5 plus 1 = inspiration and fun

I just turned 51 about a week ago and at first it all seemed rather anticlimactic after turning the big 50 last year.

Last night I was reading in Live in the Eternal Now, a new book of previously unpublished talks given over the years by my spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy. When I woke up this morning, I felt energized and inspired by one idea in one of the talks which suggested that one could do certain activities and projects drawing upon the number of years one has been alive on Earth. For instance, he recommended that if someone was a good singer and liked to sing, they could sing every day the number of songs that corresponded to their age.

Suddenly I no longer felt deflated about turning the page on being 50 – the big half century! I could think of things to do with the number 51 in them and find inspiration in the notion of 5 + 1, feeling like a child at heart to counteract the other ways that my pace has slowed down as I get older.

Right now I am in New York for a few days to observe the 4th anniversary of Sri Chinmoy’s passing on October 11, 2011. Students of Sri Chinmoy from around the globe have gathered for memorial activities, prayer, offerings of flowers and incense at the Samadhi burial shrine and a candlelight vigil starting at midnight on October 11th and ending midnight the following day.

While in New York for the memorial observance, when I woke up this morning I wanted to go walking on the 3100 mile race route which is only about a mile from where I stay when I come to New York for prayers and meditation with the Sri Chinmoy Centre.

As the year wanes, sunrise arrives at about 7:00 a.m. so I found myself walking the 3100 mile race route as the sun rose. I contemplated my inspiration to do things with the number 51 in them now that I turned 51 and next thing I knew I pulled out my camera and took 51 photos of the 3100 mile race route. I am quite fond of these photos – probably because they make me think of the immortal achievements that happen on that route, amidst the hustle and bustle of a service road onto a parkway, a park with playground equipment for children, an area to play handball, a baseball field and a vocational high school.

I hope a little of the enthusiasm and inspiration I woke with rubs off on you as you look at the photos. I am SO grateful to Sri Chinmoy for the myriad ways he finds to sleeplessly inspire humanity even though it is 4 solemn years since he walked among us on Earth.

Other posts about Sri Chinmoy’s Samadhi:

The notion of running 2 marathons a day from 6 am to midnight for seven weeks leads one to imagine that the participants must be superheroes who have secretly leapt off the screen of the Captain America film opening today in the U.S. or perhaps they snuck out the back door of the Comic-Con Convention going on in California.

As a fellow female, I derive the greatest inspiration from following Surasa Mairer, the only woman in the field of runners this year, now back for her second attempt at reaching the 3100 distance before the end of the race on August 3rd.

Talk about improving with practice! On Day 40, July 22nd, she is 336 miles further along than she was a year ago on day 40 of the race.

A little more than a week ago, blogger Utpal Marshall interviewed Surasa while she was out on the course and compared her achievement to Derek Jeter with his 3,000 hit over the course of his baseball career. Utpal blogs most every day during the 3100 mile race, sharing photos, interviews and quotes from conversations he engages in with the runners, helpers and observers of the race.

Read and listen to Utpal’s post on Surasa here: “July 13: Just a Dream”

Read my post about Surasa from a year ago here: “Surasa Mairer: Ultra-Running Pioneer”

With only 12 days of the race left, it will be a special day indeed if Surasa reaches the 3100 mile distance by the race’s end (last year she achieved the amazing distance of 2760 miles).

She runs backwards and forwards literally. She set 4 world records by running backwards (retro-running). She was the first woman in the world to backwards run a half-marathon, marathon, 10K and 5K race.

Her first marathon backwards was in 2004 at an event called Impossibility Challenger held in Germany near Munich. Her second attempt at a backwards marathon was a Guinness Record in a time of 6:27:11 in the Munich Mediamarathon in 2005.

Born in Tyrol, Austria in March 1959, Surasa (born Paula) Mairer has worked for a number of years as a secretary in academic settings – most recently the University in Salzburg. Surasa didn’t discover her extraordinary gift for running until she was 28 years old.

In an English translation of an article written in German about her running achievements, Roby Schiltz describes,

…she is a wonderful example how out of a non-runner you can become an ultra runner and this in a completely natural way. As she began running with 28 years already 10 kilometres seemed an insurmountable barrier for her. Only a few years later she was fervently dedicating herself to multi day races. In September 1996 and 1997 she won the 700-Mile-Race (1120 km) and 1999 and 2000 the 1000-Mile-Race (1600 km) on Wards Island, USA. 2001 she ran the world record at the 1300-Mile-Race (2080 km) and thus lowered the 10 year old record of Sandra Barwick from New Zealand by 1 hour 33. In September 2002 she ran the world record in the 700-Mile-Race and over 1000 km. In September 2003 she won again the 1000-Mile-Race. 2004 she went for a “short distance”. She participated and won the 4-Day-Race in Prague.

Obviously, when Surasa runs forward her excellence and achievements are no less amazing than her backwards running talent. In 2007 she was the women’s winner with 595 miles in the Ten Day Race after a period of five years without running a multiday race. She has in fact won nearly every multiday race she has ever entered in her entire running career.

Last but not least, Surasa kept the tradition alive of a solitary female entrant among a much larger pool of male entrants in the 3100 mile race. 2010 marked her first ever 3100 mile race for 52 days this summer. For the last 13 years, Suprabha Beckjord was the first and only woman who ran the 3100 mile race in a field of male runners. This year Suprabha did not run but visited the runners as a helper. Surasa carried on the tradition as the second woman in the world to ever run the 3100.

She completed 2760 miles by the end of the race, an awesome achievement in conditions of some of the worst heat the East Coast has ever seen this summer.

Surasa is a meditation student of Sri Chinmoy and attributes her running success to her practise of meditation.

View pictures of her taken by me towards the end of the 2010 edition of the race.

Suprabhas Running Feet Photo by Sharani

Suprabha's Running Feet - Photo by Sharani

Last night I watched a fantastically inspiring documentary about one of my all-time heroes, a record-breaking multi-day runner named Suprabha Beckjord. A gift shop owner from Washington, DC, she has run in the Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race every summer for the last 12 years and is:

• *the only person to finish the race every year it has been held.
• *the only woman to ever compete in the race.
• *the only American to run the race in a field of 14 people from around the world last year in 2008.

This monumental race held over a 51 day period in Queens, New York is the longest certified road race in the world and is hosted by the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team.

The Spirit of a Runner is a documentary about Suprabha’s ultra-running career – especially her years of participation in the 3100. The film also offers a window into the race itself and the inspiration from the Marathon Team’s founder Sri Chinmoy.

This film by Jessie Beers-Altman, a student at the Boston University College of Communication, won third prize in one of the divisions of the Redstone Film Festival in 2009. Here is a trailer to the film on YouTube:

I was so inspired by this film that it brought me to tears while watching it. The next morning I woke up full of enthusiasm for life in general and for being a part of the Sri Chinmoy Centre in particular. It translated into a marathon-length (for me!) session of meditation where our centre gathers in Queens, New York. I meditated at home starting at 5 am then continued at the outdoor meditation area we call Aspiration-Ground from 6 to 9 am. The meditative morning brought a harvest of joy, gratitude and peace. Now some might say why didn’t the film inspire me to get up early and go running instead of to sit and meditate? I can only answer – good point! Maybe tomorrow it will energize my athletic activities instead of my meditation.

Related: Photos I took of Suprabha on the race course during the 2007 3100 Mile Race.