The Barkley Marathons are bizarre in their organization and extreme in their distance: This year has been completed by someone for the first time since 2017
by Gabriele Gargantini
The Barkley Marathon is an annual race in which participants attempt to run 100 miles — but likely more — with a minimum elevation gain of 60,000 feet: like climbing, descending, and climbing Mount Everest starting from sea level. They try to run because very few can; the difference in altitude is at least 18,000 meters because the race is not driven on pre-defined paths or a predetermined route. To understand where they are going, the participants, who have to make it in less than 60 hours, have a meager map given to them before departure, but they cannot use smartphones or GPS devices.
The Barkley Marathons, held each year at Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, are many things together. One of the most extreme physical challenges in the world, but also a quirky event that begins with a bearded gentleman lighting the first of many cigarettes about an hour after blowing a conch shell. An increasingly well-known competition, but also a very private event, without official channels and without sponsors, which costs one dollar and 60 cents to enter. A race that is very difficult to enter and almost impossible to finish. The news for this year is that someone has succeeded: the last time this happened was in 2017.
The bearded gentleman is Gary Cantrell, better known as Lazarus Lake or just “Laz”. In the 1970s, Cantrell, now almost 70, was an employee and passionate about ultramarathons (running races over distances greater than marathons) and ultratrails (ultramarathons on trails, usually with thousands of vertical meters).
Not finding many around him, Cantrell began organizing ultramarathons and in 1986 he organized the first Barkley marathons. Marathons because it was a lot of marathons, Barkley from the last name of a friend of his who died a few years ago. The idea of trail racing in the mountains of Tennessee came to him when he read about the failed escape of James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King’s assassin, in 1977. Ray had escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, a prison in western Tennessee, and when he attempted to escape into the mountains, he had covered twenty miles in over fifty hours before being recaptured. Cantrell thought it could be done much better.
Between 1986 and 1995, no one managed to finish the Barkley Marathons, contributing to Cantrell being dubbed the “Leonardo Da Vinci of suffering.” While Cantrell organized other equally bizarre and extreme races like the Backyard Ultra over the years, the Barkley Marathons became known first in the ever-growing ultra running niche and then even beyond, largely thanks to the non-industry media thanks to the documentary film Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young filmed in 2014 and available on Netflix. Running is also the subject of Les Finisseurs, a recent photo book by Alexis Berg.
Despite its growing notoriety, the Barkley Marathon has remained true to its origins and this year, in its 35th edition, has retained most of its traditions.
With no real official site and no other direct channels, registering for the Barkley Marathons is something quite obscure, involving a lot of work and, if possible, seeking advice and guidance from someone who has already run it. Moreover, given the way the event is made and narrated, it is not easy to orient oneself among the many “they say”.
In order To, you must first know to which email address the registration should be sent, which must be to the minute (notified with very short notice) of a given day. To sign up for the ten-year-old issue, the email had to be sent at midnight of Christmas: Christmas at midnight in Cantrell’s time zone. Also, a text should be sent to the address explaining why you want To and the answers to some kind of questionnaire with questions of all kinds, not all with an obvious correct answer: from «which is the main category of vegetables» to « what will be the 119th element of the periodic table». This year there was a call to rewrite the Gettysburg address in Sawveh, an ancient and undeciphered Chinese writing system.
As one contestant put it, “If you don’t want to do the research required to enter, then you certainly won’t want to enter a contest like this.”
However, the parameters that Cantrell takes into account in determining the forty participants who learn of their enrollment by receiving the so-called “condolence letter” are not clear, urging them to prepare themselves for humiliation» and untold suffering, that are difficult to compare with others.
Those chosen must then present themselves for departure, where they will traditionally bring to Cantrell (Cantrell collects them) a license plate number from their state or country of origin, in addition to the dollar and 60 cents needed to pay the entry fee, and as the case may be, other items of little value. In the event that they return to the starting line, the few who finished the race in a previous edition must bring Cantrell a pack of a specific brand of cigarettes that he likes.
At one point, Cantrell plays a large conch shell without any particular notice and, to our knowledge, for no specific reason: he can do this any time between midnight and noon on the day of departure and from the time of the sound the participants have one hour to get ready. In short, from their point of view, this means being ready to leave at any moment without really knowing how to organize yourself to manage pre-race recovery and nutrition.
