When the embers glow, participants have just 60 hours to complete five rounds of the same unmarked 20 mile (give-or-take) loop: twice clockwise, twice counterclockwise, with the leading runner dictating the final loop direction – if any make it that far. “I could do at least 100,” mocked Laz.Īs is tradition, Laz lights a cigarette to kick things off – an unorthodox start for an unorthodox race. During his 55 hours of freedom, Ray covered just 12 miles of ground. “This was one of the years that the Barkley felt like an entity in itself, picking people off one at a time that you thought would finish,” says race director Gary ‘Lazarus Lake’ Cantrell (most runners just call him ‘Laz’), who co-founded the race in the decade following the 1977 breakout of Martin Luther King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, from the nearby Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. And 2022 was no exception.ĭespite no one finishing, one Barkley first-timer, Jasmin Paris, beat the clock to become the first woman in a decade to complete three loops – otherwise known as the ‘fun run’. Most years see no finishers at all in the race’s 60-hour time limit. Since its conception in 1986, only 15 runners have managed to conquer the merciless course – which features punishing sections with names such as Checkmate Hill, Little Hell, Rat Jaw and Testicle Spectacle. This year, around 40 other determined runners from around the world gathered behind the race’s famous starting line, a yellow gate, with the same hope.īut finishing the Barkley Marathons is an anomaly.
The last time someone crossed the Barkley Marathon finish line was seven years ago.Bygdell made her final preparations, packing clothes and food, and honed in on her goal of finishing the annual 100-mile ultra endurance challenge. Participants will be busy for the next few days. The best way to follow updates about the race is through the hashtag #bm100 on Twitter. The world-famous marathon, for which participants pay only the amount of one dollar, takes place annually at Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, America. If you don’t make that cut-off, you will be eliminated from the race. Not only the distance and the inhospitable area make the Barkley Marathon a real torture for participants, but also the fact that you have to start the next loop (32km) every twelve hours. Participants cover 160 kilometers over five loops, through inhospitable terrain and with a basically countless amount of altimeters. It is considered the most brutal ultrarun in the world, and that is not surprising in the past 35 years there have only been 15 finishers and furthermore all participants in the Barkley Marathon dropped out early.
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