Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race

Day 1
It’s been six and a half hours since the start of the race. So far, so good.  I feel as if I were back home and it feels right.  All worries, anxieties and problems are left behind. We are in for a simple life. Each day is a step towards the goal. With no deflections. With maximum self-giving.
The starting ceremony was nice. Many people came. It’s the second or the third time in a row that the Counsel General for Slovakia and his wife have home, as the Slovaks outnumber all other runners here. He is such a nice person. He studied in Moscow for quite a long time and speaks fluent Russian. As I mentioned before, we’ve got two new runners. They are Surasa from Austria and Dharbasana from New Zealand. Surasa is a courageous woman of 51 who is challenging the longest race. Now she looks pretty confident and is running fast. On the first day everybody has a fast run  . I started in a bandana which Sri Chinmoy had given to each runner after his trip to Japan in 2006.  As it turned out, they all had different hieroglyphs. Mine said “God-speed”. The course itself is  more or less quite today which is always the case on Sunday. They are renovating the stadium which resulted in the pavement being narrowed down and a lot of machinery around. I imagine a lot noise and dust on weekdays. As usual, Parvati’s group came to sing songs specially written by Sri Chinmoy to inspire the runners. It’s so great! There’s another project Parvati came up with. There are about 40-50 trees on the course. So she came up with the idea to plant flowers around them and water them on a regular basis, as it is going to be very hot. Now it’s 28 Celsius and cloudy. It’s good weather for running compared to what can set in mid-summer. Volunteers have chosen the trees to plant flowers and tending to them throughout the summer. I am passing some of them now. They newly-planted flowers look really beautiful  When one runs on the concrete course for days, flowers can make a huge difference. Their fragrance, refinement and beauty do help in life. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Suay, Jun 13, 2010 at 02:25 PM and is filed under race experiences. Both comments and pings are currently closed.