3100-Mile runner Nirbhasa Magee: 'You have to run for the right reasons'
By Tejvan Pettingerauthor bio »
20 July
About the author:
Tejvan organises short-distance running and cycling races for the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team in his home city of Oxford. He is also a very good cyclist, having won the National hill climb championships in 2013 and finished 3rd in the National 100 Mile Time Trials in 2014.
This week, the Irish Examiner featured an interview with Nirbhasa Magee. Nirbhasa, from Ireland and currently living in Iceland, is a three-time finisher of Sri Chinmoy 3100-Mile Self Transcendence Race. Nirbhasa first completed the race in 2015, and last year (2019) he finished in second place with a personal best of 48 days+09:04:57. The article by Cathal Dennehy examines the inspiration and motivations which help Magee accomplish this Herculean effort.
In the interview, Nirbhasa explains how he copes with the intimidating distance of 3,100 miles.
“It was always very important to never think of the whole thing. Sometimes all you want is to get to the next break, then hopefully once you lay down a bit it’s a different race. You need a very good inner feeling for how far you can push it. It becomes a spiritual exercise. You have to run for the right reasons; if you run for ego or vanity, it’s reflected in the decisions you make and the outcomes of those decisions: injuries, heat exhaustion.”
For nearly two months of the year, Nirbhasa is running around one small half-mile loop in Jamaica, Queens, New York. Whilst this may seem very challenging from an outer perspective, Magee reveals how the complete immersion in the race, and the atmosphere of self-giving that surrounds it, gives him a profoundly different outlook on life when the race is over.
"If I have issues or something that keeps annoying me in normal life, when I finish the race that isn’t even a thing anymore. You do these races and realise there are very few real problems in my life. You get this real perspective that comes from inner peace.”
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About the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team in Ireland
By Nirbhasa Mageeauthor bio »
29 June
About the author:
Nirbhasa is originally from Ireland but currently lives in Reykjavik, Iceland. He is an enthusiastic multi-day runner, having completed four times the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race - the longest race in the world.
The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team don't organise any formal races for the public in Ireland, but we do have an informal 2-mile fun run amongst ourselves most Saturdays, and anyone is welcome to join! If you are interested, you can leave an enquiry on our contact form at the Sri Chinmoy Centre site.
We have members all over the world - as well as organising races, many of us are athletes. For example, Samunnati Nataliya Lehonkova from the Ukraine has won the Dublin Marathon twice, and also the Belfast and Edinburgh.
The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team also organises some of the world's most challenging endurance events, including the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race - the world's longest certified road race. Nirbhasa Magee from the Irish Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team has completed the race twice, in 2015 and in 2017. In this video (taken before his first race in 2015) he is talking to fellow 3100 Mile Runner Grahak Cunningham about the race.
Interestingly the very first winner of the 3100 Mile Race, Ed Kelley, is an American of Irish descent....
However, most of us are not excellent athletes, and we participate in sports to keep fit and to get joy from pushing our own boundaries. The founder of the Marathon Team, Sri Chinmoy, pioneered the concept of self-transcendence - that people get satisfaction not from competing with others, but with their own capacities.
"One thing that everybody agrees upon is that everyone knows he has to make progress. Progress is self-transcendence and self-transcendence is undoubtedly true perfection. According to me, perfection is self-transcendence, perfection is constant progress which is always transcending itself. Otherwise, if I say that this is perfection, you will say no, something else is perfection. So there will be no end to our dispute. My perfection need not be your perfection, but my self-transcendence will always give me satisfaction and your self-transcendence will always give you satisfaction." - Sri Chinmoy