagined.  In fact it is now the longest standing Scottish sporting record in that nations history, and as a matter of fact, it was set right here in New York city.  It turns out that in 1882 pedestrianism was an enormously popular sport.  At that time a Scottish man named George Cameron, who called himself Noremac (Cameron backwards), was doing well at races both in the UK and America.  It was at a race at Madison Square Garden in October of that year that he established his historical record of 567 miles.

William has gotten o so painfully close with his own personal best of 518 miles road (532 miles track) but it has stubbornly refused to willing fall beneath his relentless running feet.  His respect for the record runs deep and it is not impossible to imagine that he has done everything humanly possible to make his own new mark.

Yesterday both he and  Allan went into Manhattan yesterday to visit where the old Madison Square Garden once stood and bid their respects to the sacred ground where Scottish sporting history reached a new peak.

The winds have picked up today here at Flushing Meadow and the rain comes in bursts and whips around the course.  It really looks very much like a Scottish day of course.  It may not be a great day for starting a 6 day race but at least it is conditions that William is used to.

He looks calm and relaxed and his friend Allan is taking away all the burdens of the little details that can slow an athlete down a step.  All William has to do is run his very best and just maybe make his own new mark for other Scottish runners to look up to.  Set it just out of reach down the road, and then they can catch it for themselves, when their legs and hearts are really ready for it.

Continue reading “Day Five: Part of Something Greater”

“Obviously I haven’t become more clever or wiser since I am still doing a World Run.”  In the fall of 2005 I met Jesper Olsen for the first time as he was running across lower Manhattan.  At the time he was in the final weeks of a round the world run.  After a brief stop in Queens he then flew on to Ireland and than completed his journey when he returned to Greenwich England 20 months after he first began.  Now once again he is in the final stages of another round the world run, but one this time that is trying as best as possible to travel North South and back again.

This incredibly talented 40 year old Danish runner has never sought after fame or the limelight despite his incredible achievements.  Almost from the moment you hear him speak it is easy to realize that something heart felt and deep within motivates and inspires him to undertake these epic journeys.

When he speaks about the moment he completed his first run he feels that it was not the celebration for him that was significant but more so how people from around the world were drawn together.  “I don’t find any individuals as important, but what we create together is infinitely important.  I was not just one lonely runner approaching the finish line.  That scenario does not hold any value.  For this individual to cross the finish line was not important.”

He describes how one of his sponsors had promised that if he was able to finish the event he would run the final leg with him.  Jesper believes that the man did not really think he would do it.  In fact the man kept his pledge, and despite a lack of training managed to run the final 78 km with Jesper.  “That gave me much more joy than my own accomplishment.”

“I hope most of all that people understand what a peaceful place we live in.  If the world is as dangerous, and hostile, and different, as we see in the evening news.  There is no chance of our survival.”  He explains that when you meet people of the world directly as he does along the way, the true nature of the world becomes vividly apparent.  He feels that it has progressed he says even since the first time he circled the globe.

A few days ago he took a break from his journey after first reaching Boston.  The timing was perfect to then be able to take part in the Self Transcendence 6 day race here in Flushing meadow.  Although being here would be in no way beneficial to physically completing his journey  he feels simply that he was due for an inner recharge.  Be for a short while with a family of runners who do not just share his dreams, but also, in their own way view and experience the world, not just with their eyes, but also with their hearts.

He jokes about what place he will be in at the end of 6 days.

Click to play Interview Pt1

[audio:http://perfectionjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Jesper-1.mp3|titles=Jesper 1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBqLsQjCg6w

Continue reading “Day Four: What We Create Together”

“I came for the food.”  It is a statement I have heard many times over the years at the 6 &10 day race.  It of course may not be literally true, but for each runner who is being shadowed by doubt, or fatigue, or suffering from a unrelenting case of the the ‘blahs’ a trip through the food tent just may be the perfect antidote for all that ails you.

When you are relentlessly churning out the miles there is no doubt a simple equation that expresses the number of calories needed per mile.  Eat enough and your tank has enough to burn for several hours.  But none of these runners are machines and most are journeying into the farthest most reaches of their capacities.

Utilizing all your available physical strength and summoning endurance that you may never before asked of yourself is just part of the overall formula.  One must be choosy as to which emotional friends you wish to accompany you.  Doubt and fear are always looking for rides and of course never want to ever go forward.  Ultimately the inner exploration will always keep revealing some new mystery and perhaps unveil some wonder that you never knew existed within your own heart.

Good food which is made with love like Niupura’s cooking crew is creating day in and day out is not the answer for everything but it does go a long way in making each runners journey just that much better.  When your hunger goes beyond just carbs, then you will easily see the joy and love that permeates each and every delicious morsel here in the runners kitchen.  It is with this subtle sweet goodness that each runner just might  find an extra step in legs that are unwilling to go on.   Than when you have released that reluctant step, it just might lead in turn to an extra lap, and then the top of the mountain just got a little bit closer.

Continue reading “Day Three: Top Of The Mountain”

It is certainly a most difficult thing to run a 10 day race and yet sometimes the journey just to get to the starting line can be longer and even more difficult.  Nidhruvi Zimmerman is now well into her second day on the course and she is running comfortably and confidently just as one would expect this tremendously gifted and experienced multi day runner to do.

At 46 she should be at her peak but instead this race represents a comeback for this lady from Vienna. The past 10 years have been much tougher than the 10 days now slipping comfortably away beneath her relentless strides.  Over that long decade injury made it impossible for her to compete in any distance events at all.  She says now though, ” I could never get rid of the running world.  I always loved the long distance running.  But because of injury I couldn’t do what I wanted to do.  But after many experiences.  I decided just to do it any way.  Doesn’t mater what.  Just to be ready and see if I still belong to the long distance world.  Why not”

From 1995 until 2002 Nidhruvi appeared regularly at the races here.  Her accomplishments at events above 6 days are extraordinary and yet now she runs with quite a different perspective.  Those long lean years that must have at times felt like an eternity are now clearly over.  “I am just grateful grateful, from the very depths of my heart.”

Continue reading “Day Two: I Always Had Hope”

There are some things that are just so immense, so challenging, and so confoundedly difficult to grasp, that human description usually falls woefully short in shedding any light upon it whatsoever.  This afternoon I ran less than a lap of the 10 day race with kaneennika Janakova and was painfully aware from the moment I took one step, in order to match the rhythm of her stride, that I had no idea of just how strong and talented she really is, and more importantly, how she can possibly keep on maintaining this effort mile after endless mile for 10 straight days.

Ultra distance running is in many ways the world in which she is most comfortable and in tune with.  This 42 year old lady from Slovakia seems to run here with such poise and ease it is almost as though she could be doing this every day of the year and not just for 10 days in Flushing Meadow every spring.  Last year she conquered the overall first place and set a course record of 724 miles.  Yet Kaneenika is just one small piece of this unfathomable puzzle.  Also with her, and sharing the same journey that winds around and about through Flushing Meadow, as the cool overcast afternoon dissolves into a hard dark night, are 35 other runners who will attempt to discover and accomplish their own unique goals in the coming days.

Then you have to acknowledge the crew that worked for days to set up this miraculous but O so temporary community, and the  additional crew of helpers who shuttle back and forth many times a day in order to maintain the practical workings of the race.  Sometimes there are striking moments of clarity when it just seems possible in being able to take it all in.  Rupantar, who is the Sri Chinmoy marathon team race director said to me the day before the start, “if people want to see a real miracle all they have to do is come out here to the race.”
Continue reading “Day One: The First Day of the Rest Of My Life”