Running in Circles for 3100 Miles!
Inside the world's longest, strangest footrace
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #182 of CAFÉ ANNE!
Oh golly—thanks to everyone for the comments, emails, gifts and cards that came in after I wrote about Minnie’s death in last week’s issue. It was a huge comfort. My favorite notes were from those who said they laughed at my account of dealing with Minnie’s body. It made me laugh too!
There was a lot of commiseration going on. Almost everyone knows how hard it is to lose a pet. But then I got to thinking—what if our pets didn’t die?
I loved my childhood dog, Blackstone. But had she lived as long as me, I’d never have enjoyed ten years with Moosejaw, who ate a garden rake and ran away at every opportunity. Or 14 years with Louis, a Rottweiler mix who grew up in a crack den, loved to eat drywall and was really good at climbing trees. And, of course, I’d never have met my darling Minnie.
Here in the U.S., the average marriage lasts 20 years. And while parents love their kids, they’re often extremely happy when the little monsters head off to college. In short, domestic relationships typically run about two decades—about as long as you might enjoy a pet.
So here’s this week’s question: if dogs and cats lived for 80 years, would you still get a pet?
In other news, I had a lot of fun chatting with Eva Heyman and Caroline Levanthal—two “affluent, anxious and absolutely unfiltered” Upper East Side moms—on their Mic’d and Medicated podcast. We discussed living in NYC, living in NYC, and living in NYC. You can listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
And finally, huge ashes-to-ashes shoutouts to our newest paid subscriber, Joanne D. That’s enough $$$ to have a pet’s body cremated at the NYC Animal Care Center!
I am very excited for this week’s issue, of course. We’ve got a big story about the 52-day, 3,100-mile ultramarathon currently underway in Queens. You will not believe these people. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
WANT TO LEARN A FEW DIFFERENT CRAFTS IN ONE AFTERNOON?
Join us on October 11th in Brooklyn for our first seasonal day of workshops! In this session, you will learn how to find your perfect shade and dye something to take home, sculpt and play with clay, and be guided through unraveling an old, broken sweater to reduce waste and use the yarn to knit something new! All this is accompanied by a bartender who will make a special drink unique to you, local food vendors, and a market to shop for crafts and crafting materials that you can’t find anywhere else. RSVP and buy tickets here!
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World’s Longest Footrace in Queens is Truly Bonkers!
Running in Circles for 3100 miles
Most New Yorkers have no idea, but the world’s most bonkers foot race is happening right now in a sleepy corner of Queens. And happening, and happening, and happening.
It’s the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race, an annual ultra marathon that has participants running 3,100 miles in 52 days—nearly 60 miles a day. The runners start at 6 am and go until midnight. The next day, they get up and do it again.
Though it’s the world’s longest certified foot race, it’s an oddly modest affair. This year’s competition has just ten participants. The “race course” is a single city block circling a high school. The grand prize? Balloons, cake and small plastic trophy.
When I took the F train to Jamaica last week to catch Day 31 of the competition, I had some trouble finding it. The city doesn’t close the streets for the race—contenders run laps on the sidewalk circling Thomas A. Edison High School—and the event attracts few spectators. Finally, after circling half the block, I spotted a few portable toilets and the food tents staffed by volunteers, including Bipin Larkin, one of the race directors.
Mr. Larkin, who lives nearby, showed me around the marathon base camp, which included several medical tents and small trailers where runners take short breaks.
A makeshift scoreboard mounted on a chain link fence showed the mileage traveled so far by each runner. Andrea Marcato of Italy, who won the last five 3100-mile races, was in the lead, with 2,068 miles. Others hailed from Russia, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.
“A lot of them are middle-aged and from the former Soviet Union,” I noted. “Why is that?”
“They’ve had hard lives!” said Mr. Larkin. “They’re very focused.”
Mr. Larkin gave me some background. The race, now in its 29th year, was founded by Sri Chinmoy, a meditation teacher and runner. “He lived in the neighborhood,” said Mr. Larkin.
