sri chinmoy marathon team
i first displayed this page on my website in 1996 or 1997. i am not a disciple of sri chinmoy, and therefore am not using this to encourage people to join his organisation, and neither do i know enough about whether he is a re-incarnation of god, or an avatar. as a simple ultrarunner i know that his organisation puts on some great ultrarunning events, and that is why these notes are written. i have however been contacted by some ultrarunning ex-disciples of sri chinmoy to say that there is another side to their organisation. i have spent enough time hanging around the
group and
srichinmoycult.com to appreciate that another side may exist. i am fence-sitting here.
finally the below were wnippets of emails that were sent to the ultralist, and email list about ultrarunning. given they lobbed in my inbox, i consider myself authorised to use them here.
since 1985, for nearly thirteen years, chinmoy's students have held ultrarunning events of 1,300, 1,000 and 700 miles, along with five, seven or ten day races, where the athletes accumulate mileage around the clock on a one-mile race loop in a format known as 'go as you please.' for the first five years the races were held on a sealed track at flushing meadows park in queens, new york, site of the old world's fair; subsequent races have been held in a city park on remote wards island, new york.
that chinmoy is a tireless proponent of peace is salient. lesser known, however, is that chinmoy, as spiritual leader of the sri chinmoy marathon team, is as effusive and ardent in espousing aspiration and sport as he is relentless in pursuit of world peace. he is both sport's most eloquent spokesperson and aspiration's unremitting ambassador.
subtly chinmoy advocates. effusively, but unobtrusively, he promotes, his messages taunt and tug at you. they cajole. they provoke. like an oasis in the middle of a desert, like a cold, inviting drink on a sultry summer day, they encourage you to do. it's as if they glare at you from billboards on the sides of buildings and city buses, yet there's no commercial advertising whatsoever and no pressure, only encouragement, to progress if and once you've entered a chinmoy event.
simply from running in the 1997 700 mile race for a spell (three days, to be precise) i have put together a montage of chinmoy quotations derived from the back of printed t-shirts his students unfailingly wear and award to entrants in chinmoy events:
- "life and sport cannot be separated; they are one. if we believe in our own self-transcendence-task,then there can be no unreachable goal."
- "run and become. become and run"
- "run to become in the inner world. become to succeed in the outer world."
- "life's perfection-road is very long. but the journey is richly rewarding."
- "run, you can easily challenge the pride of frightening distance."
- "the supreme doesn't want you to be satisifed with 50 meters. he wants you to run 51 meters, 52 meters, 54 meters. otherwise, if you always aim at the same goal, it becomes monotonous."
- "whether or not you attain your goals - the determination in your heroic effort will permeate your mind and heart even after your success or failure is long forgotten."
chinmoy's messages are as eloquent as a leaf on a tree, yet as strong and as powerful as a mountain. they make you want to get up and go mail the letter you've procrastinated mailing. they make you want to fill out that job application, even though you think you may be under-or over-educated or qualified. they make you want to take that walk to the convenience store instead of the bus. they erase fear and reservation of aspiration right off your psyche. they make you want to turn mere aspiration into action.
and this, chinmoy has said, is part of the point: "the glorious experience of the soul" to free us "from fear."
at 66, chinmoy is a picture of vitality and health. by example of his own athletic and artistic pursuits, 'guru,' as chinmoy is affectionately known by his students, impels and inspires the athletes like the conductor of an orchestra. like the teacher at the head of the class, with the grace of a poet and the adroitness of a drum majorette twirling the baton, chinmoy is there to bring on the band: in 1994 he completed a two-year mission to draw 1,000,000 peace birds, and is the author of over 1,100 published books and 13,000 devotional songs; an avid weightlifter, he is said to have hoisted weights in excess of 7,000 pounds, and has lifted many individuals, including movie celebrity eddie murphy, olympian carl lewis, former 49er linebacker keena turner, and the prime minister of iceland, from a specially-constructed platform. he walks the talk.
