Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race

Day 36, 6 pm. I am getting old. Like in earlier days, I have intermittently good and bad days. Yesterday my knee was giving me a hard time and it took a while to get rid of the pain and pick up speed. Only to find out that I can’t run and have no strength at all. So today is mostly a walking day. Purna-Samarpan has a semi-walking day. He came up with an idea to put a belt filled with ice on the stomach for “the engine to work well”. It helps him a lot in hot weather. Ananda-Lahari and Pradeep are walking too. Pradeep has a deep blister on his left foot which makes him limp. He must be the slowest today. Others are rushing to the finish. Ashprihanal is likely to finish next Sunday, in a week from now. He says that he is ready to finish because he is fed up. Hope tomorrow will be a happier day. Alakananda made our day by putting together a funny photo collage. See ya!

Archived – click Post Title to view all. Day 35. 8:34 a.m. A few words about the previous day. It’s midsummer and it’s full moon. In the morning it was quite hard, I hard stomach problems and went to rest before my regular break time. After the break I wasn’t able to run at all. Some time later Kaushal came, looked at me and said that my liver was shutting down. He tried to fix it, but I still couldn’t’t run and walked up to the end of the day. He came in the evening again and was very surprised to find out that practically all my internal organs were shut down – liver, kidneys, stomach. And whichever medicine he tested, all of them fit, as if each organ was crying: “Me too, me too!”. He ended up giving me a shot in the liver. 40 miles on day 35 is ok. Life is life. As usual, the fool moon took its toll on me. According to Kauhal, I will be feeling better now that the moon is waning. Maybe it has the same effect on me in the regular life, but I don’t have to run 100 km a day there. Igor also had problems with his liver and he did fewer miles than usual. Sarvagata had issues with his knees but he managed to do his daily norm. Even Galya, who is not running the race, was feeling bad and didn’t come to cheer us up. Ukrainians had a bad day. Today it’s just the other way round. I feel good and hope that everything will be back to normal. I…

Author: Utpal 14 July Last night a rainbow boldly painted itself across the sky above the Self Transcendence race. There are probably quite a few boring technical and scientific reasons of why and how it was formed, but still in the brief time it glowed up in the sky, it was magical. For the runners it was particularly significant for it was for them a totally unexpected visit of nature’s beauty. They have been every which way around the course over the past month now and yet this was something totally unique and new. No one could recall every seeing something quite as spectacular as this ever on the course. Read more

Author: Utpal July 12 In their first 14 days here each of the top 3 runners had, what you could easily call, good starts.  On day 15 each of them would pass beyond the 1,000 mile mark and then from this moment on something inexplicably changed for all of them.  Since then the level of effort and overall intensity has risen to an astonishing new height.  Igor is the man currently holding down the 3rd position but really barely a slight breeze separates one from the other.  Read more

Day 32, 9pm. It’s been a tough day for me, as I’ve been mostly walking. I got diarrhea yesterday because the food had been sitting out in the sun. I had a hard time at night too. In the morning after 10 laps I had no strength. I even took a break just after 1.5 hour running and haven’t been able to run since. Looks like I am going to have the least mileage this year compared with my previous races. It’s OK. These things happen. Today we’ve got another 3 walkers – Ananda-Lahari, Atmavir and Purna-Samarpan. This must be the aftereffects of the heat. Today it was moderately hot, even nice, there was a little breeze, but we haven’t been able to run. Later in the day we had a rain with gusts and then there was a double rainbow. So beautiful! The Supreme’s Smile! Everybody was glowing, even the ones having a hard time. Later in the day another surprise was in store for us. Dr.Kaushal has come all the way from Italy. He’s already on the course taking measures and I hope he’ll help me to increase my mileage and survive my old friend, the full moon. I have become 7.6 kg lighter :-)

Author: Utpal This morning after I left the race I went for a run nearby in a local park. Quite by accident I happened to pick up a fragment of conversation that 2 runners were having as they passed by me going in the opposite direction. What I heard one of them say was, “If I could kill my enemies, the whole world would have more peace.” For some reason those few words crept into a little corner of my mind and just refused to vacate the premises. Read more