The Barkley Marathons - The Race That Eats Its Young 2014

[Music] you're listening to newshour from the bbc coming up in the program we're going to be talking to the founder of an endurance race so tough hardly anyone has ever finished it i always have to keep people a little off guard first rule of barkley is don't talk about it if you talk about it then you're not going to be part of it so it's kind of secret it kind of weeds itself out if you belong here you would find out how to get here this is about you by yourself against all that out there [Music] so soliz what is this this is my big map of tennessee where i have marked in most of the roads i've run on and i'm trying to think right now where my marker is so i can mark in some that i've done that i haven't put on there yet all the orange rows i run i remember them all lots of hours went into this lots of damn fun yeah i'd be curious to know in continuous time how many hours of running are in that map a guy's smarter than a whip smarter than dick he looks like a oh hillbilly redneck acts like one you know people like to think of him as a sadist for creating this this race but it's not him at all i mean neither is he neither is he is a bleeding heart there is nothing less pleasant to clean than a rattlesnake i don't really even like the man very much but i love him does this make any sense you know he was one of the original ultrarunners he was one of the original ones and what are the memphis runners it wasn't just the first running club in memphis was it say 78. yeah 78. oh that was a brutal race i used to wear shirts that size ah those were the days i could run i could run fast it didn't seem like i was very fast then but i i feel it would be really fast now if i get around the times i ran then those are hidden away sander doesn't know i still have them [Music] is your fuel gauge broke in there no okay we're just on empty now e means excellent half means you're [ __ ] it's on e we're in excellent shape we have plenty of gas boy how does yours work [Music] lazarus lazarus lake and the white shirt and the cigarette over there the guy that hung up all the license plates he's a dangerous man he and raw dog are the guys that invented this race they they made this race out of nothing out of thin air who is the mastermind behind the barclay uh raw doc i have suggestions to make it easier and but the harder i protest the more that eggs him on he swears that it's you which kind of leaves me obligated to swear that it's him [Music] [Music] would you say the application process is a secret uh it's not a very good secret because hundreds of damn people are figuring it out it's like a series of complicated ninja moves to get in part of the application involves a exam i've never had to take an exam to get into a race before if you're selected you get a letter of condolences sorry to inform you you've been accepted to run the barclay i guess i should get some after this numbers and stuff out now and start getting people signed in see who's still julian james i'm a physicist by training i do research in semiconductor devices i finished the berkeley last year i was the tenth finisher i feel like i have some unfinished business with not not getting the record the main goal is to try and break uh flying uh brian robinson's record uh 55 hours 42 minutes and 27 or 37 seconds i'm not sure so that that's that that's basically the goal um i mean and then i guess second to that just finishing um and then i then i'd be the only only two-time finisher for the entrance fee oh okay great application we don't give anyone change luke well a lot of people think it's a dollar sixty to enter the race but that's really not accurate we charge a dollar sixty just to apply and we don't give the dollar sixty back we keep it and that's my retirement plan if you get accepted into the race then your first year when you're when you're a virgin the first time you come you have to give us a license plate from your home state or home country there you go you know it was hard to get this off the state trooper vehicle without just sort of fortunate something from france something from france and we can tell this time right because it says france and then in succeeding years there's various things really kind of according to what it is i need for years we charged a white shirt now i have a lot of white shirts so we charged socks until i had lots of socks and now we're charging a final shirt until i get flannel shirts and this is uh oh yeah and uh in centimeters i would have had a really tiny it's a pretty low budget projection for for anyone regardless of their economic situation that if they want to they want to see that kind of a challenge can be a poor college student can afford to do it all right john last time i'm john fagberasi i'm from pennsylvania i'm sort of just a poor stipend funded grad student right now and this is a great event for that because it only cost 1.60 to do so this is my first time here uh i study glaciology and climate change paleoclimate actually so i'm currently i'm working on a project where we're looking at a ice core from antarctica i don't know we like the antarctic surprise there you go that will uh that will add a certain spice numbers you like numbers right sure yeah scientists and numbers they okay it's the ugly truth and we now are counting on you starting all right here we go thank you you are officially in the starting field it's hard to put a finger on it i don't remember exactly what it is i searched for somebody may have said something oh usually you think that's hard you should look at this race i have down in tennessee and i just started reading the race reports and it just was so fascinating to me and it's like this is what i gotta try basically for the last six months i've done nothing but eat sleep and breathe this event i think people have often said that you could charge a huge fee and people would pay it and come but i don't think you would get the same collection of people you like to have people that will enjoy the race and people that will enjoy each other