{"id":36209,"date":"2016-12-28T03:12:59","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T08:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36209"},"modified":"2016-12-29T16:58:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-29T21:58:13","slug":"the-race-that-eats-its-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36209","title":{"rendered":"The Race that Eats its Young"},"content":{"rendered":"

I watched the documentary The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats its Young<\/a> a few months ago. It describes one of the most brutal races in the world, and follows a number of contestants as they tackle the challenge in 2012. The movie has stayed with me since then. I keep thinking back to it and wondering at the strange quirks and personal drives that compel people to do this to themselves. <\/p>\n

I know calling something “The Dark Souls of [thing]” is horribly cliché by this point, but The Barkley Marathon really is the Dark Souls of footraces. It’s a 100 mile ultramarathon race. It consists of five loops around a 20-mile course. It must be completed in 60 hours or less. The course involves a great deal of climbing and overcoming physical barriers like mud, water, rocky terrain, prickly plants, and the more general inconveniences of untamed wilderness. It has considerably more elevation change than any other 100 mile race. There are no markers denoting the boundaries of the course. Navigation is done by way of written instructions describing natural landmarks, and the course changes every year. To keep navigation interesting, runners change direction with each lap. There is no aid along the way, aside from two places where the runners can acquire water. (And on one particularly cold year, some of the water had frozen.) The race is set up so that some of the laps are run in the dark. <\/p>\n

Like all sensible sporting events, the starting signal is when host Gary Cantrell lights up a camel cigarette.<\/div>
Like all sensible sporting events, the starting signal is when host Gary Cantrell lights up a camel cigarette.<\/div><\/p>\n

The Barkley course was conceived by one Gary Cantrell. He came up with the idea when he heard about the 1977 escape of James Earl Ray<\/a> from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Ray spent 55 hours in the woods, but when he was recaptured he’d only made it about 8 miles from the prison. Cantrell – unimpressed by Ray’s low mileage – said, “I could do at least 100 miles.” So he made a 100 mile race through the woods, not far from the Penitentiary.<\/p>\n

I’m not just calling the Barkley Marathons “the Dark Souls of footraces” because it’s hard. Although to be clear: It is really, obnoxiously, unreasonably hard. The race began in 1986. Since then, over 1,000 hopeful runners have set out. To date, only 14 have finished in the allotted time. <\/p>\n

But what makes Barkley so Dark Soulsian isn’t the difficulty, but the sheer indifference<\/em> of the thing. The race doesn’t care if you finish it or not. Gary Cantrell isn’t a gleeful sadist taking joy in the suffering of the contestants. He’s also not trying to inspire people to push themselves. He’s like the classic stoic game master in a tabletop game. He doesn’t care if your character lives or dies, only that the rules are followed. In 2001, runner Blake Wood and David Horton finished the race with about an hour and a half to spare. They’d tried several times before in previous years, but this was the first time they finished the course. But then it was discovered that they had incorrectly gone 200 yards off-course at one point, following the more familiar route of previous years. Cantrell disqualified them both. Rules are rules. <\/p>\n

If Cantrell seemed at all invested in the success or failure of the contestants then I’d probably hate his guts. But his casual detachment makes him captivating. He maps out the course, sets the rules, screens the contestants, and officiates the race. But when it comes right down to it, he seems less interested in the results than in the process. The race has countless little traditions, in-jokes, habits, and rules. He creates, sustains, and propagates these customs, probably as a way of keeping himself amused while he’s sitting around base camp during a lap, waiting to see who makes it and who bails. <\/p>\n

The race is about to start. Statistically, basically none of these people will last all the way to the end.<\/div>
The race is about to start. Statistically, basically none of these people will last all the way to the end.<\/div><\/p>\n

The entry procedure is secret. You have to email the race director (what’s his email?) on a certain day (what day?) of the year, and you must submit your qualifications (how?) in order to have a chance at winning one of the limited number of slots in the race. In 2010 there were about 200 entries and only 35 were accepted. None of this is explained in an official way. You’re supposed to find out how to join by learning from previous contestants, although you can probably figure things out if you know how to internet. Even then, it’s a strange process driven by luck and secrets. <\/p>\n

As you can imagine, the race is hard. If you watch the documentary, you can see what it does to people. Aside from the obvious challenge of conquering 100 miles in 60 hours, the course tries to twist your ankles, tear your skin, sap your strength with cold, and make you lose your way. It’s a heartless meatgrinder, but Cantrell seems content to have several years pass by without anyone completing the course. He doesn’t seem inclined to make it easier, but neither is he driven to keep ramping up the difficulty. The race just is<\/strong>, and it’s up to you to figure out if it’s something you can do.<\/p>\n

What drives people to do this to themselves? It’s certainly not fame. It’s not like this shit is gonna wind up on ESPN. If I climb Mt. Everest then I can show up at a party and tell everyone about it and they can be duly impressed. They’ve heard of Everest and they know it’s a big deal. But nobody’s heard of Barkley so I’d have to explain all the extenuating circumstances of the race before they could even begin to appreciate what I’d accomplished. <\/p>\n

There’s no trophy. No prize money. No sponsorship deals. The only reward is that Gary Cantrell will write down that you won. In fact, the race seems designed to drive off the usual kinds of recognition and coverage. This is the kind of race that can kill somebody, and it’s not like Nike wants the bad press that would come if people found out they’d helped a guy run himself to death. Gatorade isn’t interested in making a commercial about some thirty-something athlete collapsing and going into shock in the Tennessee wilderness, miles from the nearest hope of medical care. (Thankfully, none of those things has happened yet. But it would be the kind of thing that people of Nike’s legal and public relations personnel would worry about.)<\/p>\n

The Barkley Marathons are a race run in obscurity, for no profit, officiated by a guy who acts like the only thing dumber than applying for the Barkley is showing up to run it. <\/p>\n

It’s one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in years. It’s available for streaming on Netflix if you’re of a mind to see it. In case you’re curious: I haven’t spoiled much. It follows a handful of the runners in the 2012 Barkley. You can find out if anyone made it through, and what happened to them in the attempt. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched the documentary The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats its Young a few months ago. It describes one of the most brutal races in the world, and follows a number of contestants as they tackle the challenge in 2012. The movie has stayed with me since then. I keep thinking back to it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream-cast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}