His clothes are soaking and he
desperately sucks at the air. His
wife weeps as she huddles with
him. Above them stands
a bearded igure in a wide-
brimmed hat and a worn-out
oilskin duster.
“I got all my pages!” pleads
the man. His voice is shrill. “I
dropped down the wrong side of
the mountain in the fog. I had to
swim a river.” He gasps for air. “I
got all my pages!”
Onlookers glance from the
broken man on the ground to the
inscrutable face of the bearded
man. “He got all his pages,”
repeats a voice in the crowd.
“He got all his pages.”
For most of us, the 42.195km
of a marathon are the epitome
of athletic endurance. But for
others, there are ultramarathons,
which stretch to 160km or more
through some of the world’s
least hospitable regions. The
Marathon des Sables is a s
ix-day, 250km race across
the Sahara Desert. The
Hardrock 160km run across
Colorado’s avalanche-prone
San Juan mountains.
Then there are the Barkley
Marathons. Oicially, the race
consists of ive loops totalling
160km through Frozen Head
State Park, Tennessee, but most
participants believe it’s closer
to 210km. Runners must ascend
and descend about 37,000m
of elevation – the equivalent
of climbing up and down
Everest twice – in just 60 hours.
More than 1000 people have
attempted to run it. Just 14
have inished.
It costs only $1.60 to enter.
An application must be sent to
a closely guarded email address
at precisely the right minute
on the right day, along with an
essay titled “Why I Should Be
Allowed to Run the Barkley”.
New runners, known as ‘virgins’,
must bring a licence plate from
their state or country. ‘Veterans’,
the returning runners who did
not inish, must bring an item
of clothing. One year, it was a
lannel shirt. Another year, it was
a white dress shirt. In 2017, it was
a pack of white socks. The few
who have inished the course
and are crazy enough to return,
known as ‘alumni’, need only
bring a pack of Camel cigarettes.LUST FOR FAILURE
The race can begin at any time
between midnight and noon
on the closest Saturday to April
Fool’s Day, always exactly an hour
after a conch is blown. Runners
are not given a map of the course
until the afternoon before. GPS
is forbidden.
Competitors must locate 13
books along the course and tear
out a page that corresponds to
their race number. In 2017, the
batch included Unravelled, Lost
and Found and There Is Nothing
Wrong with You: Going Beyond
Self-Hate. After each loop, the
pages are counted. There are
no aid stations. Those unable
to inish are serenaded by the
Barkley’s oicial bugler, who
plays a discordant rendition
of Taps.
“The runners come for
something they could fail at,”
says the course’s designer, GaryA man is
begging on
the side of
a Tennessee
mountain.
02GOING THE
DISTANCE
02 The oicial T-shirt of the
2017 Barkley Marathons
03 John Kelly struggles through
the brutal last kilometres
04 The Brushy Mountain
State Penitentiary
03 05 Lazarus Lake