and plus for a dollar sixty and a license plate if people have complaints i can just laugh you are officially starting oh my goodness i've got your shirt excellent hey have you made a fun run no i didn't think so it's my year you're a really good runner not to have a fun run this is that map of course uh the master map is around somewhere here okay on friday we put out one master map and the people have to mark their own map if they don't exactly match the master map that's their own problem but it forces them to have some familiarity with what the layout of the course is and find out a lot of things that it would be a lot less convenient to recognize that you have this question when you're eight hours into the race whenever you get the first trail you just start falling if it switched back down you went the wrong way well i thought it was right there it is it's not no they they got rid of that and now they're going i think the instructions last were basically keep on following the ridge up and climb to the highest point when it hurts more you're on the right path or something like that to your right 45 you're right if you hit the big rock huh it's on this side if you drill it's on that side okay you keep road yeah right and you go right no no the jeep road you go left you don't want the instructions of course map you'll know where all the sweet new stuff is cool you're gonna like the new hill it's a source of endless speculation what you know decoding what laz says there's this tree that's got three trunks and this other tree that's got four trunks and they're right next to each other to him that's like he really knows the area and that means a lot and as if that would be helpful to me tree with three trunks when they're all in a forest so his instructions require you to require you to know the history of his instructions i don't know everyone who's in it i would be most worried about jarrod campbell he was a past winner of the hard rock 100 in colorado so he's clearly in pretty good shape so i he would be my top concern however he's a virgin at the barclay which gives him an enormous disadvantage yeah and which will definitely be relevant on loop five you know if it gets to that point so you know so we'll see hopefully he's running i haven't seen him yet you're seated 47th out of 35. i'd like to start at the back of the pack i'm jared campbell i'm from salt lake city utah i'm an engineer mechanical engineer have you ever been up here before to never have uh just drove in about five to ten minutes ago so yeah this is all new to me at this point there's a great website out there with tons of information on it i'm totally kidding there's no information online at all so it really helps to know somebody i think my intent is to really go out and and pair up with someone who knows the course for at least a lap or two try to get it figured out and go from there the virgins tend to want to stick with a veteran for the confidence in knowing where they are because they're seeing it all for the first time but if you don't have a certain number of veterans just have people wandering around out in the woods all day i am water harling from belgium i took my bike with me a folding bike that i had in my luggage and from knoxville airport i was cycling over to the park i'm here to run the barclay and well i try to get as far as i can and as we know that might be not so far but okay we try to make the best of it is it well known in europe i think it ranks among the best known races us races in europe i've been here two years ago and then it was a rather total disaster so i try to be to do better than that how did you do two years ago just one loop do you have any goals this year well you should at least hope for five loops if you don't hope it you shouldn't start but i will be disappointed if i don't get a fun run [Music] as you probably know the course adds up to each loop is 20.00 miles and every time the course changes somehow it's still 20.00 miles even if he's directly added something maybe it's both maybe it's exactly 20 miles and maybe it's a bit more that's probably about as true as you can get part of the whole adventure is having a little uncertainty having to use your route finding skills we do it twice clockwise the daytime loop clockwise and night time loop clockwise and then a daytime loop counterclockwise and the night time movement counterclockwise pushing the fifth loop and we send them out in opposite directions the first guy who leaves on the fifth loop can go either way he wants clockwise or counterclockwise but the next person has to go the opposite direction every loop you're doing is going to be unique because of the time of the day and the direction i just hope to slog it out and uh get to the end really that's my whole objective i think i'd be thrilled if i could could finish five laps so that's it try to have the best time that i can out there but i'm not going into this thinking it's going to be fun to be honest if you're going to quit you know you're going to quit quit somewhere where there's a trail buy it quick because then you quit put it no don't quit early or don't quit at all because you got to do five but i mean if you're out here you're because it took us i think four hours just to get back that's after you quit i just don't want to get so lost that it becomes like embarrassing that i end up having to get airlifted out or something and yeah become one of those stories of miserable failures i just want to be a regular failure like everyone else well you know the the uh record for futility is for dan baglion who covered two official miles on the course and was out there for 32 hours so i now hold the record for the slowest absolute pace ever at barclay 16 hours per mile are you excited are you nervous are you how you feel right now not yet i keep being nervous until tomorrow morning okay how do you know it's not going to start tonight could be yeah so one of the beloved features is wondering when it'll start we actually only narrow the start down to about a 12-hour period between midnight and noon on