LET T E R FRO M QUE ENS

RUN LIKE FIRE ONCE MORE Chasing perfection at the world's longest footrace By Sam Shaw

Te runners slog legs, lampooning past a bivouac of the runners' form, plastic card tables sometimes divert- and folding chairs, ing the race into past electric-green traffic. "The first Port-O Lets ripe couple years, the with disinfectant, kids threw things past indifferently at us," a volunteer groomed hedges told me. and the red brick Such were the facade of Thomas hazards last sum- A. Edison Voca- mer in Jamaica, tional and Techni- , at the cal High School. At tenth running of the comer of 168th the Self-T ranscen- Street, they cut dence 3,100. The north to the Grand fifteen partici- Central Parkway, pants-all but two the course rising gently as trucks and tables, where women jot notes on clip- of them disciples of the Bengali Guru cars rocket by. The concrete apron is a boards, like a delegation of Green Par- , who has resided in the blinding white line. They pass illegal- ty poll watchers. At a comfortable pace, neighborhood for forty years-hailed ly parked cars, wipers festooned with you can walk the loop in about ten from ten countries on three continents. tickets. Trash has blown into the grass minutes. The course of the world's They ran in all weather, seven days a ofJoseph Austin park, named for Mario longest footrace measures .5488 miles. week, from 6:00 A.M. to midnight, or Cuomo's childhood baseball coach. I firstwalked it myselfon a balmy day until their bodies compelled them to Here are silent handball and basket- last June, then found a seat at Base rest. If they logged fewer than fifty ball courts, and a playground where Camp among a half-dozen volunteers, miles on a given day, they risked dis- sprinklers throw a flume across a mid- bright-eyed European women and men qualification. By their own reckoning, way empty of children. Alone or in with the lost-boy quality of scoutmas- the runners climbed eight meters per twos or threes, the runners pass the hy- ters. A giant digital clock was perched lap, mounting and descending a spec- drants and trash cans of 164th Place, atop a pair of milk crates. Every few tral Everest every week and a half. moving southward to Abigail Adams minutes one of the racers passed by, They toiled in this fashion for six to Avenue and thence east a half-block and we all applauded. eight weeks, however long it took them under shade trees to the row of card At 3:00 P.M., amid a crackling of to complete 5,649 circuits-3,100 police bullhorns, 2,000 mostly black miles-around a single city block. Sam Shaw is a writer living in . This and Hispanic teenagers emptied out Before any concerns aesthetic or ishis first articlefar Harper'sMagazine. of Edison High. They pumped their spiritual, the loop serves the practi-

62 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I AUGUST 200? Illustration by Luke Best cal function of enabling the Base nounced the completion of his mil- man who had inspired seven thou- Camp crew to attend to the physical lionth "Soul Bird" painting (art- sand followers in sixty countries to requirements of runners traveling at all works expressing the "heart's one- forswear alcohol, tobacco, meat, and speeds. (By the sixth week of the race, ness"), and his disciples resolved to sex. I wanted to stop, but the race nine hundred miles would separate match the feat by running, collec- paused for no man, not even an course record holder Madhupran tively, a million miles. Abichal avatar of divine consciousness. Wolfgang Schwerk, of Soling en, Ger- pledged an even thousand. Within a A few paces ahead, Abichal stud- many, from Suprabha Beckjord, in last year, Chinmoy had painted another ied the objects he'd received: two place.i ) But in another, more ethere- million Soul Birds, and the running strawberries, cupped in his palms like al sense, the Self-Transcendence Race project was scuttled, but Abichal bulbous, red communion wafers. "I could not exist on any other course. kept it up. In Wales he edits a don't know why he gave me two," he Here was a kind of living koan, a race magazine and a website devoted to said. He turned to me, suddenly seri- of invisible miles across a phantom multiday ultra marathons. He had ous. "I think one of them is for you." plain wider than the continental Unit- finished the Self-Transcendence Our fables, stretching back to the ed States. For fifty days, breathing Race twice before; a third attempt myth of Persephone and Genesis 3:6, miasmal exhaust from the Grand Cen- failed when his visa expired 2,700 teach circumspection in receiving tral Parkway, the runner traversed miles in. gifts of fruit. Abichal nodded, and I a wilderness of knapsack-toting We passed Edison High, progress- ate the Guru's strawberry. Within a teenagers, beat cops, and ladies pilot- ing counterclockwise up 168th few weeks, the runners would be hob- ing strollers. Temperatures spiked. Street toward the Grand Central bled by distance, gorging ice cream Power grids crashed. Cars also Parkway. (The runners switch direc- and butter to stem the loss of body crashed-into the chain-link fence tion every day, not for the sake of weight. We passed the giant digital around Joe Austin park or into other novelty but to ensure that the toll of clock, and the women applauded. cars. There was occasional street rounding corners is borne equally by Two thousand eight hun- crime. One summer a student was both legs.) Abichal does not consid- ~ dred and thirty miles to go. knifed in the head. The runner en- er himself an athlete. "The race is a dured. He crossed the finish line metaphor for life." He gestured, las- ..I.he specter of death has hung changed. It was said to be the most soing the whole of Jamaica around over long-distance running since difficult racecourse in the world. Point- us. "People in the neighborhood, Robert Browning published his Dra- to-point racing is gentler on the spir- we'll see them year after year. They matic Idylls in 1879. In a flight of lyric it, and concrete is ten times more pun- stop by, say hi. They ask, 'How do fancy widely mistaken for truth, the ishing than asphalt. Such hurdles were you do that?'" He laughed. This was poem "Pheidippides" describes an ill- more than necessary evils; they were the first interview I conducted while starred footman sprinting from central to the nature of the race. As power-walking. It was awkward. My Marathon to Athens with news of a one of the disciples told me, grinning pen kept slipping in my hand. surprise Greek victory in an early bat- and drawing air quotes with his fingers, Abichal wore an iPod clipped to tle of the Persian Wars. "It's 'impossible." his waist, jarring my notion of the So, when Persia was dust, all cried, I fell into step beside Abichal Chinmoy disciples as latter-day as- "To Akropolis! Watkins, a forty-five-year-old cetics. I wondered what he had been Run Pheidippides, one race more! the Welshman with a keen, appraising listening to. "Fix You,'" he said, "by meed is thy due! squint. After only five days, he Coldplay." For more than a hundred 'Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go looked like a man who had wan- miles, Abichal had been listening to shout!" He flung down his shield dered out of the desert with a story the track on a continuous loop. Ran like fire once more: and the space to tell. "There are so few things for ("Lights will guide you home," the 'twixt the Fennel-field the mind to dwell on here," Abichal chorus intones, "and ignite your