The race around … a block in 42 days: an Italian ultra-marathoner won Sunday the longest and craziest walking event in the world, covering nearly 5,000 km in a month and a half around a only group of buildings in New York.
“It was really monotonous!” Exclaimed Andrea Marcato as she crossed the finish line on Sunday evening, Italian flag in hand, to the cheers of the crowd, after having circled 5,649 times around a school complex in the Queens neighborhood of northern New York.
And therefore have walked 3,100 miles, or 4,888 km.
With a lap of 883 meters, an average of 116 km per day – that’s more than two marathons – the incredible sportsman, almost a 39-year-old superman, ran and walked for 42 days, 17 hours and 38 minutes. Every day from 6 a.m. to midnight.
The remaining six hours, Andrea Marcato and her six competitors – a New Zealander, a Taiwanese, a Japanese, a Russian, a Ukrainian and a Slovak – spent them sleeping, healing, eating, washing, responding to natural needs, in construction huts installed in the street during the ordeal.
The race, completely crazy but fully internationally approved, is supposed to last another eight days, barely disrupting New York car traffic, let alone traders, residents and some 2,000 high school students in this popular corner of Queens called Jamaica.
– “Same every day” –
To break the routine and the grayness of the urban jungle, concrete sidewalks and black high school gates, the seven marathoners run one day clockwise, the next day counterclockwise.
“The first week is pretty hard, especially for the mind,” admits Andrea Marcato. “And then you end up getting used to it and accepting that it will be the same every day”.
Whether it’s raining, windy, or New York’s heat and humidity are sweltering, it has been ticking like clockwork, since September 5, nearly 5,700 times around Thomas Edison Technical High School.
The event was created and named in 1997 “The Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendance 3,100 Mile Race”, by an Indian guru turned New Yorker, Sri Chinmoy , died in 2007.
He advocated a mixture of extreme sport, surpassing oneself and meditation.
– “Do not think about anything” –
On the physical side, the organizers only accept ultra-marathon runners who have already done races of the same kind of at least six days. On the mental side, “with a concentrated mind, you don’t think of anything else, neither fear, nor worry, nor doubt”, assures Andrea Marcato.
“It’s a test of endurance, effort, determination and talent”, sums up the race director, Sahishnu Szczesiul, very proud to note that if 4,000 mountaineers in the world have managed to climb Everest, they are only 49 ultra-sports to have completed its race of 3,100 miles.
For the New Zealander Harita Davies, the only woman in this 25th edition, the race is obviously terrible physically, but “unbelievably, the days and the weeks pass, the body adapts and strengthens itself”.
At 47, she runs “to become a better being”. She listens to music, audio novels and meditation classes. Harita Davies is expected to complete the distance before the October 26 deadline.
– No money –
Other New Yorkers, deprived of the show in 2020 due to a pandemic that has brought the city to its knees, sometimes barely understand what’s going on: “I live here but I didn’t know it was a race. I always thought they were just jogging, ”laughs Julio Quezada.
And what does winner Andrea Marcato gain after losing thousands of calories a day and 16 pairs of shoes? A trophy but no money, assure the organizers.
“It is the absolute, my dream and I have realized it”, rejoices the Italian, employee of an agribusiness company.
But Harita Davies warns that the hard part begins: “Getting back to normal life.”
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