I later learned that Sri Chinmoy, a spiritual leader from India, moved to NYC in 1964. He gained a major following after establishing his meditation center in Queens. You can find pictures of him with the Pope, Mother Theresa and Princess Di.
Chinmoy, who encouraged his students to expand their limits through feats of endurance, started organizing ultramarathons in 1977. He was also into weightlifting. According to Wikipedia, in a program known as Lifting Up the World With a Oneness Heart, he went around hoisting celebrities on a platform overhead. Among the people lifted: Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Ali, Sting, Eddie Murphy, Yoko Ono, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Gere, twenty Nobel laureates and a team of sumo wrestlers. He died in 2007 of a heart attack.
Mr. Larkin—along with most of the volunteers staffing the marathon—was a close student of Chinmoy’s. “I’ve done 17 marathons,” said Mr. Larkin. “The furthest I’ve run is 100 kilometers.”
“That’s a long way!” I said.
“I agree!” he said. “But that’s small potatoes around here. No one’s impressed!”
I resumed circling the block and spotted an oddly-dressed man strumming his electric guitar under a tree. His name was Kodana, a moniker he adopted after becoming a Chinmoy disciple. He comes out every year and plays to support the runners—everything from Pink Floyd to “Chariots of Fire.”
Kodana said he was inspired by his own experience running the NYC Marathon. “Every time I ran, there were all these bands playing along the route, and some of them were really bad!” he said. “But I noticed that even the worst band helped me. So I thought I could come out here, and this couldn’t harm anybody—I know I had to be a little better than those worst bands.”
His favorite runner in this year’s race is Russia’s Vasu Duzhiy, who was in second place. He was hosting Mr. Duzhiy in his own home. The Russian gets the bedroom while Kodana sleeps in the garage. Most of the runners, it turns out, are staying in the homes of volunteers.
As if on cue, Mr. Duzhiy rounded the corner jogging alongside Alex Ramsey, a contender from Cleveland I’d heard was super friendly.
“Alex!” I shouted. “Can I interview you?”
I was wearing a pencil skirt and three-inch heels, but Mr. Ramsey—who was in sixth place with 1,890 miles—was sweet enough to walk a lap so we could chat.
While most of the runners looked determined at best, the radiant Mr. Ramsey, who is 40, looked like he’d swallowed the sun. This was his first year running the 3100, he said, and he was loving it.
To qualify, he had to run 1000 kilometers in ten days at another Sri Chinmoy race last April, in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
“So now you’re running for 52 days, and circling this high school 6,000 times,” I noted, as we walked alongside Grand Central Parkway. “Does that seem absurd to you?”
“Initially, it did, but I’ve had a change of heart because there’s so much newness to each lap,” he said. “As you can see right now, we’re in the midst of the kids being released from school!”
His favorite point on the half-mile loop is a street pole plastered with a red Supreme sticker. “Supreme” can refer to God, he noted, “And it’s also a clothing brand here in Soho.”
Of course I was mainly interested in what Mr. Ramsey eats during the race. He said he grabs a small bite, like a cookie, every time he laps the food stand. That’s more than 100 snacks a day! And then there’s meals.
Yesterday’s breakfast, he said, was a heap of scrambled eggs with fries, mayo, olive oil and ketchup; two containers of yogurt; and two bananas. Lunch was “a whole bunch of fruit, mixed nuts, and a sandwich—a fake-meat BLT.” Dinner was deep dish pizza. “The perfect amount of cheesy,” he said. “It was hitting so perfectly last night!”
We finished our lap, and I tried to thank Mr. Ramsey for his time, but instead he thanked me. “We’ll be covering 50,000 loops just this race alone,” he said. “And now you have contributed to that.”
I needed to know more about the food situation, of course, so I did some snooping around the food tents. To supplement the meals and snacks provided by volunteers, each runner had their own personal stash labeled in black marker.