saturday of race weekend and at the time i that me and raw dog picked out a year earlier we blow a conch shell and that means the runners have one hour until they start from trying to figure out how to enter the race to actually finally towing the starting line and going out in the woods there's all kinds of little things that you just have to deal with and i've found over the years people who have trouble with any of those things are not going to do well out on the course because it's not going to be the way you planned it [Music] it was nice weather for the snake so what time is this [Music] game one hour to go there it is time to get ready how you feeling a lot better announced in such a conch flute man yeah i was uh sort of stressing all night because you know i was here last last year and you know had the middle of the night start so you're sort of anticipating that again you know and you keep waiting for the conscious blow all night long so the didn't sleep too well it's been nerve-wracking just sitting here so i'm happy to have heard the noise and the conch shell and get ready to go i slept miserably from i think about 10 to uh seven so miserable but you never really get good sleep before race so whatever i put my shirt on backwards that's not a good start i think you kind of have to come at least hoping to finish i mean especially when i think about all that training i have to at least believe that i could do it so that's about as best as i could say i know the odds are super against me and who knows but i have to at least say that uh 60 hours right 60 hours [Music] i've never gone quite that long without sleep on an event the longest i've ever gone is about 48 hours so this will be in uncharted territory for me as well [Music] with the barclay there's since the it's so steep there's a lot of pressure both on the front and the bottom of the heel does everyone do this but if you if you i don't i don't see how you could get by without doing it because you're definitely going to get blisters on your on your heel and after a while that's just going to become debilitating i don't think these are even the socks i was intending to wear but they're on now so well ready yeah you got plenty you got more than that or is that it i got like one more bottle and like 100 ounce water oh okay cool yeah you'll get the camera back yeah you got your map you got your uh yeah all that all right one two three four five wow this is my favorite day of the year [Laughter] this will be my 16th [Music] the most important thing is how did you sleep last night four minutes oh i slept like a baby night because that's what's important that's what's important i knew when it would start don't be shy step on up step right up [Music] [Music] all right we got about a minute to go this would be the part of the race where they give you lots of good advice if you all would take good advice you wouldn't be here so in about 50 seconds we're gonna light a cigarette like all great races in traditional history we light a cigarette and that means they're off can i jump over the yellow gate they are perfectly free to jump over the yellow gate that might save them a couple of hundredths of a second there you do it the right way around over under or through if you're going to face a real challenge it has to be a real challenge you can't accomplish anything without the possibility of failure pretty much everybody you see go out there you really want them to succeed you know that most of them won't and there is kind of a maybe a dark humor to all the things that go on some of the failures are spectacular and really funny but you like to see people have the opportunity to really find out that something about themselves [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] do [Music] um how did the barkley start or where did you get the idea the james royal ray escape where that he'd gotten out of the prison into this area and we were familiar with it because it had we'd hiked up here for some years and because when trail running started to become popular and we thought it was amazing that people were running astounding times on trails we didn't really have a picture in our mind of what kind of trails they were running we thought of trails like this we had pretty well said man this would be such a uh i guess the only term it would be a pullbuster of a race [Music] so [Music] the barkley course is about one-third on trail and that's the formal trail in the park and two-thirds or more off trail keeping in mind every year the course is going to change a little bit the off-trail sections are not marked is anything marked no no there's no marks nothing is marked i mean you get a map of compass can't use gps and this year due to popular demand they don't get to use altimeters whatever you can carry on your back and you're on your own we do try on most years to put out a couple of water drops along the way for people who are reluctant to drink out of the creek i think one year he'd let us fill one jug with a moonshine frozen head is a place that creates its own weather howling winds hail sleet snow ice and this time in the spring in tennessee you can get especially a frozen head almost anything both of the water drops are at elevations so there are years when what we have out there for the runners are 108 pound blocks of ice they come back and say the water is all frozen solid yeah it's 10 degrees what did you think would happen [Music] oh that's [Music] there's nothing in the military i did that was this hard i used to be in special operations for about four years and i've done some of the hardest things you can do and so i tell people like yeah you might want to rethink this because i'm telling you it's it's no joke it i truly think it's the world's toughest trail race you know the real attraction of it is that you know ev every year there are some really good people that come to do it and most years nobody finishes barclay's at their own edge of possibility impossibility there's no other event that i know of in this world that this is hard when you talk about being the