[terran57]

As someone who's done a couple of ultramarathons, my first reaction is "That's crazy."

However, the title of the race does have "Transcendence" in there, so it seems a primary motivating factor is to see if you can put yourself into that state of transcendence for the duration.

[jfengel]

One thing you discover once you start to look into ultras: no matter how crazy you are, there's somebody out there who's crazier.

This particular crazy is the Sri Chinmoy's whole schtick: they treat running as a form of meditation. And it turns out that it's actually possible to just keep running, as long as you don't worry about how insanely boring it is and ignore how much it hurts.

You do have to learn to distinguish between the pain which indicates actual damage being done, and how much is just your muscles saying, "Surely we have something better to do with our time." They do races like this on a track, which is even more insanely boring, and they have to switch directions every so often to even out the repetitive stress.

I know them only by reputation, but they seem harmless. Weird, but all us distance runners are weird.