Modern WisdomThe Longest Race On Earth | Sanjay Rawal | Modern Wisdom Podcast 116
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
115 min read · 22,687 words- 0:00 – 2:48
Sanjay Rawal’s film: running as a path to self-transformation
- SRSanjay Rawal
... but I made a movie. I make a lot of movies, but my, my most recent one was called 3100: Run and Become. It's out on Amazon. It's gonna be out o- on Amazon Prime in the UK in a couple of weeks. Um, it's about the world's longest running race. I, I would say that my expertise has just been gleaned by spending a lot of time with people who don't just look at running as performance or r- look at running as fitness, but look at running the way that humanity did thousands of years ago, that running is, in fact, a pathway to self-transformation, to self-realization, and if you believe in something higher, uh, to, to the divine.
- CWChris Williamson
(wind blowing) I am joined by Sanjay Raul. Sanjay, welcome to the show.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Chris, it's great to be on your show. Thanks for having me.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolute pleasure to have you on. Uh, uh, b- before we get started, even for the listeners at home, behind Sanjay, in wherever he's filming-
- SRSanjay Rawal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... is a series of, like, mannequins, slightly sullen, sad-looking mannequins and a really epic ... Is that a painting of some falconry? Like, where are you? What's, what's that, what's that backdrop?
- SRSanjay Rawal
I'm in my edit studio in New York City, and I have a garden right outside. And, uh, a friend of mine made a series of sculptures, uh, which aren't finished yet. And they were all sitting in my backyard, but the weather has turned here and I had to bring them all inside.
- CWChris Williamson
(knocks on wood)
- SRSanjay Rawal
So, I don't know if people are familiar with the Terracotta Warriors of, uh, Xi'an. Uh, a farmer discovered in his field thousands of clay statues, all pointed in the right direction. Um, I kind of feel like that's where I'm sitting right now. I've got these replica statues of-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SRSanjay Rawal
... of the Indian meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy, meditating. And, uh, it feels like I'm in a temple. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It's pretty epic. It's a pretty cool-
- SRSanjay Rawal
It's pretty cool.
- CWChris Williamson
... backd- as backdrops go, man, that's, that's not bad. So, for the listeners who don't know who you are, how would you, how would you describe yourself? And, and give us a bit of background to you.
- SRSanjay Rawal
So number one, if there is a listener who knows who I am, oh my God, I wanna meet them.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
I'm, I'm, I'm nobody. I'm, I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. Uh, but I made a movie. I make a lot of movies, but my, my most recent one was called 3100: Run and Become. It's out on Amazon. It's gonna be out o- on Amazon Prime in the UK in a couple of weeks. Um, it's about the world's longest running race. I, I would say that my expertise has just been gleaned by spending a lot of time with people who don't just look at running as performance or r- look at running as fitness, but look at running the way that humanity did thousands of years ago, that running is, in fact, a pathway to self-transformation, to self-realization, and if you believe in something higher, uh, to, to the divine.
- 2:48 – 4:13
Why humans run: evolution, breathing, and the advantage of bipedal endurance
- CWChris Williamson
Why running?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Well, th- this is interesting, because there's a famous book by a good friend of mine, Chris McDougall, um, Born to Run, and he explored the anthropological, uh, connection between human evolution and running. And evolutionary biologists suggest that the advantage, the only advantage that early men and women had on the savanna, uh, amongst massive predators, amongst massive herbivores, was the fact that we could move on two feet. Now, physiologically, that means that when we walk, our breath is not coupled to our gait. If you can imagine a quadruped, you know, when they extend out, their lungs inflate. What al-
- CWChris Williamson
Is that when they breathe? Is that how their breathing cadence works?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
No way.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I never knew that.
- SRSanjay Rawal
When their four legs collapse-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
... their entire torso collapses and the air is expelled. And so, they are not good aerobic runners, because they have to, to ... They can't regulate their breathing. Um, we can breathe a lot more. We can breathe two or three or four times per step if we need to. They can't. So even if they're going slow, they can't breathe a couple times. So they're not good slow runners. So, we were great slow runners.
- 4:13 – 6:45
The San Bushmen perspective: consciousness, prayer, and ‘running as the first religion’
- SRSanjay Rawal
And in 3100: Run and Become, we actually went to the Kalahari Desert to live and hunt with the San Bushmen, who have been around for 125,000 years. And you and I don't look like San Bushmen, but ... And not to say that they're the root tribe of everyone, but they were perhaps the most eager tribe, because every single human being has markers in their DNA distinguished only by the connection to San Bushmen. Like, we all have a piece of their DNA in us. So, they've been around for a long time. And people have gone and studied them, and Chris McDougall looked at, looked at them in Born to Run and said, "Well, we were born to run because our evolutionary advantage on the savanna was our ability to chase animals down for 24, 48 hours, totally exhaust them. With rudimentary weapons and no weaponry at all, we could approach dehydrated animals, kill them, take them home." But the reality was far more interesting. You know, when we kind of presented these outside Western theories to the Bushmen, they kind of looked at us with, with just ... And they, they were incredulous. They say that humanity evolves because of consciousness, not because of form. They said that their ability to track and catch large game was not due to the fact that they were endurance maniacs. It was due to the fact that human beings can pray. They can pray a lot more deeply than lesser-evolved primates. They said that they understood prayer, they understood how they could gather energy from the Earth, and that is what carried them to catch animals.... and so they say the cosmology developed before the actual practice developed. They got the energy, they realized what they could do with it. And so from the very, very beginning, running and human spirituality went hand-in-hand. So in that sense, running was, was the first religion of humanity.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a lovely, um, a very transcendent, uh, very, for s- for something that for a lot of people I suppose running would be a function of your lactate threshold times by your VO2 max, plus your running efficiency, et cetera, et cetera. To hear something that's a lot more, uh, spiritually guided is quite interesting and quite meaningful.
