Perfection Journey
The Board after 48 hours
Budjargal is leading overall with 200 miles his goal
Makula taking a break leads the women with 140 miles
Fernando is in 2nd with 167 miles
Giribhu is 2nd with 125 miles
Georgs who won the first 10 day race in 1996 with 721 miles. He is 76
Flower
Continue reading “Day Three, 10 Day Race 2019: An Inner Experience”
The Board for the 10 Day Runners after 24 hours
Budjargal leads the men with 110 miles
Mahakula leads the women with 80 miles
Andrea Marcato
Takasumi is 2nd
Giribhu is 2nd
Anna
Continue reading “Day Two, 10 Day Race 2019: Do Good Things”
The board of course at the start of the day is empty
Budjargal will be wearing number 1
I had a chance to talk with him before the start
Tents are still going up
The phone never stops ringing
Continue reading “Start 10 Day Race 2019: I Must Challenge Myself”
A view of the camp with 24 hours to go before the start
Runners are arriving
Welcome back Huang Lan Yang and Wei Ming Lo and
The building of the camp is on schedule
Daulot
Vasuprada’s tent
Continue reading “Day Before 10 Day Race 2019: Tomorrow’s Perfection Will Come”
Continue reading “6 and 10 Day Race 2019 Constructing the Village: Start With New Enthusiasm”
“I am happy,” Kaneenika tells me this morning.
It is hard to imagine that it is even remotely possible for Kaneenika to be happy and yet she is. She starts once again another hot and brutal day pounding along a Queens NYC sidewalk with 59 hard miles still ahead of her. Yet in the whispering moments before midnight she will have reached her goal and run 3100 miles here once again.
I make a statement that I wonder how she will respond. That the race asks of the runners more than they can imagine and yet gives back more than they could ever dream. “Yes, I think that is a very true statement, and I think this race proved it to me more than any race I have run before.”
“I have had hard races even before I started running the 3100, but maybe because this one is so long. I really wanted to finish. This race was pretty hard.”
Kaneenika had told me that she had been working on staying happy and says that like in all things, “there is always room for improvement for everything in life.”
“What I have received from this is that I feel closer to my source. With each step I feel as though I was getting closer and closer. Yesterday it was so hot and humid, and I was trying to push so that I could finish.”
“But there was a part of the day when I felt like there was nothing left in me. So I felt that the Supreme was trying to show me that this race is not about the physical. It is actually more than 100% the Supreme’s grace that we are able to do this race.”
“This morning I had 106 laps to go. I have just done 6 so there is just 100 more to go. Today though I can really see the finish line. Yesterday was really hard for me. It wasn’t that I was doubting that I would make it but it was certainly hard for me to imagine it. To run 2 more days in conditions like this, and really having to push.”
“It is all the Supreme’s grace.”
The Board at the Start of Day 52….*Note the totals may not be accurate…Magic number is 3,039*
“It’s coming close to the end.” I don’t think I have ever seen Sopan this happy in the past 51 days. This morning however he has a great reason to be having such joy that it can bring additional light up into the sky. He is just a few laps away from 3,000 miles and now less than 2 days from completing the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race.
It is never a foregone conclusion that this would happen nor is it ever so for even the most gifted of runners. The race will always challenge you, and humble you, and nurture you in ways you could never dream.
It was 13 years ago as a young person of 25 that he set the record for the youngest runner to ever run the race. In the great gap in between he has not always been granted the gift of completing the distance.
Tomorrow however it will most certainly be his personal victory. A victory over adversity which dogged his heels for many days and yet could not contain his will to succeed. Or perhaps it is just the light within declaring that this summit of transcendence he has justly earned. A goal he surrendered all of himself, to the higher force within, in order to attain.
When asked if he was ever worried, “you never know until the end. Anything can happen. But you have to have faith in order to make it. You cannot doubt yourself all the time and make it.”
“You have to believe. You have to believe that you can make it. That is your very first step.”
“I have gotten physically stronger. It is possible because as you grow spiritually stronger it also makes you physically stronger. I had some difficulties about 10 days ago and I felt that this made me stronger.”
