I recently watched the documentary The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (2014). I first heard about the Barkley run from friends several years ago. When they first started telling me about it I thought, “Oh, I absolutely have to do this!” But the more they told me and the more I later researched what this thing was all about, the more I thought, “Oh, I absolutely will NEVER do this.”
In 1977, several inmates escaped from a Tennessee prison into the surrounding Brushy Mountain range. Amongst the break out was James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. A massive manhunt ensued, one that predicted a quick recapture of the escapees. But as hours dragged into days, the search grid expanded exponentially and fears that the men had made better time grew. Ultimately however, Ray was recaptured 54 hours later, buried in leaves, dehydrated, and not more than 8 miles from the prison.
Watching this unfold was Tennessee native Lazarus Lake (AKA Gary Cantrell), a man who looks like a slightly more svelte and rascally Uncle Jesse from TV’s Dukes of Hazzard. He was one of the first ultra trail marathoners in the world and exudes a hillbilly persona, going so far as to claim moonshine as a preferred aid station resource during a trail run. Incredulous that Ray only made it 8 miles in 54 hours, Lake devised a way to mock the gunman – he’d design a trail marathon that tested the mettle of the craziest of runners and put the terrain to the test. What he created became the Barkley Marathon, a five loop course in and around Frozen State Park in Wartburg, TN, with a hard cutoff time of 60 hours.
But it’s not just any loop course. For one, there is no trail, no demarcated course. Each year, Lake and his cohorts including Ed Furtaw, change the distance, route, elevation gains, and checkpoints, especially if they think it’s getting “too easy.” Too easy is of course relative as since its founding in 1986, only 15 people have ever finished the race. Most drop out long before the first milestone goal of hitting three loops which is dubbed a “fun run” by veterans. Each loop is billed as 20 miles though runners swear the distance is more like 26. Two loops are run clockwise, then two counterclockwise, then the last alternates between participants. The net elevation gain if you complete all five loops is the same as climbing and descending Mt. Everest… twice.
Only 40 runners get in each year, having submitted to secret initiation rituals including a written exam, a $1.60 entry fee, a license plate from your home state, and an item of Lake’s choosing each year (for example one year it was a white collared shirt as he needed one; another year he was low on socks, thus a pair was a requirement for starting). Participants who do get in are sent a letter of condolence. It’s weird, silly, goofy, and in the wrong frame of mind incredibly petty and annoying.
The documentary includes a disclaimer at the onset – the truth is malleable. I fervently believe that. At the same time, the whole thing is so incredible, so weird and so “out there,” that part of me wonders if the whole “secret society” and “initiation rites” to get into the thing aren’t part and parcel of an elaborate hoax… I found myself wondering if I weren’t watching a runner’s version of Orson Welles’ F is For Fake (1973). But there’s too much, too many details and too many mundane details that make it seem all too real. The documentary’s final revelation involves where the name came from – what exactly is the Barkley in the Barkley Marathons? The answer is so anticlimactic and simple that it really must be true. You wouldn’t make it up because it’s too boring – but as truth, it’s interesting.
And that’s the case with the details of the race itself. Lake (or Cantrell or whatever the guy wants to be called) warns viewers that there are a number of things people have to do to get invited to the race and if people have trouble doing those things, they will definitely have trouble with the race itself. I don’t know if putting up with whims of a crazed, wily fox of a man prepares you for what the Barkleys entail but you have to admire the PT Barnum-ish bravado.
The race is held annually in late March or early April. A 12-hour window for the start time is announced and as runners converge on the state park, they are given access to one copy of the master map. Each runner is responsible for transcribing the map onto their own pocket maps and scribbling down such “useful” advice as “keep right at the four trunk tree…” which I would find difficult to ascertain in a forest of trees. Hilariously, the documentary crew, in the interests of preserving the purity of the event, digitally blur the maps and the handouts to participants so as to dissuade wannabe Barkleyers from trying to scout the courses in advance of their attempts.
Sometime in the 12-hour window, and it varies from year-to-year, Lake/Cantrell blows a conch shell to indicate a one-hour warning to race start. This has been at midnight, 7 AM, noon, etc. An hour later, at a yellow gate in the state park’s parking lot, the official start occurs when Lake/Cantrell lights his cigarette.
What transpires next on the course is brutal by any definition. There are 11 checkpoints along the way, each with a unique book that a runner must tear out a page number to correspond to their loop’s bib number. Titles in previous years have been “The Idiot,” “Damnation” and “Paradise Lost.” If you were bib #23 on the first loop, you’d tear out page 23 from each of the 11 books along the course, and return them at loop’s end for verification. It’s a useful feature for runners to know they’re still on the right course and it’s a check for race organizers to make sure the runners haven’t missed any of the course, either by unintentional shortcut or malfeasance. The course includes runner named obstacles and points of interest, things like pillars of doom or rat jaw. Rat jaw is an out and back section that on a map looks like a rat’s head and features briar patches that scratch legs with the furious vengeance of a pack of marauding rodents. Sounds like fun, huh?
So after hearing all of this, I was pretty sure I never wanted to face such a ludicrous challenge. But I was intrigued to know more. Yesterday, after my running debacle, I opted to treat myself to this movie. I had long hoped to see it pop up on Netflix or at the library but finally plunked down $6.99 for it on iTunes. I’m sure it’ll be on Amazon Prime or available for free any day now… that seems to be what happens here.
Nonetheless, for essentially 4.5 times the entry fee to the Barkley, I got to see what I was missing. Some of the participants are featured in these before and after pictures which show the toll the race takes.
The film itself has some structural issues I wasn’t completely sold on; there’s storytelling choices that I understand the rationale behind but felt could’ve better served the narrative flow by folding the backstories in a little differently. The footage is rather astonishing, the logistics and revelations are interesting even if at times they are as I said mundane and small. I wish the filmmakers had delved a little deeper into the psyches of those that are running – there’s some superficial discussion over the drive to compete, to push one’s limits, to see how far is too far, but I feel like there were missed opportunities to explore not only the runners’ dreams/insanity but also that of their friends and family who came along to support them.
Knowing what I know about me, I think I’d do terrible at this event. I’d have problems with the arbitrary application process, the lack of course markings, and my orienteering skills peaked in the 7th grade during a weeklong camping trip to Cape Henlopen. Again, I can’t quite shake the feeling this is all an elaborate ruse and I have little patience for such things. It’s why I hated the Museum of Jurassic Technology (LINK: http://www.mjt.org/). It’s why I hate fraternities, sororities, and the Skull and Crossbones, as they have what I perceive to be their secret handshakes and elitist worldviews.
Yet I’m still somewhat drawn to such things if only from an anthropological standpoint. And I’m still drawn to the Barkley. I can’t imagine ever actually doing it… but I can certainly imagine trying. Like the cave on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back, what runners discover at the Barkley Marathon is only what they take with them. There’s something to be said for that… and for the aforementioned quest for pushing the limits of what each of us are capable of doing.
I’ve already put aside $1.60 and I do have an old license plate from when I moved across the country.
Hmmmm….