- 6:45 – 7:46
Intention changes the experience: faith, transcendence, and Kipchoge as a modern example
- SRSanjay Rawal
You know, people can get what they want to out of physical activity, right? If you want to look really good, physical fitness will get you there. If you want to become really healthy, physical fitness, running or anything, will get you there. It's all a matter of intention. You know, with running, if you want to transform your life, and if you go into running with that intention, it will get you there. I mean, you can see with Eliud Kipchoge's run last weekend, over and over and over in all of his interviews, he touches on the idea of faith. He touches on the idea that humanity has no limits. That's not just philosophy for him, it's an idea that he's seen, he lived, he's got faith in it. It's like his faith in the, the transcendent capacity of human beings gave him the vision, and one would argue gave him the capacity or helped in his capacity to reach that two-hour run. If that's not the combination of running and spirituality, I don't know what is.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- 7:46 – 9:43
Inside the 3,100-mile race: the ‘why’ behind the world’s longest certified event
- SRSanjay Rawal
In our movie, 3100: Run and Become, we focus on the world's longest running race, which is a 3,100-mile race that takes place solely around a half mile loop on a block in New York City. It's been going on every year for the last 23 years, 10 to 15 people attempt it every year, and they have to average almost 100K, uh, 59.8 miles per day for 52 straight days. And some people, the, the course record for the men is 77 miles per day, so nearly three marathons a day, for, in that case, 40 days. There's two questions. Like, why would anybody do that?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
Number one. Number two, how is it possible? I mean, the more interesting one is like, why would anybody do it? And this is the heart of running. It's like, if you run for an hour or two hours or a day, you're running with suffering, you're running with pain, you're pushing. But once you start entering races that are two days, three days, six days, like looking at the, at the, at the example of a Bushman hunt, which might take two, three, four days of constant slow aerobic, uh, threshold running, that you not, you don't- you don't have a lot of aerobic output. You're not, you're not generating lactic acid. It's very calm, it's very meditative. When you're in that type of running, the mind shuts down, the mind turns off, and you begin to naturally experience a lot of the emotion, a lot of the flow that you can experience in silent, contemplative practices like meditation. So running actually becomes an experience of bliss, and what becomes immaterial are your surroundings. The only things that you need are water, food... 10,000 calories a day is what they take. Water, food, shelter. And having all those things around a half-mile loop takes away a lot of those issues as opposed to running across the United States, for example.
- 9:43 – 12:21
‘Run dumb’: meditation, flow states, and getting the mind out of the way
- CWChris Williamson
Well, that's one of the, uh, primary drivers behind some, uh, Tibetan Buddhist practices, right? That you do something which allows the front of the mind to be occupied, like cleaning or washing-up or tending to a garden, which frees up the remainder of the mind to be liberated into a space which gives it more freedom to think.
- SRSanjay Rawal
I mean, that- that's, that's the training, and you can see that Kipchoge is a master of it. In fact, the Kenyans say that if you want to run well, you have to run dumb. D-U-M-B. It's like you have to be totally soft between your ears. If you think, you're screwed.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
Number one, it's not that thinking is bad, but once you stop thinking, the actual power of the spiritual heart, the actual power of the body moves unimpeded. And it's not a question of like mind over matter. It's getting rid of your mind.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Like when Kip- Kipchoge says, "Human beings are unlimited," he's not talking about the mind. The mind is incredibly limited. It's always telling us what we can do and what we can't do. It's always measuring, it's saying that two hours is impossible. You can't use that kind of a tool, you have to get it out of the way. And so when... Kenyans regularly train, and Ethiopians and great marathoners will train, to be in the mind of meditation, to completely have a silent experience within yourself, to look at breathing as the song, your heartbeat as a song, and learning to recognize the cues that your body is ready and willing to push harder than you could imagine.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a number of athletes that I know, uh, in the CrossFit community is a good example of this. One where your ability to deal with discomfort, sometimes for prolonged periods of time, longer workouts, so, you know, up to half an hour to maybe even an hour, um, and I have to say that most of the best athletes that I know are not massively cerebral with their approach. Mat Fraser, for example, fittest man on the planet, probably the greatest CrossFitter who has ever lift- lived so far, he's not massively cerebral. He has strict rules that he sticks to and holds himself to a, a ruthlessly high standard, but I think that once he's done his preparation, he then allows his performance to simply be the stage upon which all of this preparation gets to present itself, and I (clears throat) totally get the analogy as well with Kipchoge. For people who are listening that don't know about him, he lives this like monastic...... lifestyle. He sees running as his, sort of the highest form of what it is that he can present to the world. So yeah, I, uh, I- it's very interesting how all of these
- 12:21 – 13:58
Why New York and Sri Chinmoy: the spiritual roots and logistics of an urban ultra
- CWChris Williamson
different things piece together. So I mean, the- the first question, apart from why does someone want to do it, before that, my question before why does someone want to do the 3100 Race is, why New York?