and though ultradistance events are the crown jewels of his marathon team, placing mortal man headlong into the undoable, chinmoy offers up a part and event for every palate and ability. in new york, rain or shine there are monthly, standard 26-mile, 385-yard "rainbow" marathons held usually on the last sunday of each month; there are weekly 'runners are smilers' two-mile races; there are masters'-only events (masters are athletes at or beyond the age of 39); there are triathlons and various other chinmoy-sponsored events around the globe.
and, outside of the ultradistance events where entrants must average a set number of miles daily by race's end to realize a finish, there is no pressure, real or presumed, to attain a certain place or finish in a specified time. sri chinmoy events are unbelievably tolerant of the intolerant. when this writer entered his first chinmoy-sponsored 26 mile marathon, non-chinmoy student wen-shi-yu, at 62 a nationally ranked runner at distances from 5k to the marathon, has finished (though we began concurrently) and yells, homebound, from her mercedes convertible: "you can do it. don't worry at all about time. they wait for you."
gwendolyn harrison, a grandmother from queens, new york, is running neck-and-neck with me, although we are not competing against one another. both of us wanted to finish in under four hours, but are way behind schedule, and are variably next-to-last and dead last; all of the other entrants have finished and long gone. finally, i am on my last lap, she on her next to last. upon my finish, sahishnu szczesiul, one of chinmoy's race directors, has given me a lustrous, sky blue marathon medallion emblazoned with the team insignia; i have since lost it; of all my marathon finisher's medals, it is the best crafted and the rarest.
on my way home, i meet harrison on her last lap and show her the medal. i also tell her that there's probably a trophy awaiting her because she will be one of the few women finishers at this particular race; though dead last she is ecstatic, both at finishing and at the prospect of medaling.
three years later, i see harrison; "yes," she tells me, she medaled and the organizers even gave her a car ride home to queens. though not chinmoy's student, she tells me she participates in the bi-ennial sri chinmoy 18-mile peace run from long island, new york to the united nations, and that it, too, is a tolerant affair with chinmoy as chaperone.
neither the shorter, standard distance events nor the ultra distance events limit participation to chinmoy students. in fact, participation of the trained general public is encouraged. ultradistance athlete stu mittleman set the world record for 1,000 miles of 11 days and 20 hours under sponsorship of gatorade in a chinmoy race. world class ultrarunner sigfried bauer of new zealand placed in a chinmoy race and then wrote a scathing letter criticizing the race organizers for purportedly mixing sports and spirituality. at chinmoy events commercially-sponsored athlete sandy barwick of new zealand set world records, still standing, of 1,300, 1,000, and 700 miles, though she is not a student.
in september 1995, with experience of a dozen or so mediocre 26-mile marathons and a few 50 milers recently behind me, i step up to the starting line of the 700 mile race. i am not here of my own volition; a minimum of 58 miles per day for 12 consecutive days -- or anything remotely close thereto -- would seem undoable for me, and but for ego i would not engage the challenge. yet something not seen and not understood, not my ego, has impelled me to the starting line. i arrive five minutes before the noon start. in a nutshell, i drop my bags, pin on my race number and start running.
i am oblivious to all the accoutrements the team offers the entrants and run through 88 miles during the first 24 hours, leading the pack by 13 miles. later, i find they offer -- in addition to the token sports refreshments found at standard road races -- daily, scheduled catered vegetarian breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks, buffet style, in a makeshift kitchen.
there are vegetables and vegetables and sumptuous fruits and more vegetables: multi-colored pastas pepper one huge serving tray; mounds of brown rice another; cooked sweet potatoes evince aromatically in yet another tray. there are watermelon slices, oranges, cookies, candies, cereal, milk, tea, hot chocolate, apple sauce homemade daily, and honey aplenty -- and the bees are a-swarming. so much so that 60-year-old don winkley of corpus christi, texas, a non-chinmoy student who has driven a beat-up mini-van non stop all the way to new york to run 1,000 miles, can't make his hallmark peanut butter, honey and banana sandwiches without swatting away the honey's manufacturers.
night and day, you name it, if it's edible and not meat, it's here.