“Even on the worst days everything just worked out. That is the whole magic about the race. It feels as though there is always a guiding and protecting force. Things just work out one way or another.”
Sopan is happy of course that the finish line is getting very close. He hopes to try and continue and maintain the inner experience that he felt here this year. He wants to build upon it.
He says disconnecting from the race is unavoidable. “But the inner cry always remains. For me this race is all about the transformation of nature. This remains, it doesn’t go away.”
When asked about Sri Chinmoy, the founder of the race, Sopan says, “I don’t feel his physical presence. But I feel that he is spiritually present here. His spiritual force is more alive than ever. The spiritual force, the inner presence, for me is much more important than the physical.”
A great finish
People came
For some their time comes soon
Singers practiced Sri Chinmoy’s Austria song
The Board is changed
“I am happy of course that soon it will be over. This last week is so long. It feels like it will never end.”
On this the 50th day of the race Surasa is 157 miles from the finish line and has a full three days in which to do it. But unfortunately the weather between now and Tuesday when she should finish could well be as hot, humid, and miserable as a New York summer can be.
“Each race is different for me. I have had those in which there was a happy ending, in the last days and so on. But this time, and maybe because the weather was so challenging.” When I mention the grim forecast that lies ahead she says, “that is good. We get everything until the end.”
“I have great helpers. They help me each time I race. Most of the time I have the same helpers, for many many years. They know me and I know them. It is perfect. I have very good helpers.” Surasa says that to perform as well as she does she just couldn’t do the race without help. “I need so many things. Without helpers you lose so much time.”
Surasa is encouraged when she receives letters from friends and supporters. She really appreciates when people around the world send her best wishes and encouragement. “When they are praying for me it touches me always, very very deeply. It helps me. The concern I can feel. That they make the effort to write.
“When I get messages I am always so grateful, that I have so many nice sisters and brothers around the world.”
“This race was challenging because of the weather. In the end I am so happy and only grateful that I have done it. You know at the end that it was worth the struggle. I am just happy that I took the challenge and I could do it. So at the end there is always gratitude and gratitude.”
The worlds beyond the worlds we see. Today while closely watching Ushika before we were to do our interview, it occurred to me just how impossible it is to understand what the runners are really experiencing. You can probe with questions, you can try and empathize. Yet no matter how far the wings of your imagination spreads wide you can never really and truly understand.
My first question is a request for him to sum up his experience. He tells me that the morning prayer on July 10th expressed it best for him.
You can see
God.
You can
feel God. But
to describe God
is an impossible
task.
Guru Sri Chinmoy
July 10th, 2007
“At one point the day after we got the prayer I thought that this exactly describes the race. You can see the race, you can feel the race, but it is an impossible task to describe the race. You can only live and do it.”
Over the past few weeks he has generously shared many of his experiences. Talked about gratitude, grace, and patience. Now he says one of the qualities he is working with is the quality of imagination. “I was using it a lot.”
He says that Suprabha used to imagine that she was not running on concrete but that she was playing in a beautiful garden. “This has become for me very vivid and very powerful.”
There have been more than a few very hard days and on those occasions he says he has pictured the epic battle the Mahabharta and powerful poems written by Sri Chinmoy like the Absolute. He has seen himself in a divine chariot slicing through ignorance night.
He says that recently during the lunar eclipse his condition was very poor which he describes as brutal. “It was so hard so difficult.” At the same time he imagined 2 chariots flying above him clearing the way.
At other times he describes the feeling of being attacked by the bubble gum monster. He describes a force that made him feel lethargic and lacking motivation. “It is exactly like in a cartoon when the character steps into a huge mass of sticky bubble gum. Hands, feet, everything is bound and like in a cartoon every step is so difficult to move.”
“In this case it came to my mind that my problem was probably coming from my own vital. So I started chanting purity. Imagining the Supreme’s presence there, and within a few steps it became much easier. Within one lap the bubblegum monster was gone.”
Ushika who has just 148 more miles to go is planning on taking each day now as it comes. “The finish line is calling. But you can’t save any steps. You have to run each one of them. I am happily looking forward to the finish line. But I have to stay here, in each lap, and in each moment.”