- SRSanjay Rawal
You know, the- the- the race was started by an Indian spiritual teacher, Sri Chinmoy. And Sri Chinmoy came from India to New York in the '60s and he was really at the heart of the running boom in the '70s. I mean, if you can imagine New York in the '70s, the 1977 and 1978 New York City Marathons were actually begun with Sri Chinmoy doing a meditation, you know, in front of thousands and thousands of runners the day before. They held a meditation in Central Park. Um, he was at the heart of that running movement. And as people begu- began to desire more distance than just 26 miles, you know, he became one of the prime sponsors of 24-hour races, 48-hour races, six-day races, 10-day races. And by the mid-'90s, people were clamoring for those experiences of self-transcendence, and it was pushed to 3,100 miles. The logistics are quite complex.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
And it's one of those things that for those of your listeners who have been to New York City, they'll understand that there's really no other place in the world where this is possible.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
So I mean, that- that's primarily it. It's like even though you're- you're running, you know, on a city street, on a sidewalk, around a school for, you know, 18 hours a day, the energy of the city and the vibration of the city is actually conducive to helping you when you're in your most exhausted state.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- 13:58 – 17:14
Marathon monks and sacred stakes: Japan’s Thousand-Day Trek
- SRSanjay Rawal
But, you know, speaking about monastic traditions, in 3100: Run and Become, we actually spent time with a very elusive sect of runners, um, in central Japan outside a city called Kyoto. And their group were the first that brought Buddhism from China to Japan. And in that first year that they brought Buddhism to Japan, they started something called the Thousand Day Trek. Now, people can go to our Instagram account @3100film and see that these monks look like they're out of Star Wars. They're draped head to toe in white, bamboo sandals, staff, like long, cylindrical hat-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh my God. (laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
... like they're Jedi. So they pick one aspirant every seven years. People have to put their math hats on. One aspirant every seven years to do a thousand days of trekking. Those thousand days are split into ten 100-day chunks. The first ... So, and you've got seven years to do it, so some years, you're doing one cycle of 100 days, some years you're doing two cycles. But each cycle has a set daily mileage. Now they're on a mountain, so it's like the first couple of year, first couple of cycles, they have to do about 11.6 miles per day, which involves going up and down a 1,000-meter mountain once. Um, they're not running, but their pace going up that mountain is faster than most people could run it. But by the time they get to the seventh and eighth cycle, they're at 35 miles per day. The ninth and tenth cycle, they're at 56 miles per day. Now they go into it with the idea that this is going to be an experience of bliss, an experience of prayer, an experience of meditation. That's what they train for. That's what their minds and their hearts are prepared for. But here's the kicker. If they don't finish any single day's mileage, they have to take their lives. Like no one's had to take their life in about 150 years, but that's the ultimate price. That's- that's the sacrifice of this hardship. And one would say, like, with that kind of consequence hanging over your head, how could you not but move in fear? But it's the opposite. It's like you know there is that consequence, but that keeps your intent pure. That makes you realize that this is a sacred opportunity. I can only do this if I remain in the mind and heart of meditation. So in- in the movie, it's like we- we explore these root cultures, the Navajo, um, and other South- Southwestern Native American tribes in the United States, the San Bushmen, these monks in Japan, to really show how and why extreme physical fitness or extreme achievement through the body is not only possible, it's one of the most natural things that human beings can do.
- CWChris Williamson
It's really epic. Hearing about it, it- it's, you know, conjuring up these images of these monks going up and down this mountain in service of, you know, their higher, their higher sense of self, searching for self-transcendence and using it as this meditative practice. It- it does, um, it makes things like the Olympics feel quite impure, weirdly, actually feels quite glitzy and sort of glam- glamorous in a way that this doesn't.
- 17:14 – 29:46
Joy through exertion: indigenous wisdom, pain re-interpretation, and heart-based practice
- SRSanjay Rawal
Well, so the- the- the experience that I had, I- I used to be a semi-competitive runner, but never really put one and one together until I started spending time with these cultures that have run and looked at spirit- the spirituality of sports for thousands of years. We all experience these things, you know, in a workout or maybe in a race. The beauty of connecting with these cultures, and what we tried to show in 3100: Run and Become, is we- we try to give people the language to understand their own experiences, to deepen their own experiences, and to understand that physical fitness can actually be a spiritual path. I mean, if you look at the Spartans, if you look at, like, the roots of the Olympics, the idea of- of faster, higher, stronger, that's self-transcendence. You know, we met a- a Hopi elder in- in Arizona who said, um, on- on a morning run that we were doing, he said, um...... and the translation was, "Find joy through exertion." A man named Rex Taliamtewa: "Find joy through exertion." That means, like, in your most, quote unquote, "painful moments," when we are thinking that all we're experiencing is suffering, you know, he, he, he exhorted us to flip that experience, to deny the, the strength of that suffering and to realize that there's a deep joy in that idea of exertion. We have to go beyond the concept of pain defining exertion and let joy be the overflowing emotion that we feel in exertion. You can't achieve that in a race. You can't hope that once you get to the, like, the performance level in a crossfit competition or in a running race, that you're magically going to be able to experience that. It's something that needs to be done, not just in training, but it needs to be your mindset. And you can see that if your goal is self-transcendence and you focus your entire training around that, it can't but be a spiritual path.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a very beautiful way of putting it. I wonder, I wonder how many people that are listening understand what we mean when we say about the pain-into-joy sensation. I think if you're not massively familiar with a meditative practice or doing things similar to that, it might sound a little bit alien. But there's (clears throat) a quote from Sam Harris that I always remember when we talk about long seated, um, meditation postures. So, I did a meditation retreat with my friend, uh, in between Christmas and New Year at a Tibetan, uh, a temple not far from here. Um, and as a part of that, we did a, a seated meditation for 90 minutes, which isn't that long. It was part of a much longer, uh, meditation for the whole day. But being sat cross-legged on the floor for 90 minutes, I got, like, the, the tightest hips in the world. It was ruthless. And there's this quote from Sam Harris where he talks about when he was doing it, and he said after a while, he couldn't work out whether the pain in his hip was absolute agony or complete ecstasy. And when you spend sufficient time around a sensation, and you begin to imagine it and break it apart into its component pieces, you actually realize that the difference between a lot of pain and a lot of ecstasy, it, the line becomes incredibly blurred, doesn't it?