in ignorance, thereof, i have prepared to rough-it-out for 12 days of running and walking, subsisting on organic apples, whole wheat fig bars and mixed raw nuts i've brought along. 'is this heaven?' i think. there is a handling area with a built-in washer and dryer, showers, on-premises massages, chiropractic, homeopathy.
near the end of the race, curiously i stop into the medical tent.
a chinmoy medico from abroad is attending. his credentials decorate the tent's makeshift walls. at his command i lay on the examining table. he gives a short indoctrination about how he believes holistic prevention is preferable to conventional medicine. "tell me," he then says, "what's your problem." "i'm exhausted," i reply. he moves his arm quickly like a geiger counter across my chest. his face brightens as though he has received a brainstorm; information, says his expression, is appearing in torrents.
"low calcium!," he exclaims direly. "almost no potassium!"
"you mean you can detect these things by waving your hand like that?," i ask, bellowing uncontrollably. "you are a very special subject," he offers cheerfully yet serenely, nearly oblivious to my understandable wonderment. "i will always remember you." then he makes his recommendation: he reaches for a bottle of vitamins named, appropriately, exhaustion.
there is a replica of chinmoy's home on the course, replete with a white picket fence surrounding his sky blue 'house' at which i discover empirically he offers the runners prasad -- a hindu tradition in which a yogi offers to the willing selected foods he has blessed (in this case bananas and triple-fudge cookies emblazoned in green with the number "10") -- throughout their endeavors.
though pup tents pepper the course periphery, there is a dormitory for runners and their helpers without them. flags representing the home country of each entrant are hoisted high from poles along the course. at times there is a trumpeter serenading the runners at night. chinmoy's students have transformed a normally drab park on a remote new york city island -- inhabitated otherwise by mental institutions, water treatment facilities, fire department training depots, and a homeless shelter -- into an iridescent oasis of life, hope and luminosity.
the lone chinmoy student in the men's 700 miler is sasa djordevic, 27, of nis, yugoslavia. as though he is privy to facts or circumstances of providence i cannot perceive, he relinquishes the race lead at about mile 20 with a smile of unconcern. he is confident in countenance, almost majestic, yet completely self-effacing. djordevic is so confident, in fact, that he does not regain the lead until about mile 340; he storms aways easily and unchallenged to win by some 154 miles, the only entrant to complete the distance.
scott weber of littleton, colorado, is the president of supermarathon sports, a sports marketing and ultrarunning event production firm and is a national class ultrarunner who is the only person in the world to have survived a double round trip between badwater in death valley, at 282 feet below sea level, to mt. whitney -- at 14,494 feet the highest point in the contiguous u.s., where the temperatures are said to rise to 200°f.
but as an entrant in the 700-miler, weber is befuddled. long retired and resigned to a dnf, "they're on another planet," weber said to me during a lap, referring to chinmoy's runners. "where," i think silently, "and how do i get there?"
"some of the bodies" chinmoy's runners possess, says weber, do not appear to be aerobically suited or especially trained for ultrarunning and should not enable them to "do what they're doing." yet they do.
i have run consistently alongside nirjhari delong for much of this event. i know of nirjhari from spectating at the sri chinmoy monthly rainbow marathons, which she unfailingly runs. she betrays none of the typical rigors of aerobic exercise, such as grunting, squinting, grimacing or labored breathing. she is the picture of grace, smiling, ambling along, yet in a hurry to go nowhere. it appears as though she aims, in fact, not expressly to finish the distance. she simply is.
at 300-plus miles her feet glide along effortlessly, her cheeks are rosy, her head is aloft and her posture upright. she is smiling from ear to ear. there is no visible stress, and delong is talkative, much like a little kid turned loose in a candy store. like all the sri chinmoy runners i meet, positivity seems to be concentrated in her being.
the apotheosis of grace in motion, offers delong self-effacingly, is "suprabha," referring to chinmoy student suprabha beckjord of washington, d.c. (american 1,000 mile record holder) who is not running this particular event and whom i do not immediately meet. "nothing," says delong, can break her concentration.
