Barkley race, a bit of a tough race.
Editor's note: this article was first published on Jolie Foulée in November 2014. Figures and results are those of the time.
Billed as the hardest race on the planet, the Barkley is a proper race for nutters. A race for which participants, men and women alike, had better not leave their cojones at home. The athletes who head to Frozen Head in Tennessee to line up for it face a pile-up of difficulties that makes their chances of finishing tiny. Since it was created in 1986, out of 1,000 lunatics who have started the race, only 14 hotshots can boast of being Barkley finishers. Created by the mischievous and enigmatic Laz, the Barkley also stands apart for its spirit and the values it calls on. A clever mix of irony, solidarity and pushing yourself that gives the Barkley its particular charm. More than an immensely hard race, it's the craziest race in the world.
Prison, $1.60 and a letter of condolence
On 10 June 1977, James Earl Ray, sentenced to 99 years in prison for assassinating Martin Luther King, escaped from Brushy Mountain penitentiary in Tennessee. He was caught 3 days later in the forest, 8 miles from the prison. Gary Cantrell (aka Lazarus Lake, or “Laz”) knows the area around Brushy Mountain well, as he goes hiking there. So he found Earl Ray's performance pretty ridiculous: just 8 miles in 3 days. He decided to organise a race in the area to find out how far you can get in 60 hours.
The Barkley was born in 1986, and the entry process has stayed the same ever since. First, you have to manage to get in touch with Laz: no date, no address, no official website. It takes long hours of investigation just to submit an application. If it's accepted, big Lazarus sends the future participant a letter of condolence in which he apologises in advance for selecting them, since they're about to be put through terrible suffering. To confirm your entry, no need for a fucking medical certificate, just $1.60, a licence plate from where you come from and an essay on the topic “Why I should be allowed to run the Barkley”. No need to spend a fortune to take part in the most demanding race in the world.
A bastard of a course
Every year, Laz takes a wicked pleasure in cooking up an ever more hardcore course. In under 60 hours, athletes must complete 5 loops of around 32 km, so 170 km in total. The elevation gain is worthy of the most famous ultra-trails: 20,000 m of climbing. The terrain is also particularly hostile: most of the route isn't on paths but through brambles or over rock, and it even goes through a tunnel under the prison. Finally, nothing is marked: runners navigate by compass to the 13 checkpoints (where they must tear out the page matching their bib number from 13 books hidden at different spots along the course). The average speed of runners at the Barkley is 5 km/h.
Light up and off you go
The Barkley is also extreme because of the conditions the runners are thrown into and the psychological pressure that lovely lunatic Lazarus puts on them. The course (changed every year) is only revealed the day before the race. There's no set start time: whenever he feels like it (in the middle of the night), the bearded man blows his horn, and from then on the runners have an hour to get ready. The clock starts when Laz lights his first cigarette of the day. While they'll face heat on the summits, sub-zero temperatures (down to -10°C) and try to grab a few minutes' sleep in a car boot over 3 days, the runners get just two aid stations on the course. No bananas, gingerbread, saucisson, Coke or energy drinks: just two water points, and that's already something. The third of the five loops is run in reverse, just to scramble the bearings of anyone still in the race by then.
“At some point, quitting was the only option...”
If taking part in the Barkley is already an achievement, every loop completed is a victory. Finishing the race is close to unreal: more astronauts have walked on the Moon than athletes have completed the Barkley Marathons. There's not much room for competitive spirit at Frozen Head. The community of runners who gather there is more about sharing and solidarity, humility in the face of nature and admiration for those who manage to push their limits the furthest. All in the same boat, they try to prove their friend Laz wrong. As Jared Campbell, 2012 Barkley finisher and winner of the 2014 edition, puts it so well, “we're always at the limit of what's humanly possible”. Michiel Panhuysen, who came over from Holland for his third Barkley, had to give up once again this year. “At some point, quitting was the only option...” he says, both disappointed and relieved. He pays a fine tribute to Jared: “we quit, but the ones who don't get it finish”. Next year the bar will be even higher, as Lazarus Lake will want to see whether Jared Campbell (or another madman) can achieve the impossible, so we wish Michiel and all future Barkley runners the best of luck.
For those who want to soak up a bit more of the Barkley atmosphere (and for the lazy little sods who can't be bothered to read the article), we highly recommend the excellent report by the Intérieur Sport team (in French) and, in English, the documentary by American filmmaker Brendan Young. These films will help you get to know Laz, Jared, Michiel, the other runners and Frozen Head park a little better:
http://player.canalplus.fr/embed/?param=cplus&vid=1082066
Barkley 100 from Zephyr on Vimeo.