- SRSanjay Rawal
I, I, I agree. And I, I, I think that we experience things as pain when fear is involved. When fear is not involved, it's an entirely different sensation. And that's the difference between the mind and the heart. When you're in the mind, when you're thinking, you're rationalizing, you're measuring, you're contemplating. Like, how many of us in our routines are in the moment? Like, I'm looking at my GPS watch when I'm running. I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do afterwards, I'm thinking about what I'm gonna eat, what the rest of my day is like, the splits I'm trying to achieve, the time I'm trying to achieve in the run. I'm not focusing on my breath. My mind is in the way. The question for listeners is how do you get the mind out of the way? Like, you have to enter into the heart, into the, into the spiritual heart, into the area that we point to as, you know, when we say, like, "I'm Chris," or, "I'm Sanjay." Um, and that's done through practice, through seated meditation, or really through understanding simple breathing techniques, understanding how to breathe in peace, how to release anxiety, how to imagine that the breath isn't just coming in through our nose or through our mouth, but it's actually coming into our hearts. When you start feeling the breathing sensation happening here and the energy flow happening here, it becomes easier to practice that while you're competing, while you're training. And so it's like we have to get out of the minds. Once we get out of the minds and into the heart, fear isn't there. What's in the heart? Love is in the heart, joy is in the heart, peace is in the heart. And I'm not to, not to say that the mind is not gonna come back every second or every minute to be, to remind us that it's there. But the more we can get into our heart, the more we can slow down our breathing, the more we can relax, the less actual physical pain enters into us. But when it comes, we learn to breathe it out. We learn to collect that anxiety to breathe it out, that nervous tension which causes pain to breathe it out. That comes from practice, and that comes from looking at the intention behind it. It's like if we want to be in the heart, then we have to practice being in the heart.
- CWChris Williamson
Another Sam Harris-ism. I feel like I'm quoting him directly today. I'm beaming Sam Harris straight into my brain at the moment. Um, (clears throat) another thing that he says to the listeners who might be thinking, "Well, it's all well and good, but I've been in some real, real amounts of discomfort and pain. You can't tell me that that's not just pure pain in itself." Perfect example that he uses is the way that you feel when you're in the middle of a workout. You don't feel pain in the middle of a workout because you know why it's happening and because the, uh, direction that you are moving in is something that's satisfying. However, if you were just laid in bed and woke up in the middle of the night sweating with your heart racing at the same pace as it would, imagine that you took that physiological state that you had in training and moved it into your body when you were asleep, you'd think, "What is going on?" Like, "Am I having a heart attack? Uh, is this an, an, uh, anxiety attack? Am I having a breakdown? Is this a stroke? Like, what's going on?" And, uh, you're totally right. The difference between how we interpret the sensations that we have going on in our body determines a lot about how or what we can do with those sensations. So one, one of the things that you mentioned there was, um, taking our focus outside of the brain, outside of the mind into the heart and into the task that's in hand. Do you think that the short route, which will inevitably become com- very repetitive, if it's a half mile, you're gonna be doing it 6,200 laps or so during this particular race. Is that helping? Is that contributing to it, the fact that there is, it's, there's no novelty or intensity that's going past with regards to the surrounding, you're just focused on the task at hand?
- SRSanjay Rawal
... uh, that's a great question. So, you know, a- a lot of scientists and a lot of people that have been on your show have talked about the idea of flow. Like, flow isn't static, right? Like, flow is an experience of momentum. And when you're focused on the task at hand, it seems like the first step is concentration, and it is, but the second step is generating this dynamic flow of energy from your heart. And when you get into that state, everything is new around you. Like, each moment is new. It's not like one step, two step, three step, four step, 'cause people have to take more than a million steps across the 3,100 miles and that would drive you mad. So it's the idea of generating a certain type of energy from the heart that makes you spontaneously and naturally happy. Like, you know in anything in life, when you're naturally happy, like the minutes, the measurement, the hours, the miles, they fly by. When you're in a calm, relaxed state of mind, you can have intensity in the heart and you can be pushing and you can be flowing and it's great. It's an incredible sensation and you want to push harder to get more of it. That- that's- that's- that's w- what I'm talking about and- and what I'm suggesting. You know, when we spent time with one of our characters, Sean Martin, who is a Navajo ultramarathoner, Sean was the first person who totally flipped the switch in my mind. We went out for a morning run. I was waiting for my GPS watch to connect in between-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
... these canyon walls. Um, we're in this epic canyon that's completely new to me. He runs it every day and so keep that in mind. But once we set out for the morning run, I realized he was enjoying it more than me and he was getting more out of it than I ever could. He was relaxed, he was calm, he was open. And when I asked him afterwards why he looked like he was enjoying it more than me, he said, "Look, number one, for the Navajo and for a lot of indigenous tribes, running is a celebration of life. It's like you feel the energy of nature, whether you're running on a sidewalk or in a canyon, if your feet are on the ground, you're running on Mother Earth. You're surrounded by sky. Even if you're in a gym, it's like air is sky. You're surrounded by those same energies. Running is a celebration of those energies. Number two, running is a teacher. It's like, you don't go to your teacher and say like, 'These are all my problems, I'm gonna talk to you for two hours.' You have to listen to your teacher. So, running allows you to listen. It really, uh, gives you the perspective on your own problems, on your own joys, on your own sufferings." But, and this is what got me, number three, he said, "Running is a prayer. When your feet are running on Mother Earth, they're praying. When you're breathing, you're breathing in Father Sky. So when you run, your feet are praying to Mother Earth, you're breathing in Father Sky, you're showing... You're praying to them for their blessings and you're showing them, through the act of running, that you're willing to work for those blessings. You're asking and you're receiving compassion from all the divinity that surrounds you." And he said, "Take it or leave it. That's the reality."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
"It's like if somebody tells... If I take aspar- as- aspartame my whole life and someone says sugar is better, I'm gonna say, 'I've never tried sugar, there's no way it could be better.'" Right? But it's like once you've tasted sugar, you know it's the reality.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
And so he's like, "Take it or leave it," but this is the reality, it's not a matter of belief. And the more we went back into traditional cultures, the more we realized that was the root of the human experience. It's like when you dance on the Earth, when you move on the Earth, when you walk, when you run, when you lift, it's like you can channel those energies just by the humility of recognizing that your feet are on this gigantic being, that you're breathing in this entity, and you become larger than life. You hit that- that realm of where you understand that you're not as limited as you think you are. And so going back to Kipchoge, it's like what he says about breaking the two-hour barrier, that no human is unlimited, that- that's echoed in traditional cultures all over the world.
