Sri Chinmoy Races Blog @ allaboutrunning.net

"Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event 9, the one-mile: 1st, No. 41, R.G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which - subject to ratification - will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire, and World Record. The time was 3..." The stadium speaker never got to finish his sentence for he was drowned out by the thunderous roar of the crowd. Never before in history had any athlete broken the elusive four minute barrier in the standard mile. Today, May 6th 1954, changed all that.

On that day athletic history was written on the Iffley Road Track in Oxford when Roger Bannister broke the world-record by running 3:59.4. The race was the culmination of many years of meticulous preparation, dreaming and planning which eventually brought Bannister the crown of victory. The fact that Bannister ran away with the record first was no mere coincidence. As Bannister once said, "The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win."

Roger Bannister was not the only one trying to tackle the seemingly insurmountable 4 minute barrier. There were many other kids on the block. Foremost among them was Australian John Landy, who ran a 4:02 mile in 1953. He was to prove Bannister's greatest rival in chasing the world record.

Bannister trained only an hour a day - very little compared to other world class milers of his time. Being a full time medical student, he could only train during his lunch hour or at night when his other duties were finished. He sometimes entered the track at 11 p.m. for his workout.

Bannister's secret of approaching the mile was to divide the race up into four 400 metre segments, or four laps on a regular track. In his interval training he always aimed to run each lap in or just under one minute. After many workouts running one minute laps became second nature to him. He then felt he had it in him to break the world record.

Bannister was one of the first athletes who gave due importance to the role of psychology in running. He was well aware of the significance the mind played in winning and losing. He wrote, "Psychological and other factors beyond the ken of physiology set the razor's edge of defeat or victory and determine how closely the athlete approaches the absolute limits of performance."

We know that faith can move mountains. Bannister proved it. Self-confidence was his middle name. He believed he could break the record, and he did. Landy on the other hand was less fortunate in this respect. After running several 4:02 miles, he commented about the sub four-minute mile: "It is a brick wall. I shall not attempt it again." Interestingly, after Bannister broke the record, Landy suddenly felt it was possible and very soon afterwards ran 3:58, a new world-record! Here we see the power of positive and affirmative thinking. Bannister's self-confidence gave him the 'razor's edge' with which he could slice through impossibility's thick harness. And by conquering his own limitations he cleared the path for others to follow in his footsteps. Quite literally speaking.

About the author:

Abhinabha Tangerman is a freelance journalist and a marathon runner with a personal best of 2:43. He lives in The Hague, The Netherlands.

it is often said that there are as many reasons for running a marathon as there are participants. Nevertheless, for me the following three stand out head and shoulders above the rest...

Reason 1 The sheer experience... If you're the type that has always wanted to squeeze every drop out of life, to let no day go by before getting something valuable from it, then a marathon might just be for you. Because when you've finished a marathon, you look back and feel you've had a lifetime's worth of experiences in just a few hours! Not only do you travel all over the physical landscape of a city, you travel all over your own emotional landscape as well - the initial enthusiasm, the settled early part of the race, the despair, the euphoria at the finish... there's enough there to write a small novel about. As well, depending on the marathon you're running, there could be thousands of other people just like you out there, all with their own challenges to face, and added to that the hundreds of volunteers out there helping with the race and the crowds out there clapping and cheering you on - there is a real shared community feeling out there that just pulls you along.

Reason 2
To learn the art of the possible.

We all know the excuses for not running - bad for your knees, I wasn't built for running, ect, ect. To be frank, many of these excuses are mere stones in a wall of limitation we are apt to build around ourselves. If we listen to our thoughts sometimes, we can see we spend more time telling ourselves what we can't do than what we can do! But just think of this - do you think all the people that run marathons took their first steps thinking of that distance? Of course not. Many of them were at one time also saying to themselves 'No way, I'd never be able to run that'. And then maybe they did a 10k race or ran one day just a bit longer than they intended to, and all of a sudden that marathon goal beckoned on the horizon, within reach with just a bit of training...