The actual start, at a rather anonymous yellow bar that marks the end of a road and the start of a trail where competitors will set up camp and wait for the race to start, is when Cantrell lights a cigarette.
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A cigarette was lit #BM100 pic.twitter.com/rv6b07hhhm
– Alexis Berg (@Bergalx) March 14, 2023
The route changes every year but always consists of five laps, each of between thirty and forty kilometers in length: however, since there is no right path, the length depends on how the participants move, which often and sometimes the wrong one They take the road and get lost, just as the cameraman of a documentary about the event got lost for hours. Some laps run clockwise, others anti-clockwise: on the fifth lap, the first to overtake decides how to proceed and the next in the opposite direction to avoid the second having the opportunity to follow the one ahead .
There is a simple but effective system to ensure that the participants actually walk the route: there are a few books along the route, 13 this year, with titles ranging from playful to dark, for example “Death Walks in the Forest”. Competitors must find the books using the information on the card provided at the start, then tear off the page that corresponds to a number assigned to them, which changes each round. The number 1 is assigned in the first round – by what parameters is not known – to a participant who is henceforth known as “Human Sacrifice”. Between rounds, the retrieved pages are passed to Cantrell, which reviews them all.
The books and the fact that the race is a sort of test of extreme orienteering mean that some ultra trail purists see it as a separate thing as there are no trails to follow but are generally known and appreciated those involved in ultra races, the Barkley Marathons for being a great pre-race adventure, a race that requires great physical preparation but also an unusual mental approach.
However, very few participants make it into the fifth round. In reality, many don’t even make it to the third, which is where the so-called “Fun Run” ends. The only support, and definitely minimal, is between the end of a round (which only ends when you touch the yellow gate) and the start of the next: in these moments, those who have time and want can rest or take a shower. In this year’s edition, there were those who showered and then ate while cooking between tours, and those who chose to sleep with their heads propped against one of the books to be sure of waking them up Arrival of other runners interested in opening it to rip out a page.
If someone folds out and comes back before completing a round, their return is greeted with Cantrell playing the tune heard on the trumpet at US military funerals.
Almost all that is known about a Barkley marathon is while it’s taking place He arrives from the Twitter profile of Keith Dunn, a former ultrarunner who has followed her for years. Only a few days later, reports arrived from the participants, who often report, as is common in competitions of this type, that they have had hallucinations of various kinds.
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Prove it @keithdunn is not an AI #BM100 pic.twitter.com/VhXbEpK3tD
– Alexis Berg (@Bergalx) March 16, 2023
This year’s Barkley Marathons began around 10:00 am on March 14 with eight women and thirty-two men starting, two of whom were among the few to ever finish an event. At the beginning of the fifth lap four of them were still in the race (record) and even three of them finished the race within the 60-hour time limit. First was 32-year-old Frenchman Aurélien Sanchez in 58 hours, 23 minutes and 12 seconds; in second place, but from the opposite direction, came American John Kelly, who had already finished a Barkley marathon in 2017. Third and last to finish the race in 59 hours and 53 minutes was Belgian dentist Karl Sabbe. If it had lasted just eight minutes longer, it would not have been considered because Cantrell is inflexible when it comes to maximum times. However, the winner won nothing as there are no prizes at the Barkley Marathons.
Sanchez, Kelly and Sabbe are among the approximately 2 percent of participants who can claim to have completed a Barkley marathon in the past three decades.
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Last night was an unforgettable night. Three finishers. Three names in the history of Barkley. Aurelien Sanchez. John Kelly. Karl Sabba. #BM100 pic.twitter.com/HcweBoVium
– Alexis Berg (@Bergalx) March 17, 2023
Also this year, the US-American Jasmin Paris started as the second woman ever in a fourth round in a less difficult edition due to the climatic conditions.
Aside from cases of contestants being lost and found after hours (one of whom had asked for directions to a trash can) and in addition to the problems this year stemming from a hiker moving one of the books from which he wanted to remove the pages Barkley marathons are generally free of serious problems since only the participants are present and only know what they are doing anyway.
There aren’t too many criticisms of the race being too difficult in general either: “It’s very easy to design an impossible race, and it’s very easy to make a race that anyone can finish,” Cantrell agreed Outside impossible is just very, very close, and there’s the Barkley Marathons.”
– Also read: The toughest bike race ever
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