- CWChris Williamson
You can certainly see people who are living in synchronicity with their surroundings, with their higher purpose. You know, Kipchoge, to me, you s- you see him and he's just a man that is living in alignment with everything that he needs to do. It's like when he walks, when you see him at the start of the race, perfect example, if anyone wants to go and have a look at the start of the INEOS, uh, 159 Challenge, and you see him and he's sort of... He's behind the guys and he walks through, um, the parting and the barriers behind and he takes this little step through, and it feels... Like, watching it, it feels like the universe just parts around him and he- he just moves through it. Like a fish through water, he moves through the universe and the universe moves around him. He's just... I love watching him. I find him- I find him a fascinating human to watch. Um, so getting onto the actual 3100 race, take us through. So you've said it's in- it's in New York, around a- around a block. Where, when, and why? Let's- let's- let's hit it.
- 29:46 – 35:45
How the 3,100 race works day-to-day: pacing, heat management, fueling, and sleep debt
- SRSanjay Rawal
So, it's in Queens, New York City. It happens during the most brutal time of the year. It happens in- in June, July, and part of August. It's a 52-day race, so nearly eight-week period. New York City is a big city, lot of people, you have to get permits to do things like this.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Can't get a permit in a park for 52 days, so this happens to- to take place around a high school on a relatively flat loop. Although when you're doing that many miles, all the- the ups and downs add up. People have to be at the course at 6:00 AM for the start. The course is-
- CWChris Williamson
Every- every day?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Every day.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- SRSanjay Rawal
... the course is open for 18 hours a day. They can stay till midnight or they can leave. Um, there are RVs set up on the course for people to take breaks. Most people will take about 30 to 45 minutes of, of breaks across those 18 hours. Um, there's an aid station set up at the, at the, the, the start and finish of the, of the half-mile loop, um, that is just filled with stuff. Like, there's b-... There's meals cooked all day long, because each runner needs to take between 10 and 14,000 calories per day. Now, 10,000 calories is the equivalent of about 180 eggs. Like-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
... it's a lot, uh, it's a lot of food.
- CWChris Williamson
How do they do that if they're only taking 30 minutes to 45 minutes of a break within an 18-hour period? Do they eat en route?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Oh, they, they're eating constantly, yeah. It's, uh, so it's like... The, the, the thing about ultra-distance running is that pace at any one moment is determined by the course. It's like if you're going downhill on a mountain, you're flying. If you're going uphill, you know, up a big mountain, you're, you're walking. So this course is a rectangle, and if people can imagine that there's a slight downhill going one way, a slight uphill going the other way. Um, w-... They can s-... They switch directions every day. That's the only variation. So people tend to, to run the downhills probably at eight- to 10-minute-per-mile pace. They'll walk all the corners, they'll walk the uphills. Um, so it might take someone anywhere between seven and, or b-... Anywhere between six and eight minutes to do a full lap. Um, and along the way, they, they might be eating, they might be drinking. People have to take about 20 liters of water, five gallons or so of water a day. Um, across the day, they're trying to do about 60 miles, and that puts you just on the edge. People are generally trying to do 62, 65. Some are doing 70, 75.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
So it's not like they're, they're pushing it all day long. In this type of a race, you can't push it all day long. You have to, to be at a state where you can do 70 miles and then, believe it or not, recover overnight on four or five hours of sleep, and then get up the next morning and do 70 more miles for 45 days or so.
- CWChris Williamson
So that's about, about f-... Is that four miles an hour, ish?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Ish. It's like four miles an hour with your breaks will get you 60 miles a day.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
But, you know, four miles an hour is a fast walk.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SRSanjay Rawal
So do a fast walk for an hour. You go, "Okay, that was a fast walk." Try doing it for 15 or 16 hours. Um, so most people will jog and then shuffle and then jog and then shuffle. Um, they're not breaking any speed barriers. But the best qu-... The best people in, in the, in... The best people who have run the best times have all achieved pretty fast marathons, uh, pretty fast 50 and 100-mile races, um, apart from the 3100.