Finishing a marathon makes you look around at the rest of your life and ask - what else am I limiting myself in? I always enjoy listening to a good friend of mine, Arpan DeAngelo, talk about his running experiences. Thirty years ago, he was pretty much doing a mile every time he went out running, and he remembered he used to look at friends who ran four or five miles and think 'How could they do that?'. But then gradually he gained confidence in his capacity, ran longer distances, and ended up doing the marathon. In fact, to date he has done almost 200 of them. But that's not all. Soon he started thinking 'What's next?' and saw that people were running longer distances - 47 mile races, 100k races, 24 hour races... so he thought, well, maybe he could do that too. In fact, three years ago, he completed the 3100 Mile Race, the longest road race in the world.

Reason 3:
To find out what you are truly made of.

Our mental state is truly the difference that determines whether our marathon experience will be an enjoyable one - or a never-to-be-repeated ordeal. In daily life we can afford to indulge our mind's complaining or moaning - it might get us down, but we generally manage to avoid grinding to a halt. But when things get tough during a marathon, you just have to silence that complaining voice in your head and keep going. In fact, what happens is you end up going deep inside yourself and drawing on an inner strength that you might have never known even existed. And once discovered, that inner strength doesn't just disappear once the race is ended - you find yourself drawing on it every time you face challenging situations in your daily life, too. Running marathons make you a better person, which is possibly the most compelling reason of all.

As we all know at this stage, one's enjoyment of running depends crucially on one's inner attitude. However, many people just surrender to whatever mood they happen to be in on the day and let the race turn out accordingly. With a greater awareness of their inner attitude they might just be able to turn the "race from hell" into an experience to be grateful for. Sounds difficult, but it can be done!

Our feelings and attitude in running (and in life!) come out of the interplay between three main parts of our inner being - the mind, the emotions and the heart. Our mind is possibly the part we are most commonly aware of whilst running - it generally swings between one extreme and another, telling us how great we are when things are going good but then filling our heads with doubt and fears when things are going bad!

We possibly don't notice how much our emotions affect us as much - mainly because we tend not to associate them to any part of that body. In fact, many Eastern cultures would associate the navel region with the stomach area, just around the solar plexus. In Indian philosophy this areas is commonly called the vital region, and if you have even a little experience in searching inside yourself and seeing what part of you does what, you can really feel that this area is the engine of our being - it drives our enthusiasm and dynamism when we are happy but is also driving our frustration, aggression and lethargy when we are not happy. Many martial arts such as t'ai chi explicitly seek to gain mastery over this region so they can use the energy more purposefully. However we also have some knowledge about this in Western culture - we speak of a 'gut feeling' or a 'bowling ball' in our stomach when we are apprehensive.

So when things are going bad during running, what is happening? Well, first our mind is busy pointing out all the places we are starting to ache in, or how long it is until the finish, or some other reason why we should just slow down or walk. Accompanied by this we can also feel a very heavy sensation in the solar plexus corresponding to the emotional area somehow sitting on top of our energy source and making it very difficult to move your body at the speed you want to - in fact, the more you try to push, the more this part of your being just doesn't seem to want to cooperate. So how does one begin to turn around this state of affairs?

Well let's look at what we can change - our thoughts. But as we know, it can be very hard to turn around the flow of negativity. Many people who have run a lot of races are able to use their experiences of running - they know from the past that these bad feelings can be quite transient, and can change quite abruptly during a race, for example when you suddenly realise you will be able to finish it after all. So they are able to tell themselves based on their past experiences that what their mind is telling them has no basis in reality and just push on. Another thing you can use to help you is to remember that the mind can be easily fooled. Sri Chinmoy, athlete and founder of the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team has a very useful tip: when running a long race, try to imagine that you are only running half or quarter that distance. For example, if you are running a marathon, you can start out feeling that you are only running a half-marathon or 10k race: this makes it much easier on the mind. Another thing you can do is consciously try to bring about a more positive attitude. Find something inspiring to focus your attention on, some nice scenery, the vastness of the sky. Try to feel grateful that you are lucky enough to be out here, experiencing the outdoors, when many people are stuck inside - you can then consciosly try to locate this gratitude inside of you and expand it. One thing that actually does help is to smile, even if you don't mean it - if you smile, some of the heaviness in your emotional being begins to lift and you can actually feel your pace picking up. If you don't believe it, try it out and see for yourself!

