The Barkley Marathons is considered one of the hardest 100 milers in ultrarunning. In it's 25 year history, only 10 runners have completed the 5 loop course that has approximately 59,000 feet of climbing and a cut off time of 60 hours.
Held in Frozen Head State Park near Wartburg, Tennessee at the end of March or early April there is no set race time to start. That is decided by Lazarus Lake at his leisure notifying runners that they have 1 hour to the start with a blow of a conch shell, and once runners begin, they must seek out various checkpoint and tear out the page from a book that corresponds to their bib number. Of course, after the completion of each lap the runner is given a new bib number.
I recently came across a project that is being funded via Kickstarter by a couple of people looking to make a documentary about the history and race that is The Barkley Marathons - The Trail That Eats Its Young.
4 comments:
Thanks so much for the shout out Mike! The story of the Barkley, Laz, and the amazing runners who participate are all going to make this a very compelling film.
We really hope we make it to our goal so that we can share it with everyone!
Annika & Tim
Thanks so much for the shout out Mike! The story of the Barkley, Laz, and the amazing runners who participate are all going to make this a very compelling film.
We really hope we make it to our goal so that we can share it with everyone!
Annika & Tim
Thanks for your support Mike!
The story of the Barkley, Laz, and the amazing runners who participate are going to make a very compelling story.
We hope to make it to our goal so that we can share it with everyone!
Annika & Tim
Nice link, Mike!
I had the pleasure of finishing the fun run back in 2001, just making it in under the cutoff of 40 hours, by just 8 minutes!
Nice to see the run getting some recognition, but I hope it doesn't change the flavor of the event.
I know one thing, I have never had the desire to go back after those 39 hours and 52 minutes of about 60 miles of hell! ;-)
Good job on the blog and podcast, after hearing the latest pod, I'm going to buy some Chia gels and try it in my next 50 next month.
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