The Suffering and Hope of the Barkley Marathons
Around 9:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday, March 30, 2019, a man nicknamed Lazarus Lake lit a cigarette and started one of the most grueling, ridiculous, unpredictable, challenging, painful races in the world.
The Barkley Marathons is an ultra marathon that is billed at 100 miles (likely closer to 130 miles). The time limit of the race is 60 hours. Many 100 (or even 130) mile races can be completed in 18-36 hours by elite athletes. Not this one. This one takes place in Tennessee's Frozen Head State Park, a mountainous mess of unpredictable weather and unforgiving terrain.
While the terrain, distance, and time limit are certainly challenging, what sets the Barkley apart from other races that claim to be the most challenging is the unpredictability, the ridiculous hoops runners must jump through.
The race only allows 40 runners and applying to get in is a mystery, a secret combination of knowing the right email address and the right day to send the email to apply.
After the application is correctly submitted, applicants must write an essay (among other unorthodox steps) about why they should be allowed to run the Barkley. It's more like applying for college or a reality TV show than applying to run a race.
After a runner is accepted, he or she receives a letter of condolence. And the nonsense continues.
The race doesn't have a start time. It begins between midnight and noon on a Saturday, typically the one closest to April 1.
The announcement of the race starting in one hour is the blowing of a conch shell.
Runners can not use a phone, GPS, altimeter, or any technology other than an extremely basic watch that is given to them by the race director.
The course is not marked. While some of it is on state park trails, much of it is on paths known to none.
The race director has a list of course instructions that read like you're talking to your Uncle Larry about how to find the deer he just shot in the woods. (Take a left after the big rock and walk until you see a tree that looks like an anteater, then turn right, not when you get to the anteater tree, but when you first see it...). Runners must try to interpret these instructions onto a map to figure out where to go.
The course changes at least a bit year after year. (Let the reader understand: becomes harder.)
The way runners must prove they ran the course is to find around a dozen books strewn strategically through the course and hidden in trees, rocks, and other random places. Runners must tear out the page that matches their bib number.
On top of all this, there are no aid stations on the course. There is one place with gallons of water, but runners must carry whatever aid they need for 7-14 hours at a time. They cannot receive or leave behind anything on the course. When they are "out there" on the course, they are on their own.
Once that is all over and the runners have touched the iconic yellow gate, the runners have finished one loop, one of five loops. They have to go do it again. Four. More. Times. If runners make it to a fifth loop (a rare occasion indeed), they'll run three loops in one direction, two loops in the other direction. (Which loops go which way is also unpredictable from year to year.)
Once in the camp area between loops, the runners can receive aid from their crew - limited to two people in recent years. They eat thousands of calories, do surgery to their undoubtedly disgusting feet, try to patch up their wounds from the numerous piercing briers on the course, repack all that they need for the next loop, and head back out for more pain and suffering within minutes. In later loops, runners will occasionally try to get a nap, almost always less than an hour.
In 33 years, there have been 15 finishers. One person has finished twice. One person has finished three times. 18 finishes in 33 years.
What makes the Barkley so hard in the end is all the uncertainty. The physical anguish and sleep deprivation can be found in other races. The uncertainty and inability to control and prepare anything makes Barkley the most fascinating race in the world.
Barkley is one of those challenges that is at the perfect point of attainability, beyond the reach of only a few people in the entire world. It's one of those creations that forces humanity to stretch itself, to truly test the limits of human endurance, suffering, toughness, and flexibility. It seeks to set a carrot out there so far from attainable that is thought to be impossible until one crazed soul dares to redefine impossible.
The Barkley dares humanity to be better.
But I think the thing that I love about it the most is that it also encourages humanity to cheer for one another in hope. There's no way I could ever finish the Barkley. Even if I dedicated my entire life to ultra running I still would never finish. But I can follow this race from a distance in the hope that someone will be able to conquer all of the uncertainty, endure all of the suffering, and finish.
The Barkley produces hope for humanity that comes to us in the only way that hope ever comes, through pain and suffering.
The Apostle Paul talks about this in Romans 5 as he writes that "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."
And around this progression from suffering to hope we find a context that guides us to a new approach to life, an approach that takes on suffering not as something to be avoided, but something to be rejoiced in because it leads to hope. And hope does not put us to shame. Hope is not something to be hidden. Hope is something to be shown off. Since suffering leads to hope, it too is meant not to be hidden, not to be covered up because of stigma. Suffering is blessed because Christ suffered and we share in His sufferings, so too we share in His hope, hope for a life beyond suffering.
The Barkley is nearly sacramental in its sum of significant suffering and precious little hope, in its inspiration to redefine the impossible. It echoes a hope that on the third day someone will appear from "out there" alive.
This post originally appeared on my Patreon account where I will be shifting the majority of my writing over the next several months. You can find that here: patreon.com/c3pojones