And Athens was stubble again, a field said. "It loses its strength." Relative bones.") He gazed philosophically at which a fire runs through, to most of the racers, Abichal-born his iPod. "There's something special Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we Kelvin and rechristened in 1999 by about this song." conquer!" Like wine through clay, Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he Sri Chinmoy----eame to distance run- As we neared 164th Place, a white died-the bliss! ning late in life. That tale begins in town car pulled gently to the curb. the mid-1990s, when Chinmoy an- With the speed and nonchalance of Never mind that the story is plainly a dope dealer, a man in the passen- apocryphal, a pastiche of Herodotus, ger seat reached through the window Plutarch, and Lucian. When Pierre I The fifty-year-old proprietor of the Wash- ington, D.C., gift shop Transcendence- and deposited something into de Coubertin organized the first Perfection-Bliss of the Beyond, Beckjord is Abichal's hands. Sri Chinmoy. The modern Olympic Games, his friend the only female competitor in the race's sight of him tripped me up. Here was the philologist Michael Breal urged history and the only ten-time participant, the Guru himself, gold-complected, him to include a distance race in having returned to Jamaica every June since the inaugural running. She has logged resplendently bald. Dressed as if for a tribute to the doomed runner. To- enough miles around Edison High to circle day at the public pool, in shorts and day, in spite of the fact that hun- the equator. a cotton shirt, he did not look like a dreds of thousands of Americans run

.LEITER FROM QUEENS 63 marathons.I the long-distance ath- ments to the press, and hobnobbing ter of poisoned grapes, he completed his lete in popular culture is typically a with deep-pocketed strangers. 530th mile and repaired to his tent [obian figure, tortured and solitary. That August, Weston sailed from with Weston's prize belt and a share Iconic N ike ads of the '90s cast him Liverpool to City on the of the gate receipts totaling $25,000- in grainy black and white, doubled steamship Nevada, but his triumph was roughly the equivalent of over and unleashing a stream of partial and short-lived. The steamer 'T"'" $500,000 today. vomit onto his shoes. The hero of Harlem, engaged to intercept the great William Goldman's Marathon Man pedestrian in New York Harbor with .1he winner of the Self-T ranscen- gets his teeth drilled by a Nazi. Al- six kegs of beer, two cases of wine, and dence Race would return to his home ways, the runner is haunted. His race a basket of sandwiches, failed to ar- country with a plastic trophy and a is a form of flight-from himself, rive on schedule, and his admirers scrapbook. Each contestant forked over from the mediocrity of society, from greeted him instead in a tugboat. an entry fee of $1 ,l50-an investment a lugubrious backstory. Dressed in a priestly black suit, Wes- none would recoup. Self-transcen- Browning reimagined Pheidippides ton griped to reporters about a prize dence, it seemed, was not a lucrative ca- at the height of the so-called Golden watch he had been promised by the reer. In late June, Kuranga Peele of Age of Pedestrianism. In 1878, the mayor of Newark that had never ma- Neusiedl, Austria, flew home. In 2004, Crimean War veteran, baronet, and terialized. "If I owned a house in perdi- Peele had finished second, with the amateur sports promoter Sir John Dug- tion and another in Newark," he said, seventh-best time in race history. This dale Astley launched a series of six- "I'd rent the Newark house." year he had logged just over 660 miles. day exhibition footraces, held along At a time when a pound of mutton "Kuranga didn't feel up to it," Abichal ellipse tracks before throngs of deliri- cost fourteen cents, some 75,000 spec- explained. "You have to be totally com- ous spectators. The winner crawled tators paid a dollar apiece for admission mitted, or the mind can get in the way." away with a cash purse and a small for- to the next Astley Belt match, at As the fourteen remaining contes- tune in gate fees, as well as a silver-and- Madison Square Garden. Loiterers tants sauntered around the block, it gold belt valued at £100 and bearing choked 26th Street. They scaled drain- was impossible to tell at any given mo- the legend LONG DISTANCE CHAMPION pipes and shinnied up ropes to the low ment who was winning and who OF THE WORLD. windows of the theater, where sentries was losing. Madhupran Wolfgang In june 1879, Edward Payson Wes- lay in wait with sharpened sticks. The Schwerk, with a lead of more than a ton strode 550 miles in six days along Englishman Charles Rowell covered hundred miles two weeks into the race, a wooden track in London's Agricul- 127 miles within the first day and night was heavily favored. Nobody at the tural Hall, beating l O-to-I odds to be- of the race. His early lead left scant racecourse expressed much surprise- come the first American-born Astley doubt as to the eventual outcome, but Madhupran held the course record. I Belt champion and an international the circus inside the Garden roiled on shadowed him past the playground with sensation. "There were Weston shoes, with a Boschian grandeur. Bands a mixture of admiration and unease. Weston hats, and Weston coats," played "Yankee Doodle," "Tommy His gait called to mind pistons and rhapsodized Harper's Weekly. "Musi- Dodd," and "Marching Through Geor- crankshafts, the famous efficiency of cians composed Weston marches, and gia." Rowell sucked on a sponge while German engineering. Just looking at young ladies danced to Weston his countryman George Hazael cut a him made me thirsty for a Coke. Short Waltzes." His "clean-cut and shrewd" simian figure with his fumbling head- of a bunch of poisoned grapes, it was face gazed nobly from photographs "in long stride. "The question is often hard to imagine anybody closing the thousands of private dwellings as well asked, 'What is that thing?' when Ha- gap. This might have had something to as in most public places." The dandy- zael goes around," a reporter wrote do with Madhupran's support team. ish Rhode Island native was a star, with jingoistic cruelty, "but the ques- He was the only runner to have and he behaved like one, preening tioner is always awed into silence when imported a full-time handler, Helmut and sulking, issuing crackpot state- told that that is one of the best runners Schieke, himself a former trans- in England." Ever the showman, Wes- America record holder, who hailed 2 The ultramarathon (any race exceeding ton burlesqued the gaits of his rivals, Schwerk whenever he finished a lap, of- 26.22 miles), which attracts a smaller and stopping now and then to spritz him- ten with a plastic cup of diet cola or tea more fanatical community of athletes, self with eau de toilette from an at- or a slice of honeydew melon. He was gained brief notoriety in January 2004, when a member of the Colorado running omizer he toted around the loop. The also alone in having landed a corporate cult Divine Madness banked 207 miles in other contestants shuffled more or less patron. LANXESS, a German producer the forty-eight-hour race Across the Years suicidally toward the grail of 450 miles, of plastics and rubbers, had fronted his and then dropped dead. Further afield, the short of which they would not see a airfare, along with his registration fee. "Marathon Monks" of Japan's Mount Hiei have practiced spiritual running in a ritual nickel. It was a scene befitting the In exchange, he arrived each morning that dates co the eighth century. At the cul- venue, raised by P. T. Barnum as a hip- dressed in a crisp LANXESS singlet, mination of seven years of training, the aspi- podrome for mock-Roman chariot ex- matching shorts, and sneakers. rant logs two back-co-back marathons per hibitions. Rowell took ill in the last Cars passed Base Camp at the req- night for three months, carrying a length of days of the race, but his advantage was uisite school-zone crawl, and the drone rope and a knife so that he can hang or dis- embowel himself if he fails to complete overwhelming. Amid a flurry of rumors of a lawn mower filled me with a strong a run. that he had been mickeyed with a clus- Pavlovian urge to lie down in a ham-

