Interview With Filmmaker Sanjay Rawal

In this interview, with trained neurobiologist & filmmaker Sanjay Rawal we explore “self-transcendence”, and the devotion of pilgrimage/movement as meditation. He explores Kalahari bushmen in Africa, Navajo runners across their ancestral lands, as well as Buddhist monks & Sri Chimnoy's NYC race, the longest human endurance journeys known to man. Sanjay’s films “3100:Run and Become” and “Food Chains” help us to think about our place in the world and responsibility to one another and the planet.

Transcript

And,

Welcome to the podcast,

Sanjay Rawal.

This is really an honor for you to be on the podcast,

Particularly with your insight into running as meditation and prayer and all the work that you've done over the past few years.

Really excited to learn about your filmmaking and also your personal experiences.

Well,

Mark,

It's awesome to be on your show and to have this conversation with you.

Thanks,

Sanjay.

So,

Let's dive right in.

No greater topic than this,

Running for most of us,

This essential thing in our lives that are runners and digging into the history of it.

I've heard you say before that running and movement have been really part of the history of most societies and cultures for 10,

000 years or more.

Could you maybe explain that a little bit?

Well,

Yeah.

So there's a theory from evolutionary biologists,

You're an expert in this stuff,

That the only advantage that the early human beings had in the place where people believe we first originated and that's in kind of southern Central Africa,

That our only advantage on those savannas,

Which are teeming with gigantic beasts from lions to elephants and giraffe and hyenas and many things that could kill us.

Since we were one of the only bipedal animals and actually the only animal that could move long distances on two feet,

We had one main kind of physiological advantage that our breathing was decoupled from our gait.

If you could imagine a horse running,

When the legs are contracted,

The lungs are forced to expel air out.

When the horse is in full stride,

Reaching out,

Kicking back,

The lungs suck in air.

That makes them aerobically deficient.

They have a lot of power,

But they can't take in enough oxygen to be able to run at full strength for a long time.

At the same time,

We were also the only animal that was able to carry water for long distances.

Just on the cultural surface,

Survival,

Evolutionary biology surface,

We developed these things that are now called persistence hunts,

Where we would chase this much longer,

Much stronger game that we couldn't catch if the playing field was level.

We pushed them away from watering holes.

You'd scare a large African elk.

It would run 40 miles an hour and probably gain two or three miles on you.

You would use your ingenuity and track it through the desert and through the savanna,

Scare it again,

But purposely scaring it further and further away from the watering holes that you knew.

Finally,

After 24,

36,

48 hours,

The beast was so dehydrated that you could approach it with your primitive weaponry and kill it without any fear of harm to yourself.

That's considered the way that human beings carved out a place in the earth,

Or in the world,

So to speak.

We spent time for the movie I made,

3100 Running to Come,

Which is now in the US at least available all over the place online.

We spent time with the Kalahari Bushmen,

Who aren't known to be the first tribe that ever existed,

But they've had an unbroken existence of 125,

000 years.

Geneticists and evolutionary biologists point to them as the only kind of.

.

.

I hate using the word prehistoric because they're still around,

But the only kind of ancient species or ancient populations whose DNA markers are in every single human being on earth,

Meaning they were the ones that moved out of Africa,

Interbred with other species of Homo erectus,

Et cetera,

To form now what we call Homo sapiens.

When we spent time with them in the Kalahari Desert and tried to explain this Western perspective on their own existence,

They said that's nonsense.

They said that our advantage in the savanna was our ability to achieve higher levels of consciousness than the animals around us.

That was specifically done through prayer and understanding of the power of ancestors,

The power of the spirits,

The power of the other worlds.

They said that,

Yes,

There's some ingenuity.

Yes,

There's some evolutionary advantages,

But they gained strength through understanding how to connect to the earth and to the powers of Mother Earth through their breath and to pray to Mother Earth to allow them to take one of her creatures.

It was an act not of blind physiology.

Nor was it an act of superstition.

They understood that the process to gaining strength was through other parts of our being than our bodies.

That's such an amazing vision and just being able to hear that from them and to our ancestors,

At least as told by our biology.

And fast forwarding to today,

We can see throughout all the film and all the people that you talk to that the people who are really good at endurance running see running as a type of devotion,

A type of healing,

An integral part of themselves that for many leads to,

In your film at least,

Leads to a type of enlightenment or enlightened view of themselves and how they interact with the world.