Long term, it becomes much easier to push aside these negative feelings during running when one learns to run from the heart. What we mean by this is that instead of letting your attention wander to your suffering body or your despairing thoughts, you can instead bring your focus into the middle of the chest, that place where you can feel the essence of your being - indeed, many students of meditation practice focusing on this area on a daily basis. It is also a place where we feel the joy of existence, a place we have all been in during our most joyful and peaceful moments. Learning to place your awareness here helps to relieve mental worries and immerse ourselves the sheer joy of running - when you look at children, you can see they are definitely in the heart - they run here, there and everywhere without caring about anything!

Most importantly, when we are in the heart we can feel the 'real' part of ourselves, and we come to recognise these mental worries and emotional heaviness that were formerly plaguing us as something that actually had very little basis in reality. This helps us enormously in future races; when bad times are on the horizon, we can recall our past experiences of the heart and remember how to pull ourselves out the bad patch we are currently going through.

However, pulling yourself away from the mind means breaking the habit of a lifetime, so it is very useful to have a practice like meditation where you practice being in the heart for a few minutes each day. Even just five minutes a day can pay untold dividends in terms of your ability to stay cheerful and overcome bad patches - both in your running and in your life. Many athletes have used meditation to help them achieve the mental balance needed to shut out the pressure - for example nine time Olympic gold medal winner Carl Lewis, Guiness World Record holder Ashrita Furman, or the legendary Cuban amateur boxing teams which regularly sweep the gold medals at every Olympics. There are a number of great meditation sites like meditationworkshop.org to get you started and explain some basic techniques. You'll soon find, that in terms of finding out about yourself, meditation and running can complement each other very nicely indeed.

(Arent these photos great? They're taken by Prabhakar Street, the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team's discus champion, who recently travelled to Mongolia: more in Prabhakar's album on Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries)

In April 2007, Harita Davies from Christchurch, New Zealand completed the Self-Transcendence Six-Day Race in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in New York, home of the famous Unisphere sculpture. Here she talks about why she runs ultra-distance races, and how they have made her a better and stronger person in many different ways.

The first question most people ask me is "why?" Why choose to enter a race where you run around and around a one mile loop in the middle of New York City for six days? Firstly, I love to run. When running the world is an adventure playground. Day or night, rain, sun, wind, hail, you name it! I love the freshness, I love the unbounded freedom, I love the beauty of this world of ours, and I love to be a part of it. Running clears my mind and opens my heart to a realm of vastness and infinity. Secondly, multi day running is a uniquely spiritual experience. No one is inspired to do these races for the glory; it is more of a calling or an inner compulsion that draws a runner to the start line of a multi day race. Others may shake their heads in disbelief, but when you get the inner calling or inspiration, you simply have to make the attempt. Ultra running shows you what you really have within yourself. I have now completed three six-day races, each filled with volumes of experiences. This year's race started on a cool late April day in Flushing Meadows Park, New York. We were the largest field that the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team has ever had to contend with for a multi-day race; forty one six-day runners and the same amount for the concurrently run ten-day race. Six days is a long and short time. Each day is filled with so many experiences and challenges on all levels. You feel on top of the world at one moment, and consumed by pain and self doubts in the next moment. Beyond the suffering, however, exists a realm of beauty and peace that cannot be attained or appreciated without the struggle. The view from the top of the mountain is so much more beautiful if you have to climb the mountain than if you just step out of the car door, it's just the way life is. The famous poem by Robert Frost springs to mind,

"...Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference."

Multi day running is not such an unusual activity. It is actually a very normal thing to do. Much more normal for the body to be out moving around in the freshness of Mother Nature, spending quality time exploring the capacities and depths of your heart and soul and discovering your true potential, than to sit back and dull your senses watching TV, wouldn't you say?