for 35 years i've been a carcass of nerves. i want to meet suprabha. i want to experience her essence for myself. like a mad scientist, i am in pursuit of the trick, the technique that enables chinmoy's runners to glide over rock-hard concrete in a city park for thousands of miles, their senses and bodies virtually unaffected by the ordeal. i want it now. in my personal life and, less so, in possibly salvaging a finish in the race, i am in need of an elixir. i am impressed beyond fascination.
chinmoy student dipali cunningham, of melbourne, australia, has just run 700 miles in 10 days like a piece of tissue blowing in the wind, beating all male and female entrants to the finish at the distance.
georgs jermolajevs, an unemployed schoolteacher from latvia, is running the 1,300-mile race of his life; he has just taken the 1,300-mile record initially set by canadian journeyman al howie in 1989. en route, we talk. georgs is cheerful, he is smiling from ear to ear and, although he speaks in broken english, he tells me to smile too; it will help me along, he says. he, too, is running effortlessly; in fact, after finishing his race, having run 81 miles per day for 16 consecutive days, he is seen riding a bicycle along the course. i have yet to finish my ordeal, and can hardly stand.
what can explain the sudden change of fortune and success for a man who on his prior attempt to conquer a super long distance in a chinmoy race "encountered many physical problems," concedes jermolajevs, "and could not finish the distances?"
a "positive" consciousness, according to jermolajevs, who first came to america in 1993 to contest a sri chinmoy ultramarathon. "the most positive experience," said jermolajevs, "about that first visit was becoming sri chinmoy's student," and finding consequently "that a good consciousness is necessary to have true success."
i hear more testimonials. david blaikie of ottawa, ontario, canada, is the publisher of ultramarathon world, an internet magazine, and was previously a staff writer at the canadian press, the toronto star and reuters news agency. in 1989, "after ten years of following [the sri chinmoy marathon team's] activities," he became a student. from his "earliest association" with the students, writes blaikie, he "admired what they accomplish as athletes and race organizers, and their ability to discipline their lives."
so how do they do it?
"with god's grace," chinmoy has said, "anything is possible." "there are no limits to our capacity because we have the infinite divine within us." chinmoy believes that running "is an outer expression of each human being's personal struggle to achieve inner perfection." "try all the time to surpass and go beyond all that is bothering you and standing in your way," chinmoy apprises, "so that ignorance, limitations and imperfections will drop behind you."
meanwhile, djordevic has won and completed the 700 miles in 11 days, 23 hours and 47 minutes with only 13 minutes to spare; jose munoz, 40, of mexico has placed second with 546 miles. ed fishman, 74 (more than twice my age), of honolulu, hawaii -- who, along with wife lillian, drove their camper all the way from california to run this race and have yet to drive back -- has run third with 538 miles, intermittently setting a new us 6-day 70-74 age-group record of 335 miles (56 miles per day) enroute.
i come in last with 510 miles. but, according to chinmoy, i've won nonetheless -- everybody's won, including those not scored.
"there are only three winners in life," consoles chinmoy from the back of the race t-shirt he personally hands to each entrant, regardless of place or finish or dnf, at the awards ceremony: "the one who crosses the finish line first. the one who competes with himself. and the one who finishes the race."
i do not immediately, if ever, discover the technique or trick, if any, outside of the promulgated "positive consciousness," by race's end.
in 1997 i return to the 700 mile race.
in the three days i participate i have amassed a paltry 121 miles (58, 41, and 25 miles, respectively) out of the target 700 miles in twelve days. i have resigned early. i am at the awards ceremony merely to capture a glimpse of chinmoy, whose visits to the race course i missed given i was home for nine days of the event. one doesn't go to a sting concert and not see sting, does one?
entrants are awarded in descending order, last places first. sahishnu szczesiul, chinmoy's race director, makes a short speech about how they like to acknowledge even the efforts of those who could not medal. my name is called. i smile, but do not go up to the podium because i am not expecting anything other than honorable mention.