64 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2007 mock. On the refreshment table an ar- when he would return to his post as a found the letter Mike Cogan remem- gosy of chips, raisins, granola bars, laboratory specialist at Edison High. bered, but an item in an April 1979 olives, cookies, ice cream, and butter lay "Essentially, a test-tube washer. I help Notes on People column described a open to would-be saboteurs, but who to purchase-or to prevent the pur- recently formed "mutual admiration would tamper with a race whose prof- chase of---equipment. Mercury used to society" comprising the Guru and the its are tallied in the coinage of the soul? be a thing you played with," he said with flamboyant composer of West Side Story: On the corner of 168th Street, nostalgia. "Now it's a deadly poison." a man in a baseball cap was squinting A credential sticking out of his shirt Sri Chinmoy, whose followers say he has written 3,000 songs,dropped by Mr. through a handheld video camera at pocket identified the speaker as one Bernstein's Manhattan apartment a few the pageant of runners drifting south- M. Cogan. He wore his nametag reli- weeks ago, and brought with him a ward. "The footage isn't very good," giously, a precaution dating to the years choral group that sang a new Chinmoy he confessed, wagging his head. His he worked at Bellevue Hospital. "Some- number called, "Leonard Bernstein." It name was Daniel, and he had flown one had to die for that," he explained. went, in part: to New York to report on the race for Europeans in high-performance sports- Leonard Bernstein, Leonard! RTL, a German television station. A wear parted around us as he related a Eternity's singing bird! Beauty truth, second German news team was sup- long, grim story about a psychiatric pa- Truth beauty, posed to arrive tomorrow, and Daniel tient in a stolen lab coat butchering a Nectar oneness your divinity. planned to beat them to the story. female doctor. "I'm not sure if he raped Suprabha ambled past, talking on a her before he dissected her or after or Bernstein had responded in kind, pre- cell phone. "The problem is, they don't a little of both." On another occasion, senting the Guru with an original really run," Daniel said. "They jog, he told me, a paraplegic escaped from work for sitar, flute, tabla, bass, and they stop, they walk. I need running. I the prison ward and disappeared across drone. Until recently, all I had known need sweat streaming down faces." the border into Mexico. The thought of the Guru lowed to an LP called If the scene on Abigail Adams Av- of this wheelchair-bound fugitive thriv- Love, Devotion, Surrender, a 1973 jazz- enue disappointed Daniel, the trouble ing under Latin American skies seemed rock fiasco by Carlos Santana and was partly semantic. The Self-Tran- to cheer him up. "They're good neigh- John McLaughlin, both former Chin- scendence Race was not, strictly speak- bors," he said of the Self-Transcen- moy disciples) ing, a sporting event. It was spiritual dence crew. "That's all I know. Chin- Born August 27,1931,4 in East Ben- detox. For two months the athletes moy seems to attract a nice crowd. But gal, India, and orphaned at twelve, the paid no bills, ran no errands, conduct- I haven't got to the point where I want Guru spent his adolescence and early ed no business. They lived in a state of to join." He had first encountered the adulthood studying meditation at the Thoreauvian simplicity. "The mind group on an afternoon in the 1970s Sri Aurobindo Ashram, where he says it's stupid to go around and when a bald-headed stranger re- earned the title Fastest Runner twelve around," I was told by a volunteer proached him for lighting a cigarette in years in a row. In 1964 he emigrated to named Aklanta, one of a squadron of a local restaurant. The stranger was Sri New York and took a job as an assistant chiropractors at the racecourse. "B~t Chinmoy. "I guess it's a clean-living in the passport-and-visa section of the it's not stupid on a higher plane." The cult sort of thing. Like the Mormon Indian Consulate. These were lean race revealed the "true nature" above Church." Not long thereafter, notic- years for the Guru. According to his one's "base nature," he said. "You find ing Chinmoy's name in a letter sub- memoirs, he lunched on potato chips out what your true nature wants. What mitted to by the or candy bars, often in a telephone does it want? Not what advertisements composer Leonard Bernstein, Cogan booth outside his office, but already he on television tell you you want. That's realized the Guru was a famous and was laying the foundation for his spir- manipulation. I don't want to be ma- important man. itual mission, playing free concerts and nipulated. You need joy in your life. We strolled together past the line of lecturing on Hinduism. In the ensu- Otherwise, it's just stimulation-up Port-O Lets to the refreshment table, ing decades, the Guru's self-transcen- and down, nothing constant." where Cogan stopped and told a 3 The music critic Robert Christgau describes A middle-aged man approached Base spindly German volunteer that he in- its artwork thus: "On the back cover is a Camp. With his white mustache and tended to run a race of his own, albeit photograph of three men. Two of them are straw boater, he recalled Edward Payson one of humbler length. He seemed an dressed in white and have their hands fold- Weston walking through Confederate unlikely candidate for cardiovascular ed-one grinning like Alfred E. Neuman, Maryland in 1861, disguised, in Wes- exercise, but in this climate of bur- the other looking like he's about to have a Supreme Court case named after him: ton's own words, by "Messrs Brooks, geoning goodwill, with songbirds flick- solemn, his wrists ready for the cuffs. In be- Brothers, clothing dealers" as a ing through the trees and rival German tween, a man in an orangeski jacket and red "Susquehanna Raftsman on a bender." news teams trolling Joe Austin park, all pants with one white sock seems to have He stopped on the sidewalk, watching things seemed possible. Cogan beamed caught his tongue on his lower lip. He looks like the yoga coach at a fashionable lunatic the runners shuffle past with the dazed at the disciples, "You've asylum. Guess which one is Sri Chinmoy. " look of a man who had just been sprung " T inspired me." 4 The 3,lOO-mile distance of the Self-Tran- from jail. And so he had-it was sum- scendence Race celebrates Chinmoy's birth mer vacation. His furlough would ""hat, exactly, had Leonard Bern- year; an earlier incarnation, held in 1996, stretch until the last week of August, stein written to the Times? I never measured2,700 miles, in honor of his birthday.