Would that be a good way to describe the film in a nutshell as a prayer,

Meditation,

Enlightenment view of running?

I think so.

I would adjust that by taking out the word view.

Our film hopes to establish the truth of running,

Not just a single viewpoint or a single opinion.

And by looking at traditional running cultures like the Kalahari Bushmen,

The Navajo,

Other Southwestern Native Americans,

The Japanese marathon monks of the highlands outside Kyoto.

These are some of the only cultures that still exist that provide a link to our past and the past uses of running.

If you go to any indigenous community around the world,

And the evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman has done a lot of research on this,

Every single indigenous community around the world has a running tradition and that running tradition is synonymous with prayer.

And so when people say now,

Oh,

I run for fitness,

I run for health,

I run for this and I run for that,

That I consider a viewpoint because that's different from how we've run in the several hundred thousand years of our existence.

That's really interesting.

Yeah.

In fact,

I think I've heard you say,

Perhaps in another interview or as part of a previous conversation that perhaps running or movement in a way could be seen as man's first religion as they interact with their surroundings,

With creation and hope to understand or transcend just their own heads basically.

Yeah.

It's a total guest for me because I have no real background other than what I've seen and observed and tried to translate into film.

But if you look at religion,

Really Western religion,

Really prior to the last few centuries and Eastern religion prior to this century,

There were several things that were a common part of an annual practice.

And one of them particularly is pilgrimages.

People would take regular long journeys to shrines.

At the same time,

Those were considered to be holy experiences where,

Quote,

Unquote,

The journey was a destination where you prayed along the way,

You prayed for blessings along the way and those blessings hopefully would culminate in some sort of exalted experience once you got to the Holy shrine.

That was a common way for people to practice religion,

If not regularly,

At least annually or periodically,

The combination of religion plus movement.

It's only now that we kind of have taken that out of mainstream religion maybe because it's too hard to do.

Yeah.

Maybe not convenient in the ways that we would like it to be.

By the way,

At least one of our podcast episodes of our first 20 was dedicated to pilgrimage,

Just one pilgrimage.

But just for the sake of mentioning it,

Certainly not absent from the Christian tradition,

Which obviously is one of the major Western religions.

So as I move through your film,

Just amazing in the way that it compiles and shares information from three different traditional cultures and then kind of connects it to this 3,

100 mile race,

Although the mileage really isn't that important.

What everyone should know who's listening is that that's a really long way.

That's like running from LA to New York in a summer and they're doing it,

The people that you film and have the experience of going through their religious or spiritual experience,

They're doing it in full days,

Around one city block in New York City.

So that's incredible devotion there.

Could you tell us,

I know that you personally have some experience with the founder and kind of the religious origin of this race.

Could you tell us a little bit about that story for you and how you got involved with the 3,

100?

For sure.

I'll mention a couple of things about the race itself,

If you don't mind.

That would be great.

The 3,

100,

The self transcendence 3,

100 mile race is officially the longest certified road race or running race in the world.

It has taken place every summer since 1997,

Meaning that this last summer in 2019 was the 23rd edition of the race.

In order to complete the 3,

100 miles in the 52 day window,

Participants who come from around the world,

And the numbers range from anywhere from eight to 15 participants every summer,

They have to average at least about 59.

8 miles per day,

Around a half mile sidewalk loop.

Now,

Number one,

People go like,

Why the heck would I want to run around a sidewalk?

There are attempts to go from City Hall,

Some just go to City Hall in New York City,

It's called the transcontinental race.

But people find that it's very difficult to enter into a meditative flow state when there are cars flying by you.

And number two,

When the logistics make it difficult to refuel,

Rehydrate,

Rest,

Go to the bathroom exactly when you need to.

In the self transcendence 3,

100 mile race,

You get aid and opportunity for other things every half a mile.

And there's no traffic because you're just going around in high school.

It allows people to have a kind of an unbroken experience or opportunity for transformation.

And to go to your question,

The race was founded by an Indian spiritual teacher,

A guru named Sri Chinmoy,

Who moved to the States from South India in the 60s.

But he was in New York City at the heart of the running boom,

And became very close friends with some of the earliest driving forces from Ted Corbett,

The founder of the Road Runners Club and one of the early American marathoners.