Romania’s Adrian Papuc, who was in fifth place, had the best spread by far: bananas, pineapple chunks, green grapes, yogurt, Beck’s beer, Fig Newtons, cake, hard-boiled eggs, tangerines, kefir, Ritz Crackers with cheese, raisins, dark chocolate trail mix, white cheddar pop corn, Pellegrino, peanuts, potato chips and assorted pills.
I was photographing the stash of front runner Andrea Marcato—avocados, mixed nuts, creatine, kombucha, protein shakes, coconut water, mini boiled potatoes, grapes—when his handler Arpan D’Angelo caught me snooping.
Mr. D’Angelo, a local volunteer who serves as Mr. Marcato’s handler, revealed what may be the secret of the athlete’s success. “Supernova Cola, it’s called,” he said, pouring me a sample. “It’s fresh-squeezed lemons in seltzer water with black-strap molasses and maple syrup.”
I took a sip. Delicious!
“Who invented this?” I wondered.
“I did!” said Mr. D’Angelo. “It tastes a little like cola, but it’s actually quite healthy. A lot of iron and minerals. It will energize you, but you don’t get the drop in your energy afterward.”
“You could market this,” I said.
“I could, but I’m not a businessman,” he said.
Mr. D’Angelo, it turns out, is also a meditator and runner, having completed 700 miles in the Sri Chinmoy ten-day race, which also takes place on small loop.
“Somebody asked me, ‘Why do you go in circles?’” he said. “Well, it might not make logical sense. But if the moon had a mind and thought about how it was circling the earth for seven billion years, it would probably freak out and say, ‘How does that make sense?’ And then, you know, the earth is going around the sun, and the electrons are going around the atoms. So really, that’s the way the universe is working. And if you don’t identify with that, you feel separate from it.”
I listened as Mr. D’Angelo went on for quite a while, discoursing on meditation, love, unity, the soul, the human family and achieving a sense of oneness with all creation—before getting sidetracked handing Mr. Marcato half an avocado.
I returned on Day 32 and chatted with Rupantar La Russo, a NYC native and former distance runner who serves as the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team’s global director. He’s also the person who chose the race location.
In some ways, it’s a terrible place for an ultramarathon, he said. The bumpy concrete sidewalks are the worst possible surface for running. On the other hand, the neighborhood’s friendly residents supply the runners with donuts, “and the school principal is our biggest supporter.”
Mr. La Russo was in the counting tent, recording lap times for each runner, and we got to talking about the race as a mental challenge.
“The mind is limited,” said Mr. La Russo. “The mind says, ‘3100 miles. You kidding me?’ Your mind is telling you that you can’t do it. But when you go beyond the mind and into the heart, there’s nothing that is impossible. They have blisters, shin splints, rashes—but they come here every single day and start at 6 am. Something else is going on here, beyond the physical. It’s a miracle.”
I asked the obvious question: “Couldn’t that energy and dedication be put to better use?”
“What better use can you have, than doing what you’re inspired to do?” said Mr. La Russo. “I mean, you can say, ‘Why don’t you help the poor?’ But if you’re not inspired? You have to do what you feel is best for you. Everyone is inspired to do something, and there is no right or wrong way. Everyone is unique.”
I understood what he was saying. We can’t all be inspired to do the same thing—it just wouldn’t work! I was also glad I’m inspired to write a blog about New York City and not run 6,000 laps around a high school.
I’d brought my sneakers this time so I could slip them on and run a few laps with Harita Davies, the only New Yorker competing in the race. It was the first interview I’ve ever done while running! But Ms. Davies, who is 50, tan, and sports two blonde braids hanging nearly to her waist, was running 15-minute miles, so it wasn’t hard to keep up.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, as we set off around the school.
“Good question!” she said. “When I’m in the middle of it, I’m like, ‘I don’t know! This is torture!’”
She laughed, and provided a proper explanation: “If you’re always living comfortably, you’re not really going to be satisfied. You might feel like, ‘Oh, if everything was just smooth and comfortable, I’d be so happy!’ But that’s not the case. You have to have experiences which put you at the frontier of your capacity. You only get satisfaction from really challenging yourself.”