LEITER FROM QUEENS 65 dence empire fanned across six conti- 1985 he took up weightlifting; clips of one of them, the seventy-four-year-old nents, spurred by a distinctly American the Guru hoisting all manner of ec- Chinmoy purports to curl a 256-pound flair for public relations. centric burdens flashed across the dumbbell. The weight rests on a plat- He has performed original tribute screen while I sipped my lassis. With form above the Guru's left leg. He knits songs for a motley assortment of pub- the aid of a special scaffold, he calf- his face and hums. At the appointed lic figures, including Sting, Jane raised people> cars, the 1,495 volumes moment, an assistant lowers the plat- Goodall, Carl Lewis, Kofi Annan, and of his collected poetry and prose,f It form and the weight sits motionless on Quincy Jones, whose cryptic endorse- brought to mind the omnipotence para- Chinmoy's leg. After ten seconds, the ment "Sri Chinmoy is such a brave dox: Could God produce an oeuvre He assistant replaces the platform, and the musician!" appears on posters pro- couldn't lift? The footage resembled Guru smiles beatifically. The footage moting the Guru's concerts. Besides one of those supplemental tapes certain presented a kind of Rorschach test. Grammy winners and athletes, his dis- enterprising high school juniors ap- Where some found proof of the exis- ciples include Ashrita Furman, the pend to their college applications. The tence of God, others saw an old man manager of a Queens health-food store, Guru was a grind and a jock. He was the supporting a dumbbell on his knee. I who has set 148 Guinness World most prolific painter who ever lived. showed the video to friends. "I don't get Records-a meta-record itself-most He had read poetry with Joyce Carol it," they said. "Did he lift the weight or recently for backward bowling, egg- Oates and jammed with Carlos San- not?" I kept silent. Here was the perti- and-spoon racing, and lemon eating. tana. He claimed to have lifted 7,064 nent question. Once you answered, Photographs posted on Chinmoy's of- pounds and 7,040 pounds with his right there was no turning back. For the mo- ficial websites and displayed in the and left arms, respectively. Not since ment, I preferred to live in a businesses operated by his disciples Da Vinci had a single man been so world of divine strongmen. show the Guru, whose philanthropic well-rounded. network The Oneness- Heart- Tears Other videos were available for In six decades of professional foot- and Smiles delivers medical supplies download on the Guru's websites. In work, Edward Payson Weston endured around the globe, glad-handing a var- all manner of setbacks and injuries. sity roster of world leaders-Princess 5 Since 1988, when he launched his "Lifting He sprained ankles and toes. Fevers Diana, Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, Up the World with a Oneness-Heart" cam- and stomach cramps dogged him, as Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Teresa. paign, Chinmoy has ceremonially hoisted well as creditors, who took advantage more than 7, 000 friends and celebrities, Nelson Mandela once called him an including Jesse Jackson; Cambodian Prime of his highly publicized walks to have "outstanding soldier of peace." Minister Samdech Hun San; Ravi Shankar; him arrested for unpaid debts. Once In 1996, a district superintendent Moorhead Kennedy, held hostage 444 days he was shot in the leg. Always Weston of the National Park Service ap- in Iran; Mickey Thomas, lead vocalist of rallied. On the seventh day of the walk proved a plan to install a brass plaque Jefferson Starship; and the actresses Mer- that made his name, a pilgrimage from cedes Ruehl and Alyssa Milano. in the lobby of the Statue of Liberty to Washington, D.C., for Abra- 6 A selection of titles from the Chinmoy li- ham Lincoln's 1861 inauguration, he that would officially designate the brary attests to the breadth of the Guru's in- foremost icon of American democra- terests: The Earth-Illumination-Trumpets broke for a predawn restorative of sand- cy a Sri Chinmoy Peace Blossom site. of Divinity's Home, Part 1; I Play Tennis wiches. This proved a tactical mistake, Three hundred or so spectators at- Every Day; The Ambition-Deer; Ein- saddling the pedestrian with chest tended the unveiling on the Guru's stein: Scientist-Sage, Brother of Atom- pains, which he blamed on mustard. Universe; Impurity: The Mad Elephant sixty-fifth birthday. Within a month, Mental Asylum;A Soulful Tribute to the His companions noted: the Park Service reversed its deci- Secretary-General: The Pilot Supreme of sion, and the plaque was removed, the United Nations; God Wants to Read He stopped every quarter of a mile and but similar plaques identify more This Book; Great Indian Meals: Divinely sat down to sleep; was exceedingly irri- table, which caused the whole party to than 900 surviving Peace Blossoms Delicious and Supremely Nourishing; Gorbachev: The Master-Key of the Uni- have the blues, of the "darkest kind." around the world, including cultural versal Heart; Muhammad Ali and Sri Mr. Weston concludes to go back half centers (the Sydney Opera House), Chinmoy Meditate; Come, My Non- a mile, to a public house and sleep.... natural formations (the Matterhorn, English Friends! Let Us Together Climb He returns a few steps, when, suddenly the Great Barrier Reef), airports Up the English Himalayas; The Mush- throwing off his blanket, he exclaims: room and the Umbrella; My Heart's Salu- (Afonso Pena in Curitiba, Brazil), tation to Australia; A Mystic Journey in "No, I wont go back!" and, wheeling and political frontiers (the entirety the Weightlifting World, Part One; Air- around, strikes into a four-mile gait. of the Russia-Norway border). In port Elevation: Questions Answered by 1994 the late king of Nepal officially Master Sri Chinmoy at the San Juan In- Such theatrics, anticipating James ternational Airport, October 29, 1976; I christened an unclimbed four-mile- Brown's stage show by a full century, Love Shopping, Part 1; My Ivy League high Himalayan peak "Sri Chinmoy Leaves: Lectures on the Spiritual Life; typified Weston's spirit on the road. Peace Mountain." Niagara Falls Versus Children's Rise; Some of the same mettle could be I took to lunching a few blocks from Religion- Jugglery and God-Discovery; found in Jamaica, where ingrown nails the racecourse at Annam Brahma The Sailor and the Parrot; War: Man's on both of Pranab Vladovic's big toes Abysmal Abyss-Plunge, Part 1; Sleep: had become a topic of worried con- restaurant, where footage of Sri Chin- Death's Little Sister; Canada Aspires, moy's sundry exploits airs continuous- Canada Receives, Canada Achieves; Yes, versation. Slight and boyish, with lyon a wall-mounted television. In I Can! I Certainly Can!! close-cropped hair, Pranab sat on a