As an African American,

He was a representative of the US Olympic team at the 1952 Helsinki Games.

He pushed into ultra running well before anybody else did.

And he was the one who found and chose the course that was used in 1976 for the New York City Marathon that went through all five boroughs.

And they were so receptive to Sri Chinmoy's message that the inner life and the outer life had to go together,

That physical fitness was of paramount importance.

That in 1977 and 1978,

They actually had him begin the New York City Marathon with meditations.

And an Indian guru in the garb of a spiritual man inaugurated the New York City Marathon with the meditation.

So he was at the heart of that movement.

In the 80s,

To make a short story long,

Sorry,

In the 80s,

He and Fred LeBeau revived the kind of late 19th century practice of pedestrianisms,

Six day races that used to be held in Madison Square Garden indoors in New York City,

But were the first opportunities for athletes in the US to make enough money in one event to last them their whole lifetimes.

Because people would bet on who would win those six day races.

And so they revived that in 1983.

I mean,

There were other ones going on around the world,

But they wanted to revive it in New York.

And that for Sri Chinmoy grew into a thousand mile race,

Then a 1300 mile race,

And a 2700 mile race.

And finally in 1997,

It was thankfully capped at 3100 miles.

Interesting.

Yeah,

I guess the question becomes,

You know,

People obviously have a draw to that,

You know,

Being challenged physically as a means to reach out and not only test their physical boundaries,

But also test their emotional and their mental state to a point where they transcend,

You know,

Where they become something that they weren't before they started this journey.

I know that you have experience with Sri Chinmoy's,

His kind of mentality towards sport and how it would bring people together and generate peace in the world.

Very 70s-esque,

But I hope we haven't lost it today.

What did that mean for you personally when you came to New York and you started working and following him?

Well,

I grew up in the East Bay in Northern California,

And I went to the University of California at Berkeley and pretty much an intellectual and even metaphysical paradise.

I mean,

Anything you want to study or experience,

You can in that city.

But it wasn't enough for me because the message I was hearing,

And granted,

This isn't a judgment on any path,

And I by no means did an exhaustive survey,

But the message I kept hearing was that your meditation practice,

If you really want to make it perfect and reach the highest pinnacles of what meditation can offer,

That practice needed to happen in total isolation.

You could meditate in the world,

But you're not going to really achieve anything unless you join a monastery or an ashram or something like that.

But then when I came across his philosophy,

Which was in this modern age,

And he was saying this in the 60s and it's a lot more prescient now,

There's nowhere on earth where you could go where the world wouldn't eventually find you,

Where you could totally become absolutely insulated from the vibration of just the hectic and chaos of day-to-day life in the world.

And he said that in this day and age,

You had to try to bring the inner life into the outer life,

That you had to try in your own life to transform yourself while living in the helter-skelter and the chaos of life.

And case in point,

Rather than establishing a spiritual community in Maui or Bali or Malibu,

He planted roots in Jamaica Hills,

Queens,

Which now is quite a nice little place,

But in the 60s and 70s,

The neighborhood that he lived in was extraordinarily urban.

Even today in New York City,

The area is probably 95% minority,

Whereas if you go to Manhattan,

It's an absolute melting pot.

So that kind of adventure of doing what wasn't expected,

Doing what wasn't classical,

What was new and risky in terms of spirituality really,

Really appealed to me.

So I packed up and moved to a tiny little room in someone's house in New York City.

I saw that there were more possibilities than what I was just being told had already been done.

There was something incredibly new that I could be a part of.

And were you already a runner at that point,

Or was your devotion and your wanting to follow Sri Chimnoy's example was that when you started running?

So I was a runner in high school.

And everyone was a runner in high school,

But California had 33 million people.

And I was competitive enough that I would place at a lot of state level competitions.

And so times that I ran and that teammates of mine and I ran could have easily won many other state competitions.

But in California,

You're running against future Olympians no matter what when you're at that level.

So I hated running is a clear way to say it.

Because in that environment,

Nobody really taught me how to enjoy anything other than winning.

And granted,

Doing your personal best would be good,

But that's not going to happen every race.

And if you're not going to get a personal best or win every single race,

Then it's ultimately not an experience of satisfaction.

So I came to New York and was in this community of Sri Chimnoys where people were doing ultra distance races.

And I moved in the winter of 1997.

And in the summer of 1997,

He started the 3100 mile race.

