Runners have to decode a byzantine entry procedure just to get in the door, and the entry fee for newcomers is a license plate from their home state. Off the course, the Barkley is no less of a challenge. And every time someone does, the course is tweaked. Only 14 hardy souls have completed the full distance since the race started in 1986, including two runners at this year’s edition in April. So what, exactly, is the Barkley Marathons, the legendary event that every year draws 40 people to Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park to attempt to finish a 60,000-vertical-foot course in under 60 hours? Ask anyone who has tried it, and you’ll get one answer: It’s the most brutal race on earth. The course is barely marked, and forces competitors to negotiate mountains and thick underbrush in rapidly changing conditions, but the Barkley is not an adventure race. Runners competing in it slog through the mud, look for hidden checkpoints, and cross through a dark tunnel, but they’re not running in an obstacle race like Tough Mudder. Fail to bring back all 13 pages and you are disqualified.The Barkley Marathons is 100 miles long, but it’s not an ultramarathon. To ensure no shortcuts are taken, 13 books (with titles such as “Heart of Darkness,” “A Time to Die”) are hidden along the routes and runners must tear a page from the book corresponding with their bib number. Instead, runners have to make notes from a master map and then navigate their way through often thick undergrowth with nothing more than a compass. Oh, and there are no fixed trails to follow. Gradients are commonly steeper than 40 degrees. Runners who make it to the end will ascend and descend 120,000 feet - the equivalent of climbing up and down Mount Everest twice. What makes the Barkley so fiendishly tough is the unforgiving terrain of Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee.
There are many longer ultra-marathons, some of which take place in 40-degree heat. To complete the Barkley Marathons, you need to navigate five 20-mile loops of the course within 60 hours. Indeed, in its 33-year history, there have only been 15 finishers in a field containing the world’s most elite ultra-marathon runners. It took place last weekend, but you will not find any list of winners: for the second successive year no-one completed it.
More mean-spirited than Jose Mourinho protecting a 1-0 first-leg lead, more devious than an Eddie Jones press conference. Billing itself as the “Race That Eats Its Young”, the Barkley Marathons is the most evil event in sport.
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