66 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2007 massage table considering the prob- There's some kind of energy vortex on Queens County's rejoinder to the lem. His feet looked like they had been this corner." thirtieth annual Macy's Fireworks dredged out of the East River-chalky The Self-Transcendence runners Spectacular with Lionel Richie and white with a thick brownish discharge being mostly European, July 4 went the New York Pops. I decided to at the nail beds. "These are the cards largely unremarked at the racecourse. buy a proper pair of run- you get," he announced with equa- The fields teemed with men engaged in ning shoes. nimity. A few disciples stood around various team sports. Flags hung limp in "" T the massage table while a podiatrist, the cooling air as Madhupran and , 'ithout preparatory training ... sober and brusque in a tan nylon jack- Abichal strolled past, each brandish- the most fatal injuries may be com- et and gray nylon pants, frowned at ing a Popsicle. A couple of Indian fam- mitted in attempting pedestrian the suppurating digits. The diagnosis ilies spread blankets on the grassy mar- feats." Such was the counsel of Bea- was bleak. Ifhe left the nails intact, he gin by the bleachers in Joe Austin park, dle's Dime Hand-Book of Pedestrian- explained, the infection might com- and chops on a clamshell barbecue ism, published in 1867. On the cover promise the bone, and the toes would threw gusts of meaty smoke into the of the thirty-two-page tract, a man have to be removed. Pranab hugged paths of the vegetarian runners. At wearing a sporty hat and gaiters trots his knees. dusk, Sri Chinmoy arrived in a white across a sketchily rendered country- "Can he keep walking?" someone jeep to dispense bananas." side. Mysteriously, he carries a riding asked. By moonlight, Joe Austin park was crop. "In a mind upset by literary The question seemed to rattle the a place of desolate beauty. Traffic study," the author urges, "the best doctor. "That's his choice. I wouldn't thrummed eastward undeterred, plan, if practicable, is to give up the do it. How much farther till he's done?" blanching the runners in a wash of reading and writing entirely, for a "Two thousand miles." halogen beams. On 168th Street, a time." Duly warned, I toed the line The distance unfurled like a carpet man watered his lawn in the dark, by the weathered scoreboard on Joe spanning from Queens to Juarez, while a few stray fireflieswinked among Austin Way at a minute to six. Mexico. I winced a little at the sound the hedges of Edison High. I was giv- Ribbons of peach and pink banded of the figure. "You got no shot," the en to understand that miracles some- the eastern horizon, giving the sky the doctor said. times visited Jamaica. A white woman look of a novelty cocktail. At dawn, The race, however, had a physic all in a sari told me that Sri Chinmoy had the scene here was somber. The racers its own. "You get scared beforehand," cured her of lupus. The runners, too, sat glumly on folding chairs or Abichal had told me. "Your body gets had recovered from injury and illness. stretched against trees. Many of them scared. It's like stage fright. Like mov- "Shin splints that would stop an ordi- doctored their feet with balms and ing into a different realm." For two nary runner for weeks last only days," tapes. Sri Chinmoy had returned from months, the high school and ball courts insisted one of the disciples, another a trip to the Far East bearing gifts for and the abutting stretch of parkway chiropractor, on loan from . the runners, ceremonial white ban- became a shrine. Did I know about ley "The will of the-if you allow me to dannas emblazoned with the bloody lines? Abichal asked. The theory, as ar- say-soul conquers the will of the sun of the Japanese flag. A few tied ticulated in the 1920s by one Alfred physica1."Witness Pranab, who clipped these souvenirs around their foreheads. Watkins (no relation), posits a system past me, murmuring into a dictaphone. They looked a little like bandages on of arcane pathways linking megaliths, He had left the racecourse for a company of outnumbered and ill- tors, and other craggy points across two hours to have his toenails re- equipped soldiers marching to certain Britain, and possibly the world. Large- moved, resuming the race at his usual death. One of the race directors called ly ignored by science, ley lines have pace as soon as he returned. "Now I us to attention and we stood together, enjoyed a colorful life in the hinter- have to soak my toes," he said. "It's a observing a moment of silence ren- lands of paranormalism, championed little more work." His date with the po- dered incomplete by traffic sounds. to various ends by psychics, pagans, diatrist's knife had cost him roughly Then we were off. dowsers, UFOlogists, dime-store nov- eighteen miles. The pace was leaden. After five elists, and a few Nazi cranks who at- Beyond the rooftops of Jamaica, the hours of stasis the body of the multi- tributed a network of heilige Linien or horizon throbbed with light, as of a day runner locks up like a rusty trans- "holy lines" crisscrossing Europe to millenarian firestorm engulfing Man- mission. Madhupran alone advanced the ancient T eutons. hattan. Now and then a plume of col- at his usual clip, lunging and working "There are rivers, superhighways of ored sparks crested the tree line, his arms like an animatronic cross- energy," Abichal told me, "and there country skier. Within fifteen minutes are junctions where they meet." The 7 The offering of sanctified food-called he had lapped me. Sri Chinmoy vis- prasad-sometimes flummoxed visitors to junctions exert a spiritual tug. Stone- the racecourse, as in late July, when the ited the course at around 6:20, and henge, for instance, or Sedona. "Se- Guru made an offering of Granny Smith his arrival had an immediate restora- dona is a big energy vortex." So, too, apples to a pair of emissaries from Russian tive effect on the disciples. Wearing the racecourse. "I get a good vibe here," TV. The reporter accepted with telegenic a preppy pink-striped shirt, he circled diplomacy, but the cameraman froze, plying he said, indicating a triangle of lawn his camera like a rifle trained on a buck. An the block three times in a blue Smart behind the wrought-iron fencing of hour later, both apples lay uneaten on a car, goosing little fanfares from the the high school. "It's open. It's green. table cluttered with audiovisual equipment. hom when he passed a group of rae-