But I came from an 800 meter one mile background.

And the idea of 3100 miles was like,

It gave me the same feeling as if I were standing in front of like a hungry lion.

I was petrified.

I was like beside myself.

I didn't want anything to do with it because it just blew my mind.

And thankfully,

Sri Chimnoy had a lot of other activities from the contemplative to the more service related things to occupy the rest of us.

And although he passed in 2007,

I'm kind of embarrassed to say that it wasn't until I started making this movie and seeing an echo of his philosophy in all of these traditional cultures that I finally put one and one together.

And I can say,

You know,

Since 2015,

2016,

When we started making the movie,

And of course,

In 2018,

When we released it,

I've really for the first time in my life begun to enjoy running.

That's beautiful.

I feel like your experience parallels a lot of high school and even college runners in that they're doing it because,

You know,

They're competing against something,

They're running against others or against themselves.

And it's really just like pushing for that time.

But they're not,

You know,

Enjoying the nature around them,

Enjoying the physicality of their body hitting the ground and all of these things that we hear from throughout your film and some of the traditional cultures,

Such if you don't mind my jumping forward,

Such as in the Navajo runner whom you interviewed and got some beautiful filming of his traditional running routes and traditional run that they put on there.

So I learned right away on my first run with Sean Martin,

An ultra runner from the Navajo run,

That he got more out of his daily runs than I would get out of running in a year.

When I leave for my runs,

I'm thinking about my workout.

In those days,

I would listen to music.

You're looking at your GPS watch stride by stride virtually.

But I noticed when he left his house,

It was clear that he was running from his heart and that he looked at that run as though someone who has a contemplative practice of meditation or prayer or yoga even might take their daily routine.

You know,

You're not necessarily going to have the best meditative experience every morning,

But you've got to do it because it's like each time you do it,

You're getting an experience of transformation.

And hopefully that's taking you somewhere closer to a deeper goal that you're seeking.

And I could tell from his morning run that he looked at it as a spiritual experience and he was running in such a way that he would be open to whatever spiritual experience that particular day would give him.

His intent was totally different than mine.

So you know,

Most of us when we run,

We run with the intent of training for a race in the future,

3,

4,

6,

9,

12 months away,

Where we've got the intent to try to do a certain number of miles in a certain time or a certain workout.

We've got the intent to forget about problems in our life.

We've got the intent to transform the way we look.

And so,

You know,

Running will give you all those things.

But I never realized that running,

If you want it to,

Will give you the experience of transformation.

It will allow you and actually do the work for you to totally change your life,

Your sensitivities to the world,

What you understand about yourself and your purpose in life.

That comes through running.

And I saw that in hindsight in Sri Chinmoy's own writings.

Sri Chinmoy said that despite loving tennis and many other sports,

He said running is the only sport that where you're connected via your breath to Mother Earth and to the heavens.

And Sean Martin,

Our Navajo character,

Without knowing anything about Sri Chinmoy's philosophy,

Told me,

And this is in the movie,

He said,

You know,

When we run,

Our feet are praying to Mother Earth.

We're breathing in Father Sky.

We're asking them,

We're asking the holy people,

We're asking them for their blessings and we're showing them that we're willing to work for those blessings.

And that comes through running.

It's like there's other ways to get there,

But it's like,

You know,

Through prayer or meditation,

But running is that portal to all the worlds within and without.

Such a beautiful statement.

Some of the time that I spent watching the film,

I went back and watched it a few times now.

I know that the run which you covered,

I believe,

Was over 100 miles through his ancestral land,

Through the desert.

And I guess paralleling that,

People often running say that when they're having a good run,

They're experiencing connection with the place where they live,

With their community.

You know,

It's a communal experience or a connection experience with their land,

The place that they call home.

And I felt that so deeply when he explained his experience,

You know,

Obviously much deeper and much more long-term connection than what we might have with one of our communities.

But the idea still exists and it's so clear in his explaining why he runs.

And you know,

The corollary to our lives who aren't able to run in gorgeous canyons,

Stay in and out.

Sean's father,

A medicine man,

Told me,

He said,

Hey look,

Mother Earth is under the sidewalk and under the asphalt as well.

At the same time,

I think this speaks to a deeper issue of humanity that there's so many problems in our relationship with the world,

Not because we're just disconnected from the food system or disconnected from sanctuary spaces around the world,

But we don't necessarily comprehend that nature surrounds us at every moment.