Running multi-day races has made me a better person. It has made me strong physically, mentally and spiritually;
- Physically, because it's not easy!
- Mentally, because any negative thoughts weaken you, so you have to find the strength to go beyond the pain, exhaustion, frustration and self-doubt.
- Spiritually, because it quickly becomes obvious that to do this kind of thing requires a lot more than physical and mental strength. The inspiration to take part, the strength to keep going, and the indescribable experience of self transformation at the end come from a high and deep source within each runner. Drawing on the spiritual light and grace make the whole experience a real blessing.

Running in these races is a wonderful opportunity to really discover and believe the unlimited capacity that we all have within us, and how if we can make it a reality in one way, we see how much we can achieve in all aspects of our life. Sri Chinmoy, the race founder, says;

"In the outer world, whether it is a long-distance run or a short-distance run, or jumping or throwing, any extraordinary activity we perform on earth is an indication of the fact that in the inner world that capacity does exist. It is only that we have to use it..."

When discovering the joy of running or exercising for the first time, the tendency is to begin each run the same way you mean to continue it, and perhaps even get carried away with yourself if the opening stages. However, gradually one learns the importance of having a proper warm-up schedule either the easy way (by listening to older and wiser heads) or the hard way (getting injured!)

Warming up has important benefits on both the physical and mental level. Your car can't go from neutral to top gear all at once, and it's the exact same with your body. We have all broken things by pushing or pulling them too hard; similarly a sudden movement of your body from rest to full flow can place tremendous strain on yourself. Many people who start off at full pace complain of feeling like they're lugging a dead elephant around the place; that's their body trying to tell them something.

Which brings us to the mental aspect: warming up can also make the training a much more enjoyable experience. Invariably, an exercise warm-up schedule will include doing the excise at a much slower pace - for example if you were planning to do some tempo running, you would first start off at jogging pace for ten minutes or so. This means the initial stiffness can be eased out of your body at a much more comfortable pace. Even when you begin doing the real thing, it is best if you start into it at an intensity slightly below that which you've planned and then work your way up. This is much more fun than doing it the other way around - starting off very fast and having to slow down near the end. Tarit Adrian Stott, former UK national ultrarunner and Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team member, puts it very succinctly: "Speed work should be a little taxing on the body, but it wasn’t designed to propel you into oblivion or injury. Don’t kid yourself out of harder training, but be prepared for warning signs of dizziness or slight pains etc and ease back or just jog the remainder of the session."

The other thing to bear in mind about warming up is that it need not be a very complicated matter: 10 minutes of low-intensity exercise followed some stretching of the relevant parts of the body should do the trick. For running, low intensity can mean starting out at little better than walking pace, although if you are planning to do some blistering speedwork then it might be a good idea to increase the pace gradually during the duration of your warm-up. It is much better if the stretches you do are of the dynamic kind (which involve moving or swinging of your body) rather than the static kind (the kind we're all used to). If you do do static stretches, keep them light. Sometimes the extra time a warm-up takes creates a mental block which causes people to think perhaps they can do without it, but you can easily work it into your schedule, especially if you are running: just pick a place to do your training ten minutes from where you live, and do your warm-up by jogging there!

Resources:
You can read the rest of Tarit's marathon tips on the Sri Chinmoy Races UK website...

Many of us have ambitions to keep up a steady fitness program. Often we will begin one and be inspired by the fact we are doing something new, but then the novelty wears off and our enthusiasm drops off accordingly. Or we start off far too hard, trying to prove a point, and end up succumbing to injury. Here are a few tips to ensure that you can physically and mentally sustain a program for years to come.

- Make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Sometimes we start a fitness program trying to keep up with others who might be a stage ahead in their fitness than we are, or to achieve a time in a race to boast about to others. Or perhaps we're trying to lose weight to please someone else. Such externally motivated goals tend to pull us off-centre, and make us less likely to succeed if there is an obstacle in the way. The most important reason for doing anything in life is that it gives you joy. If you're unhappy during or after your workout, then you need to look at changing things around.