LEITER FROM QUEENS 67 ers. It was oddly exhilarating to see deal of time locked in the piney, Near the Port-O Lets, a violinist the Guru operate a car, particularly saunalike seclusion of a Port-O Let. serenaded an empty swath of sports one he could have parked in a walk- At around 1:30, I finished my fields. By Madhupran's penultimate in closet. The runners bowed their forty-eighth circuit of the block, and lap, the throng of acolytes, friends, heads, touched their hearts, or a volunteer informed me that I had and confused passersby at the race- waved, quickening their pace. "It's surpassed 26.2 miles. "You've run a course numbered about two hun- the same as if you like the author of a marathon!" she announced. Was this dred. That morning, Sri Chinmoy book and then you meet him in reali- my first? I admitted it was. She had written three new compositions ty," a disciple explained. It was diffi- clapped her hands. I had transcended in honor of Madhupran's success. cult to imagine John Updike inspir- myself! Was I excited? My time of Xeroxed sheet music was handed ing this sort of reverence. seven hours, twenty-five minutes left out, and men and women gathered The Guru's drive-by was only the room for improvement, I felt. None- in serums along Joe Austin Way to opening act in a morning lineup of theless, I traded high fives with a few rehearse. A blue ribbon bearing the music, poetry, and cheerleading. Two of the runners, who received the news gold-embossed legend SELF-TRAN- female choral groups staked out variously with bemusement or wide- SCENDENCE RACES was strung across stretches of Abigail Adams Avenue, eyed gravity. Remembering Pheidip- the sidewalk opposite a gauntlet of clapping and singing. Meanwhile, pides, I took care to hydrate. Self- camera-wielding disciples. the sun had broken through the transcendence aside, I didn't intend Madhupran accelerated through clouds, and commuters were tum- to die in a pair of red nylon shorts. his final quarter-mile shouldering a bling groggily into cars to ford the By nightfall, I was circling Edison victory flag fringed with gold tassels, Grand Central Parkway. When I'd High in a trance. The sign for each stride an object lesson in the asked her how she felt about Jamaica, Utopia Parkway shone inscrutably in kinetics of belief. He had knocked Suprabha had told me, "If you use the darkness, beckoning me eastward more than a day off his own world your imagination, you can feel as if toward parts unknown. As if afflicted record. When he crossed the line, you're running on a beautiful country by a kind of anatomical Stockholm Sri Chinmoy led the crowd in a tri- road. You tune out the traffic, the syndrome, my legs bore me clockwise umphal sing-along. "The champion motorcycles." Helmut, Madhupran's of their own accord, and I had the of champions/Am I," proclaimed the handler, echoed her advice. "This is idea I could keep plodding forever. I chorus. "In God's limitless pride the hardest race you can find. Very was wrong. Blisters ruptured on the sky/I fly." hard concrete. You should have it in soles of both my feet, and every step Like his many thousands of po- your mind like an endless road. Don't became a slog through molten glass. ems, the Guru's songs are nothing if see it as it is, a dirty sidewalk. You I drove home at geriatric speeds, not pithy. After the disciples repeat- must have the fantasy to see it an- unsure I'd be able to work the brake ed the first song several times, they other way-you must see flowers, a pedal in case of emergency. On the proceeded to the next. "In the beautiful forest with trees." advice of a disciple, I sat for a long world's longest bravest distance I tried to conjure these pastoral time in a scalding bath of Epsom run/Who waves the victory flag?/ mirages as I ran. Here was the broad salt. I had made eighty circuits of the Madhupran!/Madhupran!" The green sign directing motorists to block for a cumulative distance of Guru clapped a metronomic beat Queens's Utopia Parkway. The same 43.904 miles-six miles short of the against his knee. Whenever the brown Honda had been parked out- required daily minimum. My base singers fell silent, he beckoned for side Edison High for weeks. Eventu- nature wanted aspirin and 10,000 more. The third song was the ally the summer-school contingent BTUs of air-conditioning. What did longest, and the most popular: straggled in, glassy-eyed and inured my true nature want? I to the sight of nylon-clad wraiths couldn't say. Iam the world'slongestdistance Daringand shatteringrunner hustling up the block. I wished one MySupremeLord's of the runners would tell me how to A sense of giddy anticipation Sun-powerSmile clear my mind of all this urban attended Madhupran's final push on And his Moon-Bliss-Love wrack. After a morning of continu- the morning of July 22. LANXESS Winner ous locomotion, my legs were con- had dispatched a coiffed and cheer- fused. Each step reverberated up the ful stringer, who sat in the van inter- Madhupran crooned along in tibiae, delivering an unhappy shock rogating Helmut on the champion's his operatic baritone, clasping his to my knees. My stomach, too, re- progress and typing what I assumed plastic-sheathed bouquet like a belled. To the aspiring pedestrian, was a press release on a laptop. beauty-pageant winner. Sri Chinmoy Beadle's prescribed a midday smor- "If I want to say that his diet con- dispensed vanilla creme cookies and gasbord of roast beef, mutton, par- sisted of da, da, da-" she prompted. individually wrapped Keebler Club tridge, pheasant, or venison, along "Rice,sweetpotatoes, coconut milk," & Cheddar Sandwich Crackers, and with one or two potatoes. No other Helmut replied. "And he ate every day then he left. The crowd dispersed, vegetable was permitted. Short on one honeydew. And dinkel bread. No and the runners who had quit cir- fresh game, I snacked on nectarines wheat. So. Now comes my horse. Don't cling the block to watch Madhupran and granola. Even so, I spent a good forget my horse." enter the record books returned to