What else is nature other than Mother Earth and Father Sky?

Your feet are on the ground,

You're breathing in air.

No matter what setting you're in,

Whether it's a city or in a forest,

You're surrounded by nature.

And you know,

Running the way the Navajo do,

You know,

With an understanding that everywhere you are,

You are on Mother Earth.

Every time you breathe,

You're breathing in Father Sky,

Creates a deeper sense of awareness,

Something that one would call consciousness.

When you're doing any action,

But that becomes amplified when you have that intent while you're running.

Even beneath our paved roads and paved sidewalks,

It's there.

And there's also history and some good,

Some bad,

But that we should be aware of,

Obviously,

In all of our spaces.

Thanks.

I had never thought of that connection.

By the way,

Sanjay,

I know that we had spoken briefly off air that both of us have some connection to,

You know,

To following someone,

Finding meditation in our lives and that making a big difference.

For mine,

That was,

You know,

This guy,

St.

Francis,

Who was a long time ago,

Unfortunately,

I didn't get to meet him,

But I joined the Franciscans and I worked with a Catholic worker house and found some of that connection with nature and community through my experience as a Franciscan novice.

And I find that a lot of,

Shall we say,

Monastic communities or traditional cultures where there are monks,

Somehow have this just deep sense of permanency or of time not being that important but rather,

You know,

Their experience with perhaps being in an ultra long distance event as a rite of passage or as just,

You know,

A way for them to connect with the divine,

For example.

And I found a little bit of that in the third culture that you highlighted in what kind of people sometimes call marathon monks,

But it's actually quite different than how I envisioned this community experiencing.

I kind of experienced monks.

I thought these monks would be running ultra marathons as a group together through there,

But this is much more a rite of passage than it is a sporting event that you cover.

Yeah,

You know,

So the first person to go from Japan to China to bring Buddhism back was a man named Saicho,

A saint named Saicho around 550 AD.

And he was based outside the city of Kyoto on what was then now really Japan's holiest mountain,

Mount Hiei.

And he had the vision or the idea of a hardship or a quest or an austerity where an aspirant would walk on a particularly,

Particular route,

A prescribed route from temple to temple to temple.

And out of that developed this idea of a thousand day trek and those thousand days that people put their mathematics hat on,

That thousand days is split up into 10 hundred day cycles.

Each cycle has a set daily mileage.

And the first cycle is about 11 and a half miles a day with about 3,

000 feet in combined altitude walking around and up and down this mountain going from site to site,

Praying.

But by the time they get to their eighth,

Ninth,

And tenth cycle,

They're at 35 to 55 miles per day.

Now what this means is that they're doing one or two cycles per year because they have to kind of complete the whole thing within seven or eight years.

But the kicker is that they have to enter into this quest with the complete commitment to finishing it and not skirting rules,

Not skirting mileage,

And in order to kind of enforce that initial commitment,

As you know from watching the film,

If the aspirant fails to complete their daily mileage on any one single day,

They are forced to take their life.

Now there hasn't been anybody that's taken their life in the last several hundred years,

But they say that without that kind of ultimate sacrifice,

Who knows,

This practice might have become diminished.

You know,

If somebody popular or famous fell sick or twisted an ankle on day 500,

Maybe then somebody would have said,

Okay,

We'll stop at day 500 or we'll give you a mulligan,

We'll give you one free day to heal up.

But because they've never wavered on those regulations,

You know,

After 1,

500 years now,

It's still the exact same as when they started it.

That's incredible.

So really it's like a seven or eight year ultra event for them to complete over that long a period of time,

And obviously the,

As you mentioned,

The rite of initiation or the rite of passage ultimately results,

Would you say it results in them becoming a monk or does it result in them as a monk achieving something transcendent in their opinion?

Well,

So you know,

When people want to join this particular monastery,

I wish there's anywhere from three to 4,

000 people at any one time,

They have to do a hundred days of this practice.

And there's no penalty in those first hundred days of death.

But if you don't complete those hundred days,

You don't get to be a monk.

After that,

People can choose various other practices and one person at a time applies to do,

About one person at a time applies to do that seven or eight year thousand day trek.

And so we were able to film the last aspirant in effectively his second to last cycle.

