Latest news

24 Hour Races

Recently, the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team promoted a 24 hour race in Tooting Bec, London. The race was won Richard Quennell of Rugby and Northampton A.C. with a distance of 145 miles. 76 year old.

Runners in 24 Hour Race

Geoff Oliver, completed a distance of 111 miles 285 yards (178.898km), which subject to confirmation is a world best performance for over 75 years track. The leading women Aileen Scott from Glasgow’s Clydesdale Harriers with 117 miles.

The aim of a 24 Hour Race is to run as far as possible, round a 400 metre track. Each time a runner passes by the lap is noted by his counter. Each 24 hour race requires a dedicated team of helpers - cooks, counters, support e.t.c.

[caption id="attachment_500" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Joy of Counting"]

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Why Run 24 Hour Races?

A 24 hour race provides the runner with a great opportunity to transcend and compete with themselves running further before. It is not just a physical challenge but also a great inner challenge.

Sri Chinmoy, the founder of the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team, was a great believer in the benefits of long distance running.

There is also a great atmosphere at 24 hour races, with a feeling of cooperation and challenge.

24 Hour Race Report at Sri Chinmoy Races by Abichal Watkins
The Counting Shed - an experience of a counter at a 24 Hour Race, by Sumangali Morhall

Secrets of Meditation

Jogyata Dallas of Auckland, New Zealand has written an entertaining and insightful look at meditation, in a recent set of articles entitled - Seven Secrets of Meditation he explains some of the essential aspects of a successful meditation practice. These include sincerity, aspiration and the spiritual heart.

"Meditation is man's thirst for the Infinite Real, Eternal Real and Absolute Real. The secret of meditation is to achieve conscious and constant oneness with God."

- Sri Chinmoy

Sri Chinmoy Heart Garden Race

On October 10th 2009, a Two Mile Race was held in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York to celebrate the anniversary of the Sri Chinmoy Heart Garden.

Participants were joined by several Olympians, including track and field legend Carl Lewis, Russian runner Olesya Zykina and New York Athletic Club founder Bill Lumpp. Local Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows) was also present saying of the event:

“This race and this day are yet another example of the boundless inspiration that Sri Chinmoy has always provided to those who are young at heart,”

Start of the Race

Before the Start

Sri Chinmoy Street

Photos by Jowan

Overcoming Anxiety

"...If we identify ourselves with something divine, eternal and immortal, then naturally the hidden essence and quality of that particular thing will enter into us. By worrying all the time or by thinking undivine thoughts, we will never move towards our goal. We will enter into divinity only by having positive thoughts: "I am of God. I am for God." If we think this, then there can be no worry, no anxiety..."

- Sri Chinmoy

From: Yoga of Sri Chinmoy - Worries and Anxieties

The latest edition of Meditation Silence is titled 'Moving from Worry to Confidence'. Sri Chinmoy speaks how a life of meditation can help overcome worries and anxiety.

Related

Article 8 Ways to deal with worries by Abhinabha Tangerman

Tips on organising Events and News items in your site

Before hand there were many different types of content - including Page, Event and News item. Now there is only one content type (Page) with the option to mark that Page as an 'event' or a 'news item'.

This gives increased flexibility to the content editor:

when the race is over, some people might like to modify their 'event' page to become a 'news' page
whereas others might like to create a completely new page to put their results or race reports in and mark that page as a 'news' page instead.

Whatever way you do it, there should be only one 'upcoming event' page for each event on the site at any one time. Having 'Upcoming events' pages for 2005,2006,2007 looks pretty bad, and they are mostly just copies of each other anyway (and if they arent, then people run the risk of getting outdated information). It is better to either:

Convert the event into a news item, and add your news and results above the existing content. This can be a quick and easy way to display results. Then you either create a new events page next year, or move the results off somewhere else.
Or just create an entirely new news/results page, and change the date of your existing event to next year. That way, you use the same event page every year and it can be your 'landing page' for that event. If you choose this option, then your URL should not have the year in it.

The news items on the other hand can be very easily organised by year, and have the year in the URL

British-French Joy Weekend in France

On the weekend of September 26-27, the Marseille Sri Chinmoy Centre hosted a British-French Joy Day Weekend. Members of the British, French, Irish, and Italian Sri Chinmoy Centres gathered in Villeneuve-Loubet on the south coast of France for a weekend of meditation, fun and music.

The beautiful venue for the British-French Joy Day on the Cote D'Azur drew additional visitors from varied countries - Singapore, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Iceland and Switzerland to name a few. All functions, meals and meditations were held outside in a vacation apartment residence with a view of the Mediterranean from the apartment balconies. The beach and sea - walking distance from the apartments - served as a delightful venue for games and swimming.

Games on the Beach on the Coast of France

Performances included three magic acts - Robert from Prague, Czech Republic, Tulasi from Wien, Austria and Oindrajalik from Marseille, France.

Three Magicians Perform at French Joy Day

Musicians from France, the UK and Italy performed and a humorous play with Sahadeva, Devashishu and Suswara helped put the joy in "Joy Day". An early morning race in a local nature park rounded out the Joy Day festivities.

Criteria for pages to appear on global home page

The global front page is no longer manually updated - this means that country editors now have the responsibility of marking their event or news item so that it will appear on the front page.

Upcoming events

To appear on the global front page, events must have the following

Pages must be marked as an 'upcoming event'
The start date must be specified, and also the end date if applicable.
The city must be specified.
For non-English countries, there is an 'English title' field to fill in for the event, it will appear in the front page listings instead of the title. There is also an 'English city' field you can use if the name of your city is different in your native language.

As you can see, there is one item at the top of the list which has an an image and a short description For an item to be considered for this top spot, there must be in addition:

an image uploaded
a 'teaser' in English (if you are from another country, you can uncheck the 'Show summary in full view' box so the teaser doesn't display on the event page)

For latest news, the pages must be marked as 'latest news', otherwise the same criteria apply as for events.

Important note: very often you will need to create more than one page for a recent event (e.g a seperate results page and race report). In that case, just mark one of them as a news item - the one you want your visitors to see first.

More on news items: http://www.srichinmoycentre.org/marking-page-news-item-races-site

Thank you....

Thank you for taking the time to adjust to this new system - we feel it will really help site visitors to see the global nature of Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team events :)

Contact the Sri Chinmoy Centre