Ms. Davies knows what she’s talking about. Having logged 1,840 miles since the start of this year’s race, she’d already lost 20 pounds and worn out twelve pairs of running shoes. But she knew what to expect—this is her fifth time running the 3100.
The runner, who grew up in New Zealand and now lives in Queens—where she works at the Panorama Café operated by Sri Chinmoy students—ran her first 3100 at age 40. Every other year, she runs the coast-to-coast Sri Chinmoy Peace Run, a relay race. And between races, she runs about 100 miles a week, often circling the same high school we were rounding now.
We started a second lap and she grabbed a Klondike bar from a volunteer. “Ice cream is a big part of this race!” she said, tearing off the wrapper. “Easy calories!”
I asked about her daily routine while running the 3100. Every day, Ms. Davies rises at 5:15 am, meditates, stretches and meets her volunteer handler, who accompanies her to the starting line. She starts running at 6 am and takes 25-minute breaks at 10:30 am, 3 pm and 7:30 pm. to nap, stretch and bandage her blisters. But she never stops to eat: “There’s no time for that.”
The most challenging time is early evening, she said, when the neighborhood comes out to play: delivery workers on electric scooters, Bengali families strolling with their kids, teens breaking into fights. “You see a lot of people smoking drugs, you see quite a lot of gambling, you get a lot of characters, close car accidents, people getting arrested,” she said. “A lot of soccer balls come flying over the fence—you have to watch out so you don’t get hit...it’s sort of like this witching hour, around sunset.”
Her favorite time is near midnight. “There’s the moon and stars, and you feel like you can really be meditating,” she said. “Everyone’s kind of quiet.”
We started lap three. “Do you ever feel like, ‘God, this is so boring, I can’t stand this?’” I asked.
“Sometimes!” she said. “But I chose to be here, right? I could be a refugee in Gaza. My life could be a million times worse. It helps to put this in perspective. This isn’t really so bad.”
“This race, you really have to live it one day at a time,” she added. “You can’t think of all the days, or your mind goes absolutely crazy. This race is very symbolic of life. You have to live in the moment, just do what you can do in this day. If you think of everything, it seems overwhelming.”
And while the race may feel interminable, the end is in sight. The day after the race ends, Ms. Davies will hit the beach. After seven weeks running on concrete, there’s nothing like a dip in the ocean.
And then ordinary life resumes. Ms. Davis said she doesn’t typically tell people about her running life, but she’s happy when they ask: “The world badly needs inspiration, right? You can find any kind of negative thing you want in the media. You find uninspiring things in boundless measure. We need inspiration.”
As I finish writing this story, it’s fun to consider the fact that Ms. Davies and the others are still out there right now, running around the school. And if you’re reading this when the newsletter publishes Monday morning, they’re still running. And if you’re reading it Friday night, they’re still running. And if you’re reading it a week from now...they’re still running.
I find this very funny! But while I have zero interest in running 3100 miles around a city block in Queens, their example does make me consider that perhaps I, too, can accomplish whatever I truly feel inspired to do—even if my mind says it’s impossible.
So what impossible thing are you feeling inspired to accomplish? Send me an email: annekadet@yahoo.com, or leave a note in the comments!
Through October 20, you can watch a live feed of the race, get the latest updates or send a message to the runners.
CAFÉ ANNE is a free weekly newsletter created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday.
Truly loved this one Anne. The DNA lottery guarantees that beyond an oddball identical twin, every one of us is different and this was a profile of a wonderfully eclectic set of humans.
That is straight up bonkers cuckoo bananas. And I love every bit of it. I loathe running. I once tried to do the Couch to 5K program and blew out both my knees. I'm NOT a runner. That said, I do enjoy sprinting from time to time just to see how fast I can go. And then, while I'm gasping for air and wishing for the sweet release of death, I think, "Why did I do that?"