And I should say,

But this isn't meant to pat myself on the back,

But you know,

What the Navajo had told me is that they'd never allowed anyone to film the spiritual aspect of their running.

The marathon monks hadn't allowed the access that we were given to anybody since the early 80s.

And there's a film from the early 80s still bouncing around YouTube,

But the monks themselves have said that there's a lot of discrepancies in that film,

Although it is very interesting.

And the Kalahari Bushmen,

Because the practice of persistence hunting is now a matter of dispute in their relationship with their government,

You know,

They haven't and they probably won't be able to have anybody film their traditional hunting practices ever again.

So the film hopefully offers people not just an unknown viewpoint,

But an extraordinarily rare look into the way running is held sacred.

Yeah,

I don't know if,

So I'd be interested in hearing as we wrap up towards the end of our talk,

You know,

How this connected for you all three of them together in terms of then coming back around to the 3100 race.

For me,

You know,

As you mentioned earlier in the podcast,

I got the sense that,

You know,

There's this calling that people have inside of them,

You know,

Particularly among some endurance or some long distance runners,

That's almost monastic in the devotion.

And I,

You know,

I've seen that side of,

You know,

Monastic life,

Or at least of brothers in the Franciscans,

And I've also found my calling that's like,

Yeah,

Prayer and running and meditation can bring me into this place,

Even if I'm interacting with and part of the real world,

So to speak,

That I almost get that same experience that these monks have,

Because I'm placing myself into this much of a state.

Would you say that some of the 3100 runners would say something similar of their experience,

Or when you talk to them afterwards,

At least?

I think so.

I mean,

I think that,

You know,

My initial impetus,

Which is also why the movie is really built around the 3100,

Was to give people a sense of how and why that race is even possible.

And I didn't want to do it through interviews with doctors and experts and former runners.

I wanted to give people a feeling and not try to convince them,

But to show them primarily visually rather than just through information.

And so I wanted to show that running has been a cultural essential for humanity.

There's a Navajo connection,

That,

You know,

Running long distances is literally built into who we are,

Our DNA,

The connection with the bushman.

And that running can be used as a vehicle to achieve a sense of enlightenment or a much vaster perspective of one's place within the universe,

Physical and spiritual.

And so we,

In the film,

As you know,

We bounce from the 3100 thematically to other places around the world to kind of illustrate why certain things are happening in the 3100 or why things are going to happen.

And to answer your question,

You know,

People come to do the 3100 mile race because they know that after a week or so when the body's become used to the thousands of calories that it has to take a day to the gallons of water that it has to ingest,

To the beating of the sun,

To the pounding of the pavement,

That the mind itself shuts off.

Much like many people have,

Much like the experience many people have had while fasting,

The first couple of days could be really rough,

But then the body seems to kick into a different metabolic cycle,

Which we now know as ketosis,

And uses energy stores that allows a relaxation of the GI tract.

I see and I've heard and I've observed and found that in long distance running,

Something happens that way to the mind,

Where after a certain amount of time,

If you're culturally conditioned like Sean Martin,

That period might be 10 minutes.

Or if you're like us growing up in the West,

You know,

That might be two or three days of running,

The mind shuts off and completely pulls itself out of the way between your heart and the universe.

It stops being a conscious impediment to you having a constant flow of spiritual experience.

And so runners will say like,

There's no way they could complete that race if it was mind over matter,

If they had to gut their way through it and like fool their body and power their body and so on and so forth.

They can only do this,

You know,

42,

45,

52 some odd day race if they enjoy it.

And they enjoy it because they're able to access different parts of their being in different levels of satisfaction while running that literally help them overcome any kind of physical suffering they might be experiencing.

Yeah,

That's amazing to me because I think that for myself and probably for most distance runners,

You would ask them,

Did you enjoy the marathon when you ran it?

They would probably say,

No,

I enjoyed the accomplishment or,

You know,

I enjoy this medal that I got,

But that I didn't enjoy it.

Whereas,

You know,

Maybe some in the ultra running community,

People running in places that they just feel really connected to or that,

Like you said,

Push beyond that thinking mind then feel like,

Oh yeah,

I enjoyed this experience.

Yeah,

And that's the thing.

I personally think what was sad in my own running career that,

You know,

You train for a race for days or weeks or months and then you do that race and it's just an experience of like,

Let me get through it and let me hope that there's a result at the end that will satisfy me and create a sense of lasting satisfaction.

