The race around …. a block in 42 days: an Italian ultra-marathoner won the longest and craziest running race in the world on Sunday October 17 by covering nearly 5,000 km in a month and a half around of a single group of buildings in New York.
“It was really monotonous!” exclaimed Andrea Marcato as he 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 upstate New York. And therefore have traveled on foot 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 his six competitors – a New Zealander, a Taiwanese, a Japanese, a Russian, a Ukrainian and a Slovak – devoted them to sleeping, taking care of themselves, feeding themselves, washing themselves, responding to natural needs, in construction huts set up in the street for the duration of the ordeal.
The crazy but fully-sanctioned race is supposed to last another eight days, barely disturbing New York traffic, let alone the merchants, residents and some 2,000 high school students in this popular corner of Queens, called Jamaica.
“The first week is quite hard, especially for the mind”
To break the routine and the greyness of the urban jungle, the concrete sidewalks and the black gates of the high school, the seven marathon runners run clockwise one day, the next day counter-clockwise.
“The first week is quite 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, whether it’s windy or whether New York’s heat and humidity are stifling, it has turned like clockwork, since September 5, nearly 5,700 times around the Thomas-Edison Technical High School.
The event was created and baptized in 1997 “The Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3,100 Mile Race”, by an Indian guru turned New Yorker, Sri Chinmoy, died in 2007. He advocated a mixture of extreme sport, self-transcendence and meditation.
Concentrated mind, you don’t think of anything else, neither fear, nor worry, nor doubt
On the physical side, the organizers only accept ultra-marathoners who have already done races of the same kind for 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”, summarizes the race director, Sahishnu Szczesiul, very proud to note that if 4,000 mountaineers in the world have managed to climb Everest , only 49 ultra-athletes completed the 3,100-mile race.
For New Zealander Harita Davies, the only woman in this 25th edition, the race is obviously terrible physically, but “incredibly, as the days and weeks go by, the body adapts and strengthens”.
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.
A trophy but… 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 is happening: “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 the winner Andrea Marcato earn, after losing thousands of calories a day and 16 pairs of shoes? A trophy but no money, assure the organizers.
“It’s the absolute, my dream and I realized it,” rejoices the Italian, an employee of an agri-food company. But Harita Davies warns that the hardest part begins: “Returning to normal life”.
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