Andrea back from an off day
Race Director's Snippets: When the morning crew arrived at the race on Wednesday, Day 11, one of the handlers noticed on the daily print out of the runner’s mileage that Andrea had only done 53 miles the previous day, Tuesday. We all thought that there must have been some typo. Since the start of the race Andrea did not take even one break! We tried contacting Medur, who is in charge of the daily mileage results but there was no reply. Arpan, Andrea’s main helper, was out of town for 3 days, but, low and behold, he arrived at the race around 7 am Wednesday morning. It turns out that Andrea was feeling very sluggish on Tuesday, as he was on his own most of the day. Andrea did not want to bother Arpan about his problem as he knew he was out of town, so he reached out to some of his friends around the world, literally. As it turned out, these friends contacted Arpan about Andrea’s sluggishness. Arpan immediately called Andrea and told him not to worry about his mileage and be happy, exactly the same advice Guru had given Arpan in one of his two attempt at 3100 miles. So Arpan returned to Queens late that night, gave Andrea another pep talk, some calcium and magnesium, and a thorough massage of his legs.
Andrea was back on the course the next day (Wednesday) as good as new.
When we are having a bad day there is no scoreboard that reflects our struggle, that everyone can see. But for the runners their bad day is there for the whole world to examine, as was the case with Andrea. The Master’s advice: not to worry and be happy.
Rupantar, Wednesday, 14 September
Day Ten photos by Alakananda
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