hardest there's really not such a measurement because you have races that are in extreme heat races that are extreme altitude so we never really thought of it that this will be the hardest race but we felt like you would put something out there that was right at the limit of what people could do one of the big motivators in running ultras is that people want to challenge their limitations they want to see how much they can do and you can't really tell how much you can do until you try to do something that's more probably what you got all right go ahead bye go fast go fast there you go i'm gonna start falling the first couple years runners had a hard time staying on course and so i said well why don't you put a book out there and have each runner tear out a page to prove that they got to that book and the race number that you have corresponds to a page in in the books that you're supposed to tear out to show that you've been through the whole course and so if you so if you get uh race number 35 that means every time you come to a book you have to pull out page 35 of that book they're they're unofficial checkpoints they they give us the assurance that people did the course they give the other runners the assurance because some people will have a tendency to think maybe someone else is cheating and not doing the right thing and some of the people can't find their way around and we'll come back and believe in their heart they did the loop when who knows where they went the titles are fun they'll be things like the valley of death or or almost home uh you know things which uh you would look at that book and and knowing where you are in the course you would think to yourself uh he's just messing with us now this is the idiot is the name of the book there is no live web update there's no chip timing here there's books there's books that we find in the woods how old school is that this year we had 11 books i found it [Music] [Music] [Music] all of the places out there have their own names and just kind of developed over the years and it's really kind of handy because they're not on the park maps so that people who wanted to come out here and and wander into the areas where people are really not supposed to be don't have a map reference to find them it's a unique hill it's the only one where you can see the whole hill and when we came around the corner he said with what's apparently an old saying let's see my spectacles testicles violets and cigars and i just heard him say testicle spectacle and i i just had this vision of the people coming around it's kind of a test of manhood so it became the testicle spectacle with an entirely different meaning [Music] so [Music] [Music] huh that's [ __ ] up over the years when you drew the course map it looked exactly like the head of a rat with an open mouth so they started calling it the rat jaw and then it's kind of stuck and because it has all the briars or has some of the worst briars most years that's where people get the most rap bites they started calling their briar scratches rat bites that's a saw briar out in the woods you come on someone they're 20 to 30 feet tall have a stem that big and thorns about that long coming down right y'all these briars are [ __ ] everywhere the country people had a name for them they were called wait a minute did you step into it with your leg and a piece pulls down from the back and snags your ear help me ah in my ear got it and then when the runners get tired they just put their arms in front of their face and go [Music] [Laughter] hey laz who's this year's human sacrifice tim hardy and tim is in way over his head tim hardy is really good and done a lot of good stuff but he's kind of playing it by ear and yeah he's dead every year the runners seem to like even at the risk of losing one chance of getting a slot themselves that one person gets entered who has absolutely no business out there number one he is the top seed i'm definitely on the top we expect him to be back first you just wade through all of the available information and you find that person that poor unfortunate soul who's going to be way over his head it's gonna take me at least three hours to get up to book seven and i was out of water and that's planning and under train for this one it's kind of hard just hard overall yeah the hardest course i've ever been on here yeah where did you make it to it's not very poor memory card get your bugle out okay first one all year it may be a little rusty that's all right you gotta start coming back we play taps to commemorate that they came up short of the mark [Music] i learned how to play the bugle in scouts and when gary found out i could play the bugle this is probably 15 years ago he'd suggested that i should play taps every time someone quits or is timed out or does not continue they get tapped i guess it's a way of uh the final punishment i guess lets the whole camp know that somebody quit 107.26 good times out there hey man isn't that sweet oh that's a little slice of heaven you got up this may be the best you're going to see me 44 28 45 and 30. when you get back to the yellow gate it's the interlupil period it's only that interim period inter lupo that you're allowed to to get aid you're free to go to the campsite replenish your stocks you can sleep if you think you have time if you're continuing on the clock never stops the clock doesn't stop until the runner stops when you're in camp you know there's a tremendous temptation to not go back out and so you don't want to have that debate in your mind you just you know silence debate before you even start running i had some good guides i'd be still looking for book one if i didn't have the brett and the abs i'm ready yeah sure all right thanks luck have y'all okay see ya thanks matt for your help by the way well that pace is pretty impressive all right 8 23 16. you want to make sure you count before you go 45 57. [Applause] you may wish you had my heart reminder says i burned 7 000 calories i only ate about three you didn't even make it to the prison no no i just don't know what you missed