- CWChris Williamson
So they're competent across a, a range of distances, then?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah. Th- But they, they tend to get better as the distance gets longer.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. It was interesting, I was watching, uh, an analysis of Kipchoge's performance last week, and, um, they were talking about the fact that... I think he, he was at the Olympics. Is he... Was he in the 5,000 meters that he was in?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Uh, but he performed, like, okay, but they didn't even get selected for Kenya at 2012 and then 2016. He wasn't even in the Olympic squad, and he found... Or something like that, and he found that his longer distances were really where he came into his own, and then when he transitioned to road running.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Well, he, he was an in- in- incredible 3,000, 5,000, 10,000-meter runner. Like he... He wasn't at the... He wasn't the all-time best like Kenenisa Bekele, um, but he moved pretty effortlessly to the marathon. There are some people that have... That have been great 10K runners that haven't moved that effortlessly.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I get it. So getting onto the race itself, it starts with a one-minute meditation.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah. E- Every morning at 6:00 AM, there's a short meditation. Um, and I can't say how focused people are, 'cause if you, if you, if you watch the movie and you see how they look at 6:00 AM, they... It looks like, it looks like a war zone. Um, it generally takes about an hour for people to warm up. Everyone, for the most part, will pound like Starbucks double shot cans of coffee to just get everything going.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
Between 6:00 AM and 11:00 AM, the temperature is pretty tolerable. In Fahrenheit, it'll be between 60 and 68 Fahrenheit. I'm guessing like 13 Celsius or so. But between 11:00 and 6:00 PM, it can climb to 32 C, 34 C, 36 C. So you're talking 96, 98, 100 degrees.
- CWChris Williamson
That's brutal.
- 35:45 – 49:15
Champions, recovery strategies, and what it does to the body
- CWChris Williamson
Who are the superstars of this particular sport, then, of this particular race?
- SRSanjay Rawal
So the star of our movie, 3100: Run and Become, is a diminutive Finnish paperboy, probably the best paperboy in the world.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) What a selection of characteristics.
- SRSanjay Rawal
I know. His name is Aspre Hanh Al-Auto, but he loves being a, a, uh, a postal and paperboy, uh, postal and, and paper deliverer, 'cause he's, he's on his feet 10, 12 hours a day. So it's incredible training.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
He has run the race 15 times.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh my God. (laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
That, that means he's done 46 and a half thousand miles...... around this half-mile loop. Like, most people haven't run 46 and a half thousand miles in their life. I mean, doing 46 and a half thousand miles is basically like running 100 miles a week every week of the year for, like, eight and a half years.
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't the-
- SRSanjay Rawal
It's crazy.
- CWChris Williamson
... the circumference of the globe's 32,000, right?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
This guy, this guy circumnavigated the globe one and a half times.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah, a little... Actually, it's, uh, yeah, more, more or less. Um...
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
But he's incredible. It's like, you don't realize, like-
- CWChris Williamson
What makes him so good, then? Why is he so good?
- SRSanjay Rawal
He... You know, there, there's a physiological, you know, advantages like he's, he's small, he's really light, but he likes running more than almost anyone on Earth. Like, you have to. It has to be your most favorite thing in the world to do that over and over and over and over and over. So it's like look at folks that, like, this is not the best analogy, but, like, folks who love playing video games, who just love them.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Like, no judgment. They're playing video games 16 hours a day. They become professionals and they're playing seven days a week, 16 hours a day for, like, a year. They love it. They absolutely love it and they can do it. They can find variety. They can find interest. It's a whole world of stimulation and experience. Now, the difference between us and Ashby Hanall is that most of us, there's a lot of video game players, but most of us haven't had that kind of experience when we run. For many people, it's pain, it's exertion, but I learned a lot by watching him. You know, it's like he has learned to minimize all the problems that we think are problems when you run. Like, he'll get horrific blisters. There's, you know, heat effects, there's chafing, there's sweating, there's indigestion, but he's learned to, to minimize those problems, um, consciously. You know, it's like he's realized that those aren't actually problems of a great magnitude if you don't want them to be. You take care of it, but problems in life shouldn't diminish your potential for achieving happiness.
- CWChris Williamson
(sighs) Um, I mean, what sort of a state, even the best guys, our paperboy, our Finnish paperboy that we're talking about here-
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... what sort of a state are their bodies in after 3,100 miles?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah. So, (sighs) you know, the, the, the rule of thumb, right, is like when you, when you race a marathon, for example, 26.2 miles, they say anecdotally you need about 26 days before your body feels normal. You need, like, one day per mile. With a 3,100-mile race, for the most part, the average person doesn't start feeling normal again until about six months. You know, some people don't feel normal for the... for a year. Some people take two or three years to recover. You know, you're, you're not in a, in a hyper-taxed aerobic state, but your endocrine system, your glands, your adrenals are working overtime 'cause there's some stress. Like, you're trying to hit a certain number of miles per day. You realize you have to keep your mind soft to do that. But you're also pounding your GI tract with 10,000 calories a day when your body's already suffering from inflammation. You know, your kidneys are taxed trying to process the toxins and the water, uh, equivalent to five gallons, 20 liters. You're not getting much sleep. You might stop even at 11:00, 11:30 at night, but then at home you're, you're taking care of all your foot problems, all your blisters. You're getting everything ready for the next day. You might not go to sleep until 12:30 or 1:00 AM, and then you're up at 5:30. So you're doing 60 to 75 miles a day and you're sleeping four and a half hours at night. But I, you know, I, I haven't done 3,100, but I've done six-day races and my experience in those is that when you lay down, no matter what side of your body you're laying on, it feels like you're sleeping on broken glass-
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- SRSanjay Rawal
... and the, the recovery happens when you run. So it's a weird mindset where you're resting, but it's like you're... it's, it's not real rest at all. And even your 15, 20-minute breaks during the day are all kind of just to calm your mind down. Like, you're not really gonna, like, heal during that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
So you're destroying your body for 52 days and then you're spending the rest of the time recovering.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SRSanjay Rawal
But there are odd exceptions. Like, there was a guy who did it this last summer who's done it a number of times before. Um, he finished it in about S- 51 days, 50 days or so. Three weeks later, he ran, um, a 3:10 marathon. Um, two... uh, 36 hours after that 3:10 marathon, and his marathon's faster than that, his normal marathon, but he ran the 3:10 marathon. 36 hours later, he ran a 47-mile race, and actually, in between the marathon and that 47-mile race, he ran a hard two-mile cross-country race.
