The weather is unpredictable but generally awful, the terrain so difficult that only about a fifth is runable. The five-loop race starts whenever Cantrell (who calls himself Lazarus Lake) decides to send the signal - by blowing into a conch shell - which can be any time in a 12-hour window. This year, it was comfortable white socks. and for the 40 runners accepted - notified with a condolence letter - there’s a further payment: an item that Cantrell feels in need of. It’s run in loops - from a campsite in the park, the only place to get aid or supplies - which are marked as 32 kilometres long but runners say are closer to marathon length, about 42 kilometres. In 1986, that joke turned into the Barkley Marathons. Gary Cantrell, a local ultra runner, mocked that effort, claiming he could go at least 160 kilometres in that time.
He was on the run for nearly 60 hours and yet only managed to get 13 kilometres from the prison, on the edge of Frozen Head State Park in eastern Tennessee. In 1977, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin, James Earl Ray, escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. The Barkley was born from a prison escape. To comprehend how such a thing is even possible you have to understand a few things about the Barkley, which is as quirky as it is gruelling. In truth, he knew the far bigger problem was that he was three kilometres short of finishing the course and crossed a raging river that could easily have killed him. That Robbins - whose ultra-running pedigree is as extensive as his bushy red beard - was six seconds from becoming the first Canadian finisher of a race that only 15 people over three decades have ever completed is a story that went viral around the running world this month.īut it’s not the story Robbins wishes had been told. It’s undoubtedly one of the toughest trail races in the world. With no marked trail, runners navigate with map and compass, and tear out pages of books hidden along the route to prove they’ve been there.
That’s six seconds in a race well over 160 kilometres long, with so much uphill terrain that it’s the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest twice. One, two, three, four, five, six seconds past the 60-hour time limit, he hit the yellow gate marking the finish of the Barkley Marathons and collapsed to the ground. He was running out of time and he knew it. After running up and down mountains in the backwoods of Tennessee for three days and two nights, Gary Robbins raced as fast as his exhausted legs would carry him to the finish line.
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