It’s the longest certified footrace in history – the “Mount Everest of Ultra-running”: the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race.  This year there are 10 entrants - a small field, but the distance more than makes up for it. 

The race begins in June each year at the peak of New York summer in Jamaica, Queens and is going on presently.  For five or six weeks, between the hours of 6am and 12am midnight – official race hours, the runners do little else but run, eat, eat while running, and attend to blisters, cramps, and other side effects of constant impact with the pavement.

The course is a .5488 mile inner city block housing a school and a playground.  One length of the block runs alongside the Van Wyck expressway.  To complete the distance, entrants must circle this block 5649 times within a 52 day time limit. Runners average 60-70miles (90-110 kilometers, more than two marathons) per day amidst traffic, basketball games, and the surrounding activities of everyday life.  But this is more of an inner journey than an outer one, and the course itself becomes irrelevant after three or four days of running.  Officials carefully count laps, doctors provide constant medical attention, food and drink is handed out as the runners pass by.  At the end of the day the runners cycle, or are driven back to their respective accommodations, only to return at 6am the next day, to once again resume the path of many footfalls that make up this race.

Pradeep Hoggakker, 32, from the Netherlands is running the 3100 for the first time this year.  Having been declined entry several times, it took the experience of five multi-day races under his belt for race directors to take him seriously as a contender.  With the risks and requirements of such a massive undertaking, potential entrants are not taken lightly.  But the inspiration-seed that was sown in Pradeep upon meeting Namitabha Arsic (Serbia), who won the race in 2003, has not faded and after several long years of training, Pradeep has been accepted on to the course.

The race has it’s ups and downs; the victory of accomplishment cannot be separated from the monotony of running the same circuit again and again, the stress of having to achieve certain mileages to keep the goal in sight.  But despite all this, the runners are cheerful - a miracle which goes beyond the mileage they have tallied. 

On the 18^th day, Pradeep is finding his stride.  “After 18 days my body is recovering so much faster, that you don’t have the same aches and pains that you might have had after day four, five or six.”  He is optimistic; a natural style and consistent pace has taken him to an average of 60 miles a day putting him on track for a strong, if close finish.  Another miracle of the race, that as the days go by, the runners cite increases in fitness, allowing them to maintain such heavy mileage.

The distance is extreme.  Every day the runners go farther and farther beyond any preconceived ideas about the limits of human endurance.  So it may come as no surprise to hear that the ultimate ideal of this race is not so much a physical accomplishment – but a spiritual quest. The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team – organiser of this event, was founded in 1977 by Sri Chinmoy, director of the United Nations Peace Meditations and spiritual teacher.  Sri Chinmoy considered running a mirror to the spiritual journey and a tangible means of developing inner strength and many of one’s innate positive qualities.  The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team hosts events globally, including here in New Zealand from two mile races to marathons and ultra-marathons with the belief that any act of self-transcendence, from achieving a faster 10k time, or to starting running at all, brings about personal satisfaction, happiness and harmony.

This year’s race is still in it’s early days, and the days and miles of the 3100 will yield unexpected consequences.  Also running this year is Stutisheel Lebyedev, 6x finisher of the race, who was last year forced into an early finish at 1386 miles due to a knee problem diagnosed by race chiropractors only as ‘exquisite pain.’  “Many things are beyond our control in this race,” says Stutisheel.  “The uniqueness of this race is that everything can happen, even to a 6x finisher.”  It is Stutisheel’s ‘determined surrender,’ that has brought him back again this year. For, as with life, “Never Give Up,’ is the slogan which takes the runners through the hard times.  While the runners are often caught off guard by problems, their ability to get them through is there to surprise them as well.

It is the very ultimate in physical achievement. To accomplish such a feat of endurance, the runners draw upon reserves of inner strength they might not have discovered otherwise.  For the runners, the 3100 mile race is an opportunity like no other to seek out parts of themselves otherwise unseen. Pradeep says, “With the other runners we are definitely joking a lot about having pain.  In the end it is such an opportunity to be here.”

While the race seems impossible at times, entrants claim the completion of the race comes not so much from physical capacity, but an openness to the potential that lies beyond their preconceptions.  They describe the race as being not a battle, but an act of surrender; an invitation to grace.

Ask Surasa Meier, second time entrant, what is getting her through.  At first thought she tells you: she is simply running from one break to the next.  To think of the miles, the days, is too much.  You can only run one step at a time.  Come back a few hours later; she has had time to think.  She tells you: “It is all grace.”

Surasa is 52 years old.  This year she is on track to complete the race for the first time, which will make her only the second woman in history to have done so.  Age is no barrier for this woman who until last year had won every multi day race she ever entered. Last year, Surasa reached 2760 miles within the allotted time frame, leaving her with doubts about her ability to complete the race this year.  However: “The inspiration was very, very strong.  I got so much joy, and when I was imagining that I was not running, and that I was in Vienna, there was no joy. I hope that I can do it,” she says, “but if not, what can you do?  You just have to learn to accept whatever is coming…  Everybody is trying to make the cut off but it is not in your hands.  You have to try your best.”

Just try, this is the message.  To do it is definitely not easy, but these runners are trying to achieve what was previously thought impossible.  The race challenges human conception about our own limitations in every way.  Race director Rupantar La Russo comments, “I remember in the 70’s when we all started running marathons.  If you ran a marathon you were an oddball.  Sri Chinmoy just blew the boundaries away by creating the 3100.  This is extraordinary.”

The 3100 is not for everyone, less than 30 people have actually managed to complete it, but those who do participate in the race find themselves transformed.  For those of us watching, the inspiration comes not so much from those who have done it – but that it can be done at all. And while 3100 miles is a stretch even for the imagination, the idea of it - the limitlessness of the human spirit – makes this a universal achievement for those of us who believe that anything is possible.

Please visit 3100.srichinmoyraces.org/ for current race results and more information.