- 49:15 – 59:31
Women in ultrarunning, media visibility, and the future of extreme endurance
- CWChris Williamson
How many people enter the race typically per year?
- SRSanjay Rawal
W- They get between 10 and 15 a year. The overall completion rate, uh, for the last 24 years now has been, uh, about 62%. That said, you know, if there- if in any year there's 10 runners, there'll be seven men, um, three women, more or less, in terms of the split. Pretty much all the women complete the race. I would say maybe 75 to 80% of the women complete the race who enter. Um, probably 50% of the men complete the race. So fewer women enter the race, but there's a higher percentage of finishers there.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that that is because the men who enter the race are less prepared? Their eyes are too big for their stride perhaps? Or do you think that there is more volatility with the physiology of men than there is with women when it comes to distance running?
- SRSanjay Rawal
So tha- that- that's a good question. I- I'm- I'm- I'm not, uh, I'm not sure I can answer that specifically, but I can answer a corollary. Like the- the- the best times in the race, like the 25, 30 best times are all men. Like the women aren't close to the best times there yet. That said, it's like in my own opinion, seeing this race and seeing ultra-distance running across the last 24 y- 24, 25 years, women are just beginning to realize their potential. You know, it's like numbers aside, participation aside, like there's lots of social issues there, um, in terms of encouraging women. But it's like the women that get into it, I think naturally you measure yourself against the people around you.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- SRSanjay Rawal
So you measure, measure yourself against the men. And some people think that, "Oh, they're gonna ultimately be faster than we ever could be." Um, but you see there's a handful of women, like this woman named Cortley- Courtney Dauwalter who's- she's not as fast as the best ultra-runners, male ultra-runners in the world, but it's like you get her into a race with, you know, maybe not the best males, but still elite males-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
... and there's a, a very good chance that she could beat them. It's like-
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't, didn't Courtney Dauwalter, um, didn't, didn't something crazy happen to her vision recently in a race?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah, I mean, everybody has bonkers experiences, but she was blind for God knows how many minutes or hours of the race.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
But like, like there, there, there's people like Camille Herron who set the US women's 24-hour record of 163 miles in 24 hours on a track. The male record for, for, you know, 20 years ago, thir- 30 years ago, um, in the US was 163. Now I think it's like 173.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Or maybe a little bit more, but she actually feels like she can hit that. So like, you know, my, it's my, I guess, moderately controversial take on it is that you'll see over the next four or five years that women's times are gonna just get better and better and better. I mean, we saw in the Chicago marathon, uh, the w- the Kenyan woman, Br- Brigid Kosgei, she ran 2:14. Like she broke the world record by, by a minute in the women's side, but she was running, because the race is set up this way, she was actually running with the elite men, uh, or not too far behind them through the first 5K. It's like there's no... There was no... There... I can't speak for her, but it's like there's very little difference in her mind between the way she can run and the way elite men can run.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Uh, and so I think more and more women that kind of get into races, the more we'll see that even though there is a gap, and many pro ultra-women runners will say like, "The gap is always gonna be there just because of physiology."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
The gap is gonna get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.
- CWChris Williamson
I think the specifics with regards to men and women, w- men's and women's physiology as well, it does lend itself to these real long distances evening out some of those physiological differences because it is going to be so much more dependent on what your mindset can do, right? Like, so Alex Hutchinson, who's actually gonna be on tomorrow, we're gonna be discussing in detail Kipchoge's most recent performance and the implications of the shoe and all sorts of this other stuff. But in Endurance, his book, he uses the, um, the descriptor of endurance as the will to continue against a mounting desire to stop. If that's what h- that's- so that's not a function of your VO2 max, your lactate threshold, your running gait, uh, econom- e- e- economics, whatever it might be. None of that. It's your will to continue against a mounting desire to stop. And there's no reason to say that men or women will have any advantage over each other in that particular area. I suppose when we see weightlifters stepping up to the plate, things like bone density, muscle mass, testosterone levels, stuff like that, those really are- have a pronounced, uh, difference there. But when we're talking about a race that takes place over f- you know, 50 days, it's gonna be a lot more in terms of where can you put yourself mentally?
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah. Yeah. For, for sure. And I look at the 3100-mile race like climbing a mountain. Very, very few people are at the level where people, wh- where they can say like, "I climbed that mountain faster than you."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SRSanjay Rawal
And, and they, and they do do that. And, and those types of people, their achievements are incredible. But for the other 99.5%, it's like just going up and down the mountain is enough. And so I look at the 3100 that way. It's like there was a woman named Super Babeckard, an American woman based in Washington, DC who ran the race the first 13 years-... and she finished all 13 times. 13 times. I mean, it's just like an- a- a- it's a- it is an in- incredible, incredible achievement, and I look at that as akin to someone climbing Everest 13 times. Like, I don't care if took her five days or 100 days, it's like just the mindset to be able to endure that many miles across that many days, it's, uh, an incredible achievement.
- CWChris Williamson
So talking about sort of rounding off the event itself, w- are there any media sponsors? I- I- I've never heard of this race before but it's the sort of thing that I would be interested in, like why is it not more publicized? Is that purposeful?