Whereas now I realize like I can and should enjoy those day to day runs.

I can and should,

You know,

Train to run for enjoyment and,

You know,

And in doing so the races become much more enjoyable because it's become a practice in those training days or in those just regular workouts that when the going gets tough,

I can't grunt through the rest of the workout.

I have to actually try to find a way to enjoy that exertion.

Sure.

Now,

If you don't mind my going a little bit off topic,

I know that your film career is not just this film and you're also very connected to food and the supply that it gives people spiritually and physically,

Which I think is also a big topic for a lot of runners out there and I know that was part of Sree Chimnoy's philosophy as well.

Would you mind telling us a little bit about,

You know,

Kind of what that's meant to you and maybe what it means to some of the other runners that you've encountered in the 3100?

Well,

Yeah,

For sure.

You know,

I consider myself a student or even a disciple of Sree Chimnoy.

Like I came to him for an understanding of things deeper than what my mind could tell me and what I could get through a traditional outer education and much like you sought refuge in the consciousness of St.

Francis,

You know,

The relationship with an Indian spiritual teacher is the same way.

You know,

You come to that person with the ultimate hope that they,

You know,

Whether in the physical or beyond,

Will take you to an ultimate goal of realization or enlightenment.

And you know,

We find that everyone who comes to do the 3100 mile race has that same type of goal in mind,

That they're really seekers.

And you know,

In the last few years at least,

The majority of the runners,

Not all by any means,

But the majority of the runners,

You know,

Are students of Sree Chimnoy.

I think that number one,

They've overcome the fear that I used to have of the race,

Which is common amongst those mere mortals like ourselves.

And you know,

From the beginning,

Like the real maniacs,

You know,

All the good ways would come and do the race,

But now more and more normal people are coming.

But that said,

The majority of these normal people are from our community who've experienced the race by being crew members or handlers for other runners and have really realized that there's nothing to be frightened of.

At the same time,

The people that have come from professional running careers or more storied running careers aren't necessarily all quote unquote,

People of deep,

Deep faith,

But they have had enough experiences in pushing their limits to understand that the only way they can accomplish a race like this is to tap into an energy that's not calorie-based,

That's not mind-based either.

Interesting.

And am I correct that most,

Yourself and most of these runners are vegetarian and have found that as part of their way of life?

For the most part,

That's correct.

But we've also seen,

And I also see when people do multi-day races,

That they only eat meat to kind of satiate their mind.

The mind's got a craving,

Then you eat meat because in these races,

You want the energy that you're intaking to be available as quickly as possible.

And the digestive process for meat is just,

It can take,

Literally,

It can take days.

So you're only taking meat for a momentary level of satisfaction.

But most people who do these races go like,

I need protein and I'm going to get that from some sort,

Whether it's an animal-based protein,

Like from dairy,

I'm going to get that from something that's easily digestible and that's going to give me energy within the next few hours.

And in the 3100 mile race,

That's much,

Much more critical than anything else because you cannot allow yourself to bonk,

You cannot allow yourself to go beyond a certain threshold.

Unlike even 100 mile races where you could push the last 8,

9,

10 hours and then just take the next 3,

4 weeks off,

You can't win the 3100 in a day,

But you can lose it in a day.

You have to stay within those bounds of discipline.

That's really interesting.

I asked for a personal,

This whole interview,

By the way,

Is because I personally really wanted to talk to you.

Oh,

That's very kind of you to say.

Very inspired and just personally interested in the welfare of the planet and what I put into my body and kind of what's called for as a runner and to encourage listeners or people that ask me,

Hey,

What do you eat?

And I'm mostly a plant based diet guy,

But I'm always concerned about that.

Those things you mentioned about adequate protein intake and,

You know,

Kind of keeping up with what my body needs as well as my spirit.

So thanks.

I mean,

They say that each average human being has about enough calories to run about 1100 or 1200 miles just in terms of our fat stores.

Wow.

So in terms of running and I see it with some of the top 3100 mile runners,

You know,

So much of the idea of like eating for performance is overrated,

But not in the way that one might think.

Okay,

Sure.

In ultra distance races,

When your body is at an extraordinarily high level of metabolism,

Like in the 3100,

You know,

It's literally calories in,

Calories out.

