Men's Journal

For 14 runners, racing for 51 days around a city block in New York is the path to enlightenment.

by Martin Mulkeen

“Special tuning,” says Pavol Saraz about his custom Asics with the toe boxes chopped off. “So the feet can breathe.” Saraz is halfway through the 3,100-mile Self-Transcendence Race in Queens, New York, the longest certified foot race in the world.

Saraz and the 13 other participants run, walk, or hobble around a nearly half-mile course that loops around a single city block — past a vo-tech school, along a stretch of chain-link fence housing handball courts — from 6 am to midnight to reach the 60.7 miles they must average each day to finish within the 51-day limit. The runners are disciples of Sri Chinmoy, a Bengali guru and the race’s founder. Chinmoy, who died last year, sought spiritual harmony through creativity and athletics, with an emphasis on quantity (he is said to have authored 1,500 books and completed 16 million bird drawings). For this year’s runners, from places such as Finland and Australia, pushing physical limits is a religious experience. “The race is like meditation,” says Saraz, shuffling down a sidewalk as cars whiz by. “You must make your mind quiet and use inside power. Physically, there are good days and bad. But mentally, I try to be cool.”

A race pamphlet warns of fatigue, minor injuries, and, the greatest threat, boredom. “Listening to Harry Potter is popular,” says Welsh runner Abichal (he only uses one name). “And I listen to pop and electronica, if I feel I need something extra.”

Pounding so much pavement day in and day out for almost two months can be crippling. Shin splints often force participants to walk the course until the pain subsides, and blisters, heat rashes, and Achilles tendon injuries also plague the runners. “The road creates problems, and the road cures them,” says Vajra Henderson, an assistant race director and medical facilitator. “The same conditions that cause injury also heal them.”

Around the World on Biofuel

On June 27, New Zealander Pete Bethune locked up the world record he’s been after for six years by knocking two weeks off the speed record for a power boat to circumnavigate the globe, completing the 24,000-mile trip in just under 61 days. Bethune says his biodiesel boat, which averaged 20 knots (or 23 mph) and looks more prepared for flying than taking on the seas, was built to show “that any form of transport, including marine, can be nondamaging to the environment as well as high-performance.”

The Fastest Street-Legal Car on Earth

It took close to a decade for the McLaren F1’s street-legal speed record of 240 mph to be broken. But since 2005, the record’s been bested several times, most recently by 9ff’s Porsche GT9. A carbon-fiber and Kevlar shell, titanium connecting rods, forged pistons, and an induction plate covered with 24-karat gold help the 973-hp GT9 go from zero to 62 in 3.4 seconds and reach 124 in an absurd 8.2 seconds. But it’s the top speed of 254 mph that has the car claiming the title of fastest street-legal vehicle on Earth. (The Shelby SuperCar SSC Ultimate Aero was clocked at 256, but 9ff claims its tests, which used GPS, are more accurate.) It’ll cost you only $700,000 to buy your own GT9 and attempt to match it.

This article originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Men’s Journal.