- Create a constant sense of newness. When running, why not a different route each time and use the time as a chance to explore? Many people find it less mentally pressuring to run to time rather than distance - in other words, instead of saying you have to run a certain number of miles, just say instead you're going to run for a certain time.

- Have a sensible progression curve. Don't suddenly increase your program from zero to top gear. You might do it for a couple of times and say "oh, I can handle that", but it's not your cardiovascular system that's taking the strain, it's your body! As a rough rule of thumb, a 10% increase in capacity each week is enough to ensure your body still stays with you.

-Vary the intensity. Sometimes we feel that on a run or in the gym, we have to be pounding away every time; that certainly isn't the case. Perhaps you can have one set of exercises one day and another set another day. You could introduce an element of cross-training in your program by swimming or cycling one day a week. Whilst running, you can have a balance between high speed intervals once a week, a long run once a week, temp runs, fartlek runs - there are plenty of different things you can do to prevent mental burnout.

- A battle shared is a battle halved. Doing a fitness program in partnership with someone can really take the drudgery out of it. When running together, you can pull each other along, and chatting and laughing together helps take your mind off how long is left to the finish and other such annoying thoughts.

The Australian Six-Day race at Colac is one of the most well-known ultradistance races in the world. In 2002, Arun Kumar Bhardwaj, to his knowledge the only resident Indian ultrarunner in a country of one billion people, ran this race for the first time. Here he gives a very frank account of the lows and highs of his epic journey, and candidly discusses the lessons he has learned from this race.

This story can also be found on Arun's ultrarunning blog...

One of the great things about running is that you need an absolute minimum of gear, but obviously the one thing that will help is a good pair of shoes. There is no one-shoe-fits-all solution; it all depends on what kind of feet you have, what your running style is like, and obviously what kind of running you're going to be doing.

Not many people run with their feet hitting the ground perfectly, they either overpronate ( strike the ground on the outside of the foot, with the foot turnes inwards ) or supinate (strike the ground on the inside of the foot ). The ideal way to hit the ground is a slight pronation. Overpronators require runners which limit the motion of the foot, whilst supinators feel the shock of hitting the ground more and need cushioned shoes. Different running shoes are manufactured to correct overpronation or oversupination. Many specialist running shops, for example the Run And Become chain of running shops in Great Britain, will first ask you to run a short distance so they can see what running style you have, and then recommend the correct shoe accordingly.

The non-expert runner should choose his shoe according to his running style, but for the serious racer, the type of running he is doing also comes into play. Many racers will have a second pair of shoes primarily for racing or fast training, which are lighter and have less cushioning, so you can feel more of a response from your effort.

It might be worthwhile considering extra cushioning for your shoe if you are putting in the long miles every week, and/or if you have had previous injury history which you don't want repeated! Sorbothene insoles claim to absorb 90% of the running impact shock; whether or not this claim is fully true, you can certainly notice the difference on a long run.

Ever since his early teens, Sri Chinmoy has seen the value of running as a tremendous aid to inner progress. From the ages of twelve to thirty-two, he lived in a spiritual community in Southern India; however, this community did not believe in a hermetic approach to life, but instead tried to use outer pursuits like sports to strengthen the inner life. In the twenty years he lived there, he was sprint champion for 16 of those years; his athletic prowess also twice propelled him to victory in the decathlon event.

It was only natural then, that physical fitness would be an integral part of Sri Chinmoy's philosophy as he moved to the West to share his experience of meditation and inner development to interested students in the West. Many of his students began to realize the possibilities for self-growth that could be tapped through long-distance running, and Sri Chinmoy encouraged and supported them in the best way possible - through his own personal example! He moved from sprinting to long-distance running, and could regularly be seen out on long training runs in the small hours of the morning. He ran his first marathon in Toledo, Ohio in 1979; over the course of the next few years he would run 22 marathons, with a P.B of 3:55 in Chico, Ohio at the age of 48. He also ran quite a few ultra races (races of longer distance than the marathon).