anyway we're supposed to go to the northeast corner of the prison and there's a stream coming out of a tunnel underneath the prison and we're going to crawl into that and crawl under the prison that's the that's the instructions and uh and it's an active prison apparently so there are guards here well this is an interesting barkley tradition we are walking under the prison [Music] eight years have passed since james earl ray began serving a 99-year prison sentence for the assassination of dr king his escape was big news when it happened at least in tennessee and i think most everywhere in the country that it was it was big news he was a famous bad guy and then he got out of this inescapable prison police with bloodhounds on the ground helicopters with infrared detection devices in the air all of them scouring a five square mile area in the rugged tennessee hill country around the maximum security brushy mountain prison near petrus tennessee the object of their manhunt six convicts including james earl ray i'm stony ray lane i was awarding the bushy mountain penitentiary from the years 1976 to 1980 we have an extensive manhunt still going on involving brushy mountain correctional officers ray and his two companions went straight up the mountain at first prison officials were confident they would apprehend james earl ray within hours not far from the prison but hours have now turned into days and the search area has expanded to distances far from the prison for a while over the weekend james earl ray was at the top of the fbi's most wanted list for the second time in his life and the hunt ended he was taken in custody in the woods he had laid down covered himself up with leaves pulled leaves over him and uh the dog team walked up on him and took him in custody he was worn out he'd been out 54 hours how far away from the prison is that we're talking about what eight miles eight miles the whole story you might beat brushy you're not gonna beat those man and this concludes one of the largest manhunts in the history of tennessee we talked about it his kind of pathetic attempt and only going eight and a half miles in 54 hours and i said i thought i could go 100 miles out here in that length of time so that was sort of the benchmark to see if people couldn't go 100 miles out here and some can but not many we are on the other side of the prison and the book so i occasionally get angry mail angry emails and letters from people who believe that this is some sort of a tribute to james earl ray it's much more much more of the opposite there's a man with a mission right there you are now a free man go after and get it man get him man looking real good you get it about 10 degrees warmer one of the previous finishers thought that in a hot year no one could finish given the forecast it will be the warmest sparkly on record to the gate in 9 29 52. so you're perfectly on your 9 30 piece yes 9 47 42 good job rob you are looking good a little warm out there today six you have finished the fundraiser okay you got a chance yeah i'm gonna try he's got it in the bag it's not even gonna be hard for here you've got a chance i've got a chance all right go get it are you ready to be on your own you are now officially in a new loop ready to be free you are all right 10 18 20. saturday night is always fun all night long you watch them come down quitters road real slow and they come down lots of them will all right all right we're gonna have those numbers right so is it easier than you thought oh yeah i'd say you still have a chance to win this thing all right that's what i need to hear yeah that's it all right let's go get some food later where did you drive on his head it looks like it's cool i gotta be the first drop i'm sure no no next second when we were actually just commenting on how few there were and there will be more to join you soon yes i mean all right virgin going out alone at night alone at night you do have a light you've got a jacket yeah okay 115 at 10 54 11. go get them all right 12 15 19. once again boom came letting the brits down and their fine record [Laughter] you're going back out you haven't lived until you've done the night yeah come on live if i do are you sure i'm sure i'm done because if you're done we have a man to play a song for you oh excellent are you sure i'm sure i've had all i can take that all i can handle i couldn't even comprehend what it was i thought i had an idea but [Applause] we are coming to hear taps my legs hurt so much i feel stupid for starting another loop but it's what i came here for [Applause] you can do it i'm going out you're going back out for luke 2. it's a runner going back out all right and your number 127. okay tear them up we'll see you in about nine and a half hours for some people to finish the fun run is the accomplishment of a lifetime and for some of them to finish one loop is the achievement of a lifetime and for some people just to get back to camp alive is all they want in the world are you are you uh [Music] tap worthy how far did you get [Music] you feeling as good as you look the pillars are down i laid on the trail waiting for somebody that nobody came you didn't wait long enough [Music] you still have time to go back out it's highly unlikely anyone will die out there because we try to make sure that people know what they're doing and you have some control over the situation but they are going to figuratively die because they're going to fail they're going to get to the end they're people who are used to succeeding we have such a high number of people that have graduate degrees because they they set goals they accomplish them they don't let anything stand in their way and i think the race appeals to them because they could fail [Laughter] really scrapes the hell out of you yeah it's so i mean it's just razor sharp down there he'd be he'd be amazed there's so much time hours to finish another loop you can get a little rest you might feel better think how good it'll feel when you finish that third loop you came a long way for a 40-mile training run are you absolutely positive is