68 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2007 the grind. Some had nine hundred about the race. In the dreams some- knowledged a man who had helped miles ahead of them. body chased him around the block, or him organize a trip to New Zealand, By the vans, an enterprising disciple he was chasing someone else, he where he had lifted a thousand scavenged for crumbs in an abandoned couldn't say which. He woke unre- sheep. His voice was breathy and cardboard box. "They may be dregs," freshed. "I just run all night," he said. sweet. "I am playing a flute for a kan- he said, smiling, "but they're the mas- "Round and round." The energy on garoo. My only audience is a kanga- ter's dregs." A kindly, heavyset Russian the loop had changed. The race has a roo." He spoke at length about Lord woman sat counting off laps. In the force, he explained, a power you feel at Krishna, breaking off to quiz his dis- 1980s she had fled the "atheist state" of every level of your being. "Then when ciples on their mastery of the Bha- the Soviet Union for Texas, where she you cut the head off, it's gone." gavad-Gita. "In which chapter does discovered transcendental meditation. Rathin Boulton from Australia Lord Krishna show his divine form Now she gazed mournfully up the block. crossed the finish line on August 7. to humans?" he asked. "Eleven," She felt empty, she said. "It's always He held his bouquet while a modest someone shouted. Wind buffeted the like this. You wait and wait for crowd sang and clapped. A few yards microphone. I made out the words the event. Then in thirty away the door of a white sedan hung "bodyguards" and "karate chop." minutes-it's history." open. Sri Chinmoy emerged wearing Now and then the Guru paused for a flip-flops, his striped shirt tucked into bite of creme cookie, and sounds of In the last days of July, the tempo of canary-yellow trunks, and made his mastication crackled from the P.A. the race changed. Wind jostled the halting way to the scoreboard. My notes resembled a collection of trees, while in the park a woman herd- Last year, Rathin had run 3,100 haikus. Finally, the Guru stood and ed leaves with an electric blower. miles in fifty-six days, eleven hours. At waved, padded to the white sedan Endgame had arrived. Sometimes two the Guru's urging, one of the race di- still idling at the curb, and was spir- runners reached 3,100 miles in a day. rectors read this figure aloud. Then he ited away. Each finish triggered music and ap- repeated Rathin's latest score of fifty- On the loop, Abichal offered some plause, but the excitement of Mad- seven days and change. "This is- perspective. The mind likes to grasp hupran's victory was never quite more?" the Guru asked. things, he told me; this is its nature. matched. We sang the Guru's songs There was nervous laughter from But reality cannot be grasped. A true again and again, like a touring cast of the gallery. Rathin had traveled 3,100 master addresses the heart. To do so, he Godspell at the end of a fifty-city run. miles around a concrete block in must short-circuit the student's intel- The Self-Transcendence Race was Queens, but he had not transcended lect, a process sometimes calling for supposed to end on August 1, but Sri himself. The Guru sipped from a juice "special techniques." He speaks indi- Chinmoy granted a week's extension so box while a disciple set up a micro- rectly, in riddles, coaxing the student the laggards could finish. The last miles phone attached to a small public- toward a more receptive state. It made would prove the cruelest. Scattered address system. "How many years have a certain sense, but half the time I'd power outages had afflicted Queens. you been on our path?" Chinmoy found the Guru simply inaudible. To conserve energy in the stupefying asked. "Ten years, Guru," Rathin an- Abichal nodded. "It's like that for a heat of August, government buildings swered. Chinmoy sat clutching his lot of people," he said. set their thermostats at a balmy 78 de- right knee, head bowed, as neighbor- "Even the disciples." grees, and the lights of Coney Island's hood kids passed by in jeans and bag- totemic Parachute Jump went dark. So, gy shorts. Then, in a warbling voice, he By the late 1880s, the pedestrian too, NASDAQ's digital display in began to sing. "Rathin, Rathin, Rathin, craze had cooled. "The public may Times Square. Summer school was of- Rathin." I had the impression he was occasionally lose its head," the New ficially pronounced "optional." Mayor composing this number on the spot. Yotk. Times concluded, "but it is un- Bloomberg declared a heat emergency; Heedless of the roaring planes over- safe to assume that it will do so more later, the city would confirm a heat- head, the disciples joined in, timidly at than once or twice in the same direc- related death toll of 140. I worried first but with mounting conviction, tion. It rushed to see Rowell trot over about the four runners still circling Joe until the Guru produced a box of vanil- 500 miles of sawdust because long- Austin park. la cookies and called them to order. It distance pedestrianism was a new By day fifty-eight, deep red circles was snack time. thing." Slave to the god of novelty, bloomed on Abichal's cheeks. "I think Afterward he indulged in a little the great unwashed had forsaken dis- sometimes even the runners ask, 'What postprandial lecturing. I dutifully tance foot-racing for such au courant am I doing here?'" he confessed. Often recorded what I could, but the very conveyances as the bicycle and the he would orbit the block for hours first sentence confounded me. "Once roller skate. A century later, the without glimpsing another racer, a upon a time," the Guru said, and a pedestrian has wandered into cultural phenomenon he called "the dark side siren drowned him out. Whole para- oblivion, his feats relegated to micro- of the loop." At night he veered into graphs were lost in the muddle of film archives and a few out-of-print the fence outside Edison High. He had ambient street noise, giving his re- sports chroniclesf numb toes and a strange vertiginous marks a Dadaist quality. I heard the 8 Notably John Cumming's Runners & Walk- feeling, as if the ground were rolling be- phrases "unimaginable joy" and ers and Ultramarathoning: The Next Chal- neath his feet. Sometimes he dreamed "peace blossoms." Chinmoy ac- lenge by Tom Osler and Ed Dodd.

