Running Anecdotes
by Sri Chinmoy
Big mouths
Quite often a fat lady who walks with a cane greets me during my run. She has two dogs and she likes me very much. Whenever she sees me, she always has the same question: “Hey, don’t you feel cold?” Each time I give her a smile and say, “No, no.” By that time, I have run past her. Even if she sees me twice in the same day, she greets me with this same question, and I tell her the same thing.
This morning, at around 7:15 on our street, I saw this fat lady and her dogs having a real fight with another lady and her dog. The other lady was thin and seemed to be a little aristocratic. Let us say the fat lady is my friend, since she sees me every day and she likes me and talks to me. When the dogs started coming near each other, my friend said to the thin lady, “Don’t you dare come near me.” The thin lady replied, “Shut up, you big mouth!” Then, the fat one, my friend, threw her cane at the other one and said, “To hell with you!”
I finished my run and stood there watching them. As the thin one was leaving she said to her own dog, “You also have a big mouth!”
Now I had to sympathise with the fat lady because she was my friend. I went about 15 metres over to her cane and picked it up and gave it to her. She was very nice to me and said, “I knew all along you were a nice guy.” She was giving me a compliment. By that time the other lady had gone away.
The power of a smile
The first time I ever did seven miles, I was running alone in Flushing Meadow Park. After three or four miles an old man who was also running saw me and gave me a smile. There was such power in his smile that I went practically half a mile without feeling any pain, just joy.
Then, when I was coming back after having completed six miles, I was breathing heavily: “Ahh, ahh.” An old, fat lady who was waiting for the bus saw me and started imitating me in a joking way: “Ahh, ahh.” In silence I was saying, “Oh, if you had run six miles!”
The man was so nice and the lady was so bad!
Running late
There is a very nice black lady who helps school children cross 150th Street. Every morning she sees me running and appreciates my style. The other day I was coming back from my run later than usual because I had run four miles instead of my usual two miles at that hour. She thought that I had run only two miles, but had taken more time because I was tired and exhausted. When I came near her she said, “What is wrong with you? Why are you coming so late?”
She had been talking to a man and she told me, “I was just telling my friend that today you have new shoes and you look so nice. Why are you late?” I went twice as far, but this lady thought that I should have come back sooner. She has her own time!
Child’s advice
One day while running, I was talking to myself in Bengali, in my Chittagong dialect: “I can’t go any farther.”
What could I do? I was dying! I kept saying, “I won’t be able to go any farther.”
Then, a child about eight years old came up to me and said, “Don’t talk. It will make you more exhausted. Don’t talk.”
Published in Run and Become, Become and Run, part 1
The San Juan Marathon
An anecdote by Sri Chinmoy
At our marathon in Puerto Rico the runners had to run three times around the stadium at the start of the course. Our singers had taped running songs that were played over the loudspeaker, and they inspired the runners considerably.
Because of the heat, many people suffered after completing the race. For many it was a very painful experience.
The man who won had a time of around 2:30, and his wife stood first among the women. So husband and wife stood first together, with one hour difference.
The former champion finished in 2:51. I had a long talk with him, and many pictures were taken. He said this was his worst time in ten years. He blamed the heat. Also, the day before he had eaten Kentucky Fried Chicken, and he said that ruined everything. So remember, don’t eat chicken before a marathon!
Published in Run and Become, Become and Run, part 17
Sri Chinmoy ran the Sri Chinmoy Marathon in 5:12:00 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.