that your final answer you are the luckiest man this morning [Music] easy first loop was fine a bit fast but okay but then second loop my my feet gave up my my feet were totally wasted i'm disappointed i only got two loops in any given year there's probably um at least several people who could finish but at the end of the day know either either due to like some run management issue like dehydration and you know not not eating properly frequently enough or you know due to a mental breakdown essentially um you know one of those reasons that they end up not doing it um but yeah the the mental aspect is is key [Applause] [Music] that's pleased as a man who never brings anything back leaves it all on the course uh i arrived at yellow gate and said taps please uh i'm done you know this barkley one there's nothing else i can do sometimes when something defeats us we feel a need to go back and prove something to ourselves i guess i don't i don't feel that way about this it was just i gave everything i had it wasn't enough and i'm okay with that still on time to maybe do it so we'll see i haven't slept oh you haven't yet no are you trying to plan some time for sleep yeah i'll see how i feel when i get back to camp but my limit is sort of 48 hours i get kind of weird after that i'm starting to mumble my words i gotta change sides oh yeah and i know what that's all about i don't know how many times most of the people that finished the fun run kind of treated as sort of a lifetime achievement really we didn't even say it was a 100 mile race for several years although that concept was there because people couldn't even finish the fun run and once people started finishing the fun runs then you say well you know the real deal is to go 100 miles the americans just had a fallback mentality that the race was the fun run the 100 was impossible who was the first one mark williams came from england he was one of the first foreign entries when we started to suddenly get people from overseas he finished it in 1995 so it had been going on for close to if not at 10 years once someone finished you knew it could be it really could be done and then it was an additional six years before a second person finished it each year that no one finished that that appealed to us a set of people that like to be out there at the limit and then people would come and they would be angry when they got to the race and ran it because it was exactly like we said it was that loop really took a lot out of both jared and i daddy can you say cheese cheese do you want two more do you need anything else you want to bring a shake with you a strawberry shake mrs mommy he said he might take that soup we should have fun oh no no there were parts that were definitely not fun i felt terrible though i don't know i felt really good the first few laps but this last one was rough things weren't looking good okay jared was just waiting for me [Music] [Music] straight dog horse records record 162 165 you all have fun out there [Applause] 1447. [Applause] 32 14 51. she's got it made now it's all downhill from here yeah good job guys are y'all back in about half an hour uh yeah oh do you know where you dropped that yeah on top of uh stallion and thank you for a nice neat orderly pile of pages can you down that's kind of cool yeah it is way cool fun running in the bank virgin fun run we got mountain dew or caffeine pills i i kind of don't want to take it because i feel like i don't need it yet hey nick what time are you going um about 13 minutes you i just i need to get at least five to seven hundred calories in me yeah um i might i'll try to go with you guys but i might not quite make it how about a payday oh bomber yeah it kind of started so i was just sort of working had a house was doing the whole domestic thing and had this weird sort of life-changing thing one year i just said i'm gonna hike the appalachian trail and i did that and i sort of got hooked on that adventurous challenge lifestyle and then from there i decided to do a few more through hikes and i went home for christmas to visit with my family and an old high school friend was there we went out for a beer and he said yeah i've got my first marathon next weekend and i kind of just sat there thinking that's something i could probably do i know my dad ran a marathon years ago and i'm going to give it a try the leaders these two guys that's four me is five if bev's still in it that's six and then travis that's seven yeah i wonder if tim's still in it no tim um hey man it sounds remarkable good job thanks man how are your feet holding up um you know they're okay just gotta get through two more you ready nick yeah let's get the hell out of here i think it's i think it's gonna be there's another one on the other side you got everything you need yep all right dropped off everything you don't know [Music] you are now an independent human being 169 good stuff cool okay way to go nick all right go get him good luck thank you have you started a fourth level [Music] 171 32 53 17. very good good luck john great job john way to go jen we want two more two more but we'll start with one right don't forget you're representing an entire continent no pressure though [Applause] oh no well you got about uh 13 and a half hours to get turned around check in me you sure you've got time yeah my knee is not going to take another i wish i could the briars are actually a little better this year i know i know i'm sorry to say that you went a lot further than i did but this is gonna be lovely i guess i won't be wearing any dresses i think most people would would be better off with more pain in their lives honestly you know i think they would if nothing else appreciate the pain three times more but i think also if it's if it's there's this self-induced aspect of you've struggled you've overcome you've gone through then you're confident and you both enjoy the rest of your life more but also you feel like you can do things and you take on challenges that you wouldn't otherwise try and you get to points that you wouldn't otherwise reach [Music] [Applause