Hand in hand with his own running career, Sri Chinmoy also began contributing to the running world in a visional capacity. The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team, founded in 1977, set new standards in race organisation and treatment of runners, especially in races longer than marathon distance. A year earlier, Sri Chinmoy had set up the Liberty Torch relay, an Olympic-style torch event that ran throughout all 50 states, rekindling the pristine ideals of the Founding Fathers of America. Over the next two decades, this beautiful idea of runners carrying a torch of friendship and harmony was to be developed and extended; currently, the World Harmony Run, as it is now called, visits over 70 countries around the world, the route set by the runners a golden thread linking each of the people they meet in those countries together in a spirit of friendship and oneness.

These unique contributions were quickly recognised by the running community, and Sri Chinmoy has has made close friendships with many inspiring figures in the running world. In the early eighties, Sri Chinmoy had a weekly syndicated column in which he answered questions on all aspects of running from many of the top athletes of the day. (View column articles on srichinmoylibrary.com).

In recent years, Sri Chinmoy has been plagued on and off by knee injury; however he has competed in many Masters Games, including the 1983 World Masters games in Puerto Rico where he competed in the 100, 200 and 400m events, setting many of his fastest times. He compted as part of the Puerto Rican team, having been made an honorary citizen for his work for world harmony. In 1992 at the age of 60, he ran his fastest time for 100m since he came to America, at 13.67 seconds. Ten years later, he participated again in the World Masters Games in Japan, where he ran a 100m time of 15.34 at the age of 62 (see photo on left).

The word 'fartlek' means 'speed play' in Swedish, and a fartlek run aims to do just that, alternating fast and slow pace during the course of a long run. This system was initially designed in the 1930's by Swedish coach Gösta Holmér for the Swedish cross-country team. This form of training has a number of advantages:

• The runs develop both your speed and endurance capacities, by increasing aerobic and anaerobic fitness level.
• When you change pace during a run, you take the stress off some muscles and place it on others. Fartlek running can therefore be a way to 'spread the load' on your leg muscles and avoid overuse injuries.
• On a mental level, a fartlek run with lots of different stages can be more appealing than one long continuous run. Many people add one fartlek session a week to their normal runs for variety.
• Fartlek can be adapted to training not only for races, but also for field games like football or rugby, which also require alternating periods of fast and slow motion.

However, it must be said that to use fartlek as part of an intensive training program, the runner must already have sufficient experience to be able to judge his pace and strike a fine line between ensuring he has a demanding workout but at the same time doesn't overdo it and cause injury. This can be quite hard to do when you are out running in the open country, which is why many people will recommend that beginners get some experience with interval training before they start serious fartlek running. If you are just making the transition to incorporating fartlek in your training, it is better to carry a stopwatch and have a well thought out plan beforehand. (With time and experience, you will be able to 'run on feel').

However if you don't wish to take things that seriously, you can still have an enjoyable fartlek run by alternating the pace and still staying well within your capacity.

Here are some sample plans for different distances - all of them should start with a 10 minute warmup jog and end with a 10 minute warmdown jog.

Watson Fartlek - good training for 10k, 5k, 3k and cross country.

* 10 minutes warm up jog.
* Race pace for 4 minutes with 1 minute recovery jogging - repeat 8 times
* 10 minute warm down jog
(Alternatively for shorter distances up to 5k you can stride hard for 3 minutes, repeated 6 times)

Astrand Fartlek - good for 800m .

* 10 minutes warm up jog.
* Full speed for 75 seconds, 150 seconds recovery jogging, then full speed for 60 seconds, followed by 120 seconds jog run. Repeat this twice - three circuits in all.
* 10 minute warm down jog

Gerschler Fartlek - good for getting fit quickly when combined with steady running.

* 10 minutes warm up jog.
* Race pace for 30 seconds, then recovery jogging for 90 seconds. Repeat with 15 second decreases in recovery jog e.g. 30-90, 30-75, 30-60, 30-45, 30-30, 30-15 and 30-15-30. Repeat this circuit twice, for a total of 3 circuits per session
* 10 minute warm down jog

Related links:

- Sample Fartlek plans obtained from Sports Coach website