The Barkley Marathons are not for the fainthearted.
The notoriously gruelling race takes place every year off-trail in Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park, towards the tail end of the brutal winter months. The unmarked 160-kilometre course changes each time, and participants must rely solely on a paper map to navigate.
It has a 60 hour time limit to complete five loops – each of them around 32 kilometres, with around 4000 metres of elevation gain.
Only 20 people have ever completed all five full loops of the Barkley since 1986.
Last weekend, two of these people made history in doing so, as Greig Hamilton and Jasmin Paris became the first New Zealander and first woman to complete it, respectively.
"It's hard. Once you're out there, it then becomes a job," said friend of Hamilton, Matt Bixley.
Bixley, a member of the Peninsula and Plains Orienteers club alongside Hamilton, attempted the Barkley in 2015.
For him, it was somewhere along the third loop when the event lost some of its shine.
"I started thinking: 'I'm not having fun anymore and I'm not gonna finish'," he said.
While Bixley was no stranger to running hundreds of kilometres, it was the elevation that was the challenge.
"It's steep, and you're just going up and downhill the whole time and that takes a toll.
"I was mentally checked out, so I quit".
"For Greig, that point would've been quite a bit further on".
The race was created in 1986 by Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell, and according to Bixley, seems designed to push people to their physical and mental limits.
"Sixty hours starts getting to the end of when you really need to sleep. Going one night and going the next day is easy, anyone can do that".
He said it's during the second night when people really start to struggle.
"[Cantrell's] mindset is to do things to help people find their deepest fears and weaknesses and he tries to extract that out of people".
That part is exemplified by the titles of the books laid out at regular intervals around the course, from which racers must tear out a page corresponding to their race bib number.
"The books have bizarre titles, like there'll be one called 'No Escape' or 'You Think This is Hard?' or 'No Place to Die'," Bixley said.
“There was a guy a few years ago, a Canadian, Gary Roberts. He was disqualified anyway because he went the wrong way, but he nearly finished the five loops, but he got around six seconds over the time limit.
“The following year, the first book was called Six Seconds".
All of this is set against the “stunningly beautiful” backdrop of Frozen Head State Park, which conceals the brutal reality of the race.
"It's coming out of winter, and it's brown and grey… it's naked and raw and there’s beautiful rock features.”
It's one of the many quirks of the Barkley, which can start any time between midnight and noon on race day, with a conch being blown an hour before it begins. The race officially kicks off when Cantrell lights a cigarette.
"It’s always a Camel".
Entering the race is almost as tricky as running it, with no official website or public information indicating when applications open. Budding participants must pay US$1.60 (NZ$2.66) as an entry fee, and also submit an essay on why they should be allowed to enter.
“Then you get an invite (editor’s note: this is officially a letter of condolence from Cantrell). Even when I got one, I didn't get told the race date. I got told a certain time, relative to another time, and I had to work that s*** out,” Bixley recalled.
“I’m flying halfway around the world… everything’s about mental pressure.”
Only 35 people run the Barkley every year. Between 2018 and 2022, there were no finishers.
History was made at the 2024 event, as UK runner Jasmin Paris became the first woman ever to complete all five loops.
Paris recalled hallucinating as she approached the yellow gate for the final time.
"I saw quite a lot of people in black mackintoshes," she told the Guardian.
“They were climbing the same hill as me, always a certain distance ahead. And it was bizarre, they all had a sinister foreboding feel to them.”
She finished with a time of 59 hours, 58 minutes and 21 seconds – just 99 seconds before the cut-off.
“When I got about eight minutes out, I suddenly thought I really might not do it,” she said.
“I had about a kilometre to go but up a hill. I was so desperate to stop. But my mind was telling me: ‘If you don’t make this, you will have to do it all over again’.”
So, another year of the Barkley winds up, the world’s best runners head home, and the mastermind behind the race, Lazarus Lake, presumably begins planning next year’s event and how he can make it even harder for anyone brave enough to enter in 2025.
Despite all this, Bixley said ever since Hamilton’s achievement, the Barkley is beckoning once more.
“I’ve had a message from him asking me ‘what bloody excuse I’ve got now for my lack of training’,” he laughed.
“I’m 52 now but I reckon I’ve got another one in me.
“I’d like to go back.”
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