- SRSanjay Rawal
They, you know ... Doing the race is hard and pulling off the race is hard enough to do no matter what, and they get 10 to 15 runners every year. Um, every few years there's a big article, like there was one recently last year in the BBC, um, every- there's one in The New York Times every other year, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, I think, has covered the race. But it's so out there.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
And it's more of a thing that people really have to come to see to experience and, you know, because of the- the- the movie coming out in the States last year, 2018, there were hundreds of visitors that actually came out to watch the 3100 last summer, and people brought food, picnic baskets, sat on the benches, and it's one of the most oddly entertaining events to spectate at because it literally feels like you're in a temple for human achievement. It's like you can see Kipchoge run the two-hour marathon once in your lifetime and that's an incomparable experience and h- having, you know, if someone w- was there in Austria and there's just the thrill. But it's like that same type of ethos that he brings to his races on a different level is present at the 3100-mile course. Like everyone on that course believes in their heart and in their feet that no human being is limited, and that's what the- the- the- the atmosphere is like there. So, you can spend a minute or an hour there. It's like going to the beach. You go like, "I'm not ... If I- I can spend five hours at the beach. What happens?" Nothing, but I feel good.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah. It's a-
- SRSanjay Rawal
Right?
- CWChris Williamson
... it's a really good analogy. So, as we move forward with this, uh, is this the longest race on the planet so far?
- SRSanjay Rawal
It's the- it's the- it's the longest officially certified race. Um, there is a cross-country US race from San Francisco to New York City. Um, people end up running anywhere between 3,050 and 3,100 miles to actually do that, but they can, the- the- they can choose any course they want to. Um, so it's- it's not- it's a great race but it's not officially sanctioned by distance like this is.
- 59:31 – 1:04:36
Running as play and ritual: backyard ultras, indigenous games, and where to watch the film
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It's interesting. So to- to round off the discussion, one thing for me as someone who I'm interested in sports, I'm interested in human athletic accomplishments, but really as a person who's not into distance running, I think, "Oh, like there's a marathon and then there's like a 50 and then there's like 100 and that's kind of it," and it's like- it's just- there's- there's long stuff and then there's everything before that. But now there really is this- these ultra-events. You know, we've got, um, the Barkley Marathon, uh, guys-
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... have just recently released that thing where you have to do a number of miles per hour.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah. It call- actually it's called The Big Backyards and Courtney Dauwalter won it m- pretty recently. You- it's- it's- I think it's a 4.1-mile loop in The Backyard of Lazarus, the- the founder of the Barkley Marathon, and you have that- it's- it's in one-hour cycles. You have an hour to complete the 4.1 and you have to show up to do your next lap precisely on the hour. So if you finish it super fast, that's your rest time.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SRSanjay Rawal
If you don't quite make it, you don't get to start the next lap. So, it's really a race of attrition. So what happened a couple years ago was Courtney Dauwalter was neck and neck with the male leader and a number of people dropped out and they pushed it to ... God, I- people will have to look it up themselves but-... a couple hundred miles. Um, it was ... They were over 60 hours, no sleep or whatever sleep you can get in between your return and the start of the next hour. Now, here's the kicker. Let's say you and I are doing it and it's 11:00 PM and you finish at 11:55, I don't get there, you don't win the race. You have to start at 12 and finish that last lap solo. If you don't make it before 1:00, no one wins the race.
- CWChris Williamson
No way.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah. So-
- CWChris Williamson
I didn't know that rule. That's brutal.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's beautiful that way. And these types of, like, unsanctioned, unregulated races really are much more similar to the types of things that we used to do in running. Like, the, uh, Native Americans and the Bushmen would look at running as a game. It wasn't just point to point, like, one against the world. There was one type of race that was done in the, in the indigenous Northeast of the United States where there would be teams of three or four, and there would be maybe 10 teams and there's one corn bushel. And we'd all start at the same place and the team that carries the corn bushel across the finish line, maybe 10 miles away, wins. They, they'll, they'll draw straws to see who has to carry the corn bushel from beginning, but you have to capture the corn bushel from the other runners. So it's a matter of like, I'm not gonna try to take it from you at the beginning, but I'm not gonna let you cross at the end. So there's a lot of intricate strategy and there's a lot of wrestling. It's like you literally have to, to wrest the bushel away from the other team. So it's these things which are not measured, you can't say they had the fastest time or they had the slowest time, but it's much more about running and play and strategy than what most of us have been used to in, like, schoolyard running.
- CWChris Williamson
I wonder how many more people would enjoy running if that was the ethos that was brought to it.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Well, that, that, that, you know, that, that's, that's become rugby, right? It's like ... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, you're right, you're right to, uh, uh-
- SRSanjay Rawal
You know, so you're right. So it's like, you know, the more we can broaden running, the more we can look at obstacle course racing, the more we can kind of broaden out this exploration of the world on our feet and the more we can bring spirituality into our feet and into our breath, I think the more we'll get out of the multifarious world of endurance running.
- CWChris Williamson
Couldn't agree more. So, Sanjay, where can people watch the 3100 race? We'll have 50/50 UK:US listening, so where should they head?
- SRSanjay Rawal
So to, to, to watch 3100: Run and Become, uh, in, in both parts of the world, you can download it on Amazon, you can download it on iTunes. It's available right now, uh, mid-October to stream on Amazon Prime in the US, and it will be streamable on Amazon Prime in the UK by mid-November.
- CWChris Williamson
Amazing. Well, I will leave the links. If I manage to find them, I will leave the links, uh, to where you can go and check that out in the show notes below. Uh, if anyone wants to follow you online, Sanjay, where should they head?
- SRSanjay Rawal
@MrSanjayR or @3100film.
- CWChris Williamson
Amazing. Thank you so much. It's been, it's been absolutely awesome. I'm gonna ... Uh, I'm looking forward to when the, the documentary comes out and good luck with the rest of the promo for it.
- SRSanjay Rawal
Thanks a million, Chris. It was great to be on your show.
- CWChris Williamson
Outfits. Ah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Outfits.
Episode duration: 1:04:36
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