"robin," says szczesiul, "come on up!" rupuntar larusso, another chinmoy director, and szczesiul hand an envelope and photo album to chinmoy. chinmoy then turns towards me. i bow. he bows. chinmoy is smiling from ear to ear. reciprocally, me too. he hands me the envelope, containing a cetificate of recognition for my effort, a race t-shirt whose back reads "the fullness in life lies in dreaming and manifesting the impossible dream," and the photo album, which contains photographs of race participants, including myself, and of chinmoy at the event. i am beyond myself. 'why would sri chinmoy honor me for what conventional sports measure would deem, in relation to the goal, a half-hearted effort?,' i think.
in the world of sport, there is nothing but praise and respect for chinmoy: "the care and attention of the sri chinmoy people," writes new zealander sandra barwick in her biography unstoppable: the sandy barwick story (1993, harper collins publishers new zealand) "is an important feature." only "they," believes barwick, "could run a [multi-day ultradistance] race so successfully."
aren't "the sri chinmoy people great?," writes dan baglione, 67, a retired computer engineer who lives in the foothills of the california sierras and is an ardent recreational sportsman. "nobody treats [an entrant in a sporting event] like the sri [chinmoy people]," concedes scott weber.
prior to the '96 olympic trials, said carl lewis in an interview with the houston chronicle, his "friend sri chinmoy called from new york to wish [lewis] well." "find your own time to be quiet," chinmoy advised lewis. "there will be so many people talking around you and about you. you must not," admonished chinmoy, "allow others to drain your energy heart."
"it was vintage sri chinmoy," said lewis. chinmoy's "thoughts are so often connected straight to the heart. they flow from the heart. they lead to the heart."
"chinmoy," says essie garrett, 51, of denver, colorado, a technical educator, "taught me the importance of mental and spiritual preparation, not just physical preparation," and his motto of "beyond, beyond, beyond," said garrett, is a main ingredient that has inspired her numerous cross-state, solo fund-raising runs for charitable organizations.
the year garrett contested chinmoy's 1,000-mile race, she ran 700 miles in 12 days, raising $11,000 for the dr. justian ford house, a denver museum, along the way. still short of her 1,000-mile target with time to spare, said garrett, chinmoy kept saying "transcend, transcend!" "i have transcended," garrett told chinmoy. "now give me some advil!"
and so it seems the few chinmoy detractors, either disgruntled ex-students or those who question the authenticity of chinmoy's weightlifting feats, are either sowing bitter grapes or missing the point and an experience so cheap that money could never buy it: do. be. become.
every phenomenon, even the less altruistic, has its hierophant: rock n' roll has elvis and dick clark; for the paranormal there is ufo's. elvis, however, hasn't risen from the grave lately. dick clark isn't spinning records daily anymore. and ufo sightings are nowadays infrequent.
but for sports and aspiration, there is sri chinmoy, 66, playing concerts, writing books and prose, drawing birds, lifting hurculean weights, elephants and celebrities, sponsoring over 500 sprints, peace runs, marathons, swimathons, bikeathons and triathlons around the globe, preaching his messages of trascendence of sport as a metaphor for life from the back of t-shirts his students wear and award to event entrants.
whether it's some little old lady who's inspired to trek safely around the block instead of take a cab, an olympian like carl lewis who's impelled to yet another gold medal, a couch potato who's inspired to perform calisthentics at home or jogging in place, or merely the common procastinator who otherwise just can't get up the gumption to mail that overdue letter, the fruits of sri chinmoy's efforts to inspire rival those of the most intense commercial advertising campaign and the fiercest motivational speaker.
but, then, sri chinmoy, however, is not taking any credit. his athletic, artistic, and motivational talents are merely expressions of providence, he says. chinmoy claims he is merely an instrument for the divine, the way a clarinet is one of music.
to the world, chinmoy is salient as a 'student of peace.' that title is not apt, however, much too subtle for the activity of sport, which chinmoy espouses so heartily.
christen him "aspiration's unremitting unambassador" and "sport's most eloquent spokesperson."