You know,

Your calories in,

Energy out.

You just want to take something in that's easily digestible.

You know,

When they're taking 10,

000 calories a day,

You know,

They're not looking to get,

They can't get 20,

30% of that from protein.

You know,

They're still only looking to get 100 or 200 grams or maybe 150 grams of their daily calorie load from protein,

Which is,

You know,

Could be 600 calories out of 10,

000.

That's 6%.

It's nothing.

At the same time,

You know,

A lot of the training requires you to be in states where,

You know,

You're not running out of what you're eating because people have studied that in most high performance running or athletics,

You're only digesting 300 to 400 calories an hour.

So if you're doing a three hour marathon,

You know,

You're burning about 3000 calories and there's no way you could take that all in.

They say that you can only store about 1300 calories or so in your muscles,

Glycogen-based reserves.

So much about running is,

And ultra endurance events is about training the body to understand that there's no such thing as running on empty.

You know,

It's like you never run on empty.

Your body might not know how to tap into those resources,

But that's what the training is for.

Yeah,

That's a good point.

I feel like everyone always says,

Oh,

This is my wall,

And then somehow they can push past it.

Of course,

There are exceptions with things like heat stroke and,

You know,

Being dehydrated and cases like that,

Then obviously there is a wall and there's a limit and people should be very aware of their,

Especially their fluid intake and that basic carbs that they need for the running.

So thank you for answering that.

That was really helpful.

As we finish up,

Sanjay,

I also wanted to briefly ask you from other projects that you're working on or things that you have upcoming that are connected to running or not that you'd like to share.

Well,

You know,

We've both been denizens of,

At least me part time,

From a small city in southern Florida,

Immokalee.

Yes.

And my first film was based on the kind of vaunted labor organizing group,

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers,

That small association of tomato pickers that have really radical,

You know,

Revolutionized,

I should say,

The way that large buyers at the top of agricultural supply chains treat their workers and ensure fair wages and fair conditions at the bottom of those supply chains.

And you and I both know that the underbelly of America has a lot of dark,

Dark secrets.

And we see that in political rhetoric and how people sidestep reality through bluster.

But at the same time,

You know,

One of the reasons why I really want to make 3100 Run and Become is because,

You know,

From just our own life experience,

How many things do we have as human beings that totally transcend barriers of language,

Ethnicity,

Culture,

Where you can go anywhere around the world and if you share this activity,

You can make a lifelong friend and never even know a word of their language.

There's two things I can think of that are just that democratic and that human.

It's eating like you can go have a great meal in any country and not speak the language,

Point at things,

Have a grand old time on both sides.

And number two,

Running.

You can go to almost any city and find a group that runs and you go and you run with them.

You don't need to talk.

But afterwards,

You know,

You're their sister,

You're their brother.

And it's those types of activities that God,

This country,

This world needs to number one,

Appreciate and value and needs to do more of.

So I've got this weird thread in my filmmaking career of either doing food films or sports films.

Yeah.

And food chains is,

By the way,

For listeners,

The one that's based in Immokalee and was done when I was there teaching and working with the community there.

And I know it's true to what was happening there.

And it's an amazing recognition of what those people go through and how our food is chained,

How it gets to us.

So it's really,

Really great to be able to,

You know,

Just to have you do both an eating film,

One making us think about food and a running film,

Making us think about our daily practice of running.

So I can't thank you enough,

Sanjay,

For your films and for your presence and,

Of course,

For your continuing social justice work,

Which I think,

You know,

As you've said before,

We're all called to do when we realize our connection to each other.

So thank you.

Well,

Mark,

Let me know when you're up in New York City.

I don't find myself in southern Florida nearly as much as I used to,

But hoping that you have some time next time you're up in the city.

And we'll do some laps around the 3100 mile course and we could pretend,

At least for those few minutes,

That we're the best in the world.

Wow,

I would love that Sanjay,

Thanks.

I'll make it a point to be up there.

I have a few good friends in Brooklyn that I need to visit.

So I look forward to that.

Awesome.

I really,

Really appreciate your time and the opportunity to be up there.

Thanks Sanjay.

I appreciate having you.

And please keep me updated if,

You know,

New things are happening and you'd like to share about them.

I'd love to help you share them.

I'm grateful for that.

And I'll definitely reach back out.

Thank you,

Mark.

Thank you.