LEITER FROM QUEENS 69 Edward Payson Weston clung embark on his final lap. Someone had felt a constant sense of freedom. The doggedly to fame well into his senes- arranged two long files of tea candles race was like a weight he'd been car- cence, but an accident brought his leading to the finish line-the lights rying for months. He was relieved: career to an unceremonious end in of Coldplay's "Fix You," come to not physically-although his body 1927. His glory days behind him, the guide him home. A bicycle horn was recovering-but psychically. He great pedestrian was broke, sharing a bleated in the dark, and we called his intended to edit a poetry anthology. Greenwich Village flat and begging name as he lumbered eastward bear- There was also his magazine and for work in the pages of the Times. ing the Self-Transcendence banner in website. In December he would fly to Eight days after he received a gift of one hand and the Red Dragon of Arizona to run Across the Years, the $30,000 from Anne Nichols, author Wales in the other. An unexpected race that killed a man in 2004. He of the popular Broadway comedy knot formed in my throat as Abichal hadn't decided whether he would re- Abie's Irish Rose, Weston was pasted walked gingerly across the line and turn to Jamaica next June. "Have to in the streets of New York by a taxi- accepted his flowers. After the usual wait and see," he said. On a televi- cab. He was eighty-eight years old. singing, Abichal sat with a cake in sion screen in the comer, Sri Chin- For decades he had railed against the his lap, while friends filed past to moy lifted an airplane. evils of the motorcar, an invention shake his hand, and then we stood in After lunch, Abichal offered to for loafers and slobs. Weston spent silence. Altogether, the turnout was walk with me to the racecourse. His the balance of his life confined to a about a quarter the size of Mad- thoughts followed a meandering path. wheelchair. The age of hupran's. "Speech," somebody called. "For many of us, the mind is limited," pedestrians was dead. The brake lights of a passing car he said. "It's useful, we need to use it, flashed, and a mild electrical current but it grasps at bits. Then it uses those Ireturned the next day to watch passed through the crowd. "Guru," bits to form a picture and acts as if Abichal cross the finish line. The came a whisper behind me. There the picture is reality." We lingered at heat wave had broken, and he cir- was a collective turning of heads. the verge of the racecourse. He looked cled the block with a look of resigna- "Guru's here?" "Abichal, I think mistily at a trash can heaped with ice- tion. He would finish a week later Guru's here." But the car sped down cream wrappers and soda cans. "I still than he'd hoped. "1 feel joy," he said, the block. Pink and blue balloons jog- feel a connection to this bin. Some- but I couldn't shake the sense that gled above Abichal's bowed head. His times it would be full to overflowing. past races had meant more to time was fifty-eight days, sixteen Sometimes somebody would dump a Abichal. As we walked against the hours, twenty-two minutes, big bag in." Abichal squinted up at stream of traffic on the parkway, he rJ"' three seconds. the clouds. The light was different told me about a particularly grueling now, he said. The race starts just a race he'd run a few years back. "I was ~ he next week Abichal met me week before the summer solstice, when so looking forward to the end. Dy- for lunch at Smile of the Beyond, a the days are at their longest. We fell ing, dying, dying. Then on the last vegetarian diner managed by one of into a natural orbit around the block. lap-it all fell away." He made a lit- the race directors. Suprabha had "It's all the same," Abichal said. He tle magician's flourish with his hand. crossed the finish line the previous pointed out features of the loop like a "What I thought would be the goal Thursday, and now the racecourse docent leading a cathedral tour. "Same just vanished, like a mirage. There was empty. Some of the runners had bins, same cracks in the sidewalk." He was no goal. It didn't exist. I realized already returned to the jobs they had nodded at a sapling by the high school. that my mind had been playing this left behind in their home countries. "This oak tree replaced a birch that trick. It was just another lap, same as Others planned to hang around Ja- was here a few years ago. You know all the other laps." This summer, maica for the Guru's seventy-fifth what lives where. Blue flowers live at Abichal had not transcended himself birthday party at the end of the this comer. And a flower called a scar- in precisely the way he'd imagined, month. The previous year, he had let pimpernel, and yellow clover. This but he would run again. celebrated with a solo concert per- pine tree lives here. And little red As we neared the diminished Base formance on seventy-four pianos. It flowers, too." Abichal crouched down Camp with its skeleton crew of vol- would be difficult to top. to show me. Somebody had tossed an unteers, Abichal's thoughts turned Abichal showed up twenty min- empty Newport box in the grass, to the future of his sport. There was utes late, his hair newly trimmed to alongside a foil printed with the words an upcoming 1,200K in Germany, a boyish wiffle-most likely at Per- BOMB BAG. The flowers were minus- the Deutschlandlauf; 2006 would see fection in the Head-World, the cule, each blossom the size of a Q- new six- and seven-day races in disciple-operated barbershop down tip. "There's still something here. I France and Greece. A note of hope the street. He looked ten years can feel my echo. Some trace of the entered his voice. "They said the younger, but he walked on the legs experience." Abichal rounded the marathon was impossible. Now hun- of a senior citizen. It was strange to comer. "This is where the course flat- dreds of thousands run them. Maybe see Abichal in a restaurant. In the tens out. Now it starts to rise gently. this is it." seven weeks I'd known him, I had al- In the past sometimes, I'd get a burst At 10:20 P.M., a few disciples gave most never caught him sitting. Now of energy here. You feel that you can up tossing a Frisbee to watch Abichal that the struggle was past, he said, he run forever." _

70 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2007