Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race

Archived – click Post Title to view all. After yesterday’s hot and sultry day , when it was around 32-34 with high humidity which we survived, someone successfully, and some not so (Atmavir and Ananda Lahari, for example, walked all day, I managed to keep running) today is a different picture. Ashprihanal and Igor, as if nothing happened, have been running at their usual pace. Sarvagata slowed down, but almost everybody has been running today – including Ananda Lahari, Pradeep, and Atmavir. Pradeep, incidentally, is very stable and it looks like he is gaining momentum. He is a growing fast runner. As it turned out, he was at my house in Kiev in 2001 with the European World Harmony Run team. When they were in Kiev, they stayed with me, and I absolutely do not remember it. But he remembers:) Purna-Samarpan is a trendsetter today – he cut off his T-shirt, so as to leave a well-ventilated top with the stomach, and rushed in the morning, because the day was supposed to be hot. It was hot and we were saved only due to the wind. So throughout the day he’s been running in his vest in which he put ice bags and looked like a terminator. It’s a special vest, which makes one a few pounds heavier, but it cools very well. So he has developed a policy – he runs fast in the morning, walks in the afternoon and runs fast at nighttime. He’s got good mileage, too. I had a good morning, much better than yesterday, and in…

Archived – click Post Title to view all.  Yesterday something very unusual happened. To begin with, Sarvagata ran 80.6 miles (147 laps) and I’d say this is the level of  Madupran, the world record holder. Of course, only he could run more than anybody else, but Sarvagata is a rookie! Think of that! Wow, amazing. Yesterday most of us had a good day.  Shrasa surprised us all – she did 115 laps (63 miles) for the first time and at 11pm went home to rest.  Pradeep did 66 miles and Purna-Samarpan did 65 miles. In general, everybody rocks! I had quite a decent mileage, but since Independence Day I haven’t been able to pick up the pace to do 120 laps. We’ll wait and see. This morning, let’s face it, it has been hard, and I see that my pace is slow, and everybody is moving slowly. I even started looking for the gun to finish these torments:) … And here we meet with Igor, and he says: ‘Stutisheel, I can no more. I’m tired of bearing it. “And when I said that he had only 2 weeks to go, he said, ‘This is too much. I’ll die sooner than that. ” Igor, well, bad news is that at 3,100-mile race nobody has died. So in your case, the only way to stop running is to finish.  We smirked a little and then I took a book of jokes, and we were cracking.  Igor remembered a joke about a moose:) A moose walking in the woods gets wounded by hunters….

9.50pm A few laps ago, Purna-Samarpan did 1,550 miles and he still cherishes the hope to finish the race before the cutoff (day 52). He is running faster now and did 116 laps yesterday. His spirits are also fine. Which you cannot say of Ananda-Lahari – he’s been walking for the past 2 weeks and something is not working out for him this year. In a few miles, Ashrihanal is going to cross the 2,000 mile mark which is pretty decent. My 3-day eye epic has ended today. My common sense took the best of me and I asked Maral to have a look at my eye. There was a grain of sand stuck. He took it away and I am feeling much better. The eye is red still, but these are just aftereffects which will disappear soon. One can only wonder that a tiny particle can give one so much trouble and get one to the edge. Our rockets Igor and Sarvagata are still flying. Looks like Sarvagata decided to catch up with Ashprihanal. For the last several days, he’s been doing 140 laps (76 miles). Stay tuned!

Archived – click Post Title to view all. It’s our last hour of the day. A few words about yesterday. The whole day I was crying. My eye was, be exact. Something must have gotten stuck in it or I could have scratched it. I tried applying different stuff on it but it didn’t get better. In the morning, tears began streaming. Even when I was wearing sunglasses, the wind was still bothering it and I was blinking all the time. When I couldn’t bear it anymore, I had to use antibiotics eye drops. It got a little better. I had to run in sun glasses till late into the night. I got compliments that I looked cool. They wouldn’t say that if they saw what was behind the glasses. Each race bring something new. The eye thing has happened for the first time. Everything can happen as we are outside the whole day and experience rain, wind, and heat. Today I woke up with no energy to go. When I started running, I realized that this was one of those days when I didn’t have enough sleep. No energy at all. Then Igor caught up with me and took me in tow. We started chatting about this and that and then I had a good run and picked up a decent speed (120 laps a day). At 4 pm it started pouring. It has just stopped raining. I had to change shoes twice and my feet are heavy. It means that I will have a fewer laps….

Archived – click Post Title to view all. It is the 25th day of the race, the clock shows 9:05pm. After the Independence Day, I had been recovering and only yesterday I started to get my energy back and I did 62 miles. Today happened to be very interesting because it is already the 3rd day in the row that the temperature rose up to 33C and today since the very morning it’s been humid. So, of course, in the afternoon I was quite wiped out, although I kept running. However, I am going to have quite a decent mileage, though I expected it to be more. Today I have completed half of the distance which is 1550 miles (24 days 6 hours and 14 minutes). It is one day faster than my previous record race in 2009. But in 2009 I completed the second half of the distance one day faster than the first one. So, I have a good backlog at least and the best present for my half of the distance was a completely unexpected arrival of Sugambhir! When I saw him, everything immediately became much better for me. So, the help has arrived. Approximately at a time, when I was doing my 1550 miles, Sarvagata and Igor approached 1700 miles on the same lap being 5 meters apart. So, our new generation of runners is 150 miles ahead of me. Running lap by lap for long distances is also great because you come in contact with the people who are 150 miles ahead of you and…

Archived – click Post Title to view all. It is the 24th day of the race, 7:24am. I would like to say a few words about yesterday. It was the 4th of July – the Independence Day in America. I myself had to struggle a real battle for independence. I ate something that did not please my stomach and in the morning of the 4th of July first I was struggling with my leg so that it could run normally. Later in the day I picked up my regular pace and found out that my feet weighed several tons. No energy whatsoever and after 10 laps I had to make a break. I looked at my tongue, it was as white as snow. It was clear to me that there was a block in digestion and this mush have drained energy. So, throughout the day I tried to normalize my digestive system with changeable success but I did not succeed in it and that day I broke my record in minimal daily mileage – 43 miles only. And in the evening I still had a feeling that my stomach did not work at full capacity and even ached a bit. So, I started to think of a way out of this situation. It occurred to me to get a cleansing with a lemon diet. Of course, not a full 10-day cycle :), but the last hour and a half on the course when I was walking I prepared a Neera drink with a Madal Bal syrup and drank…

Author: Utpal 29 June Quite often great moments in sports are captured by film crews and news reporters and are then shown on evening news programs or are splashed across sports sections of local news papers. If you score a goal, win a match, or set a record at something there is a pretty good chance somebody will be there to capture it for posterity. It will then fly out into the endless electronic void. Where countless eyes will be peering as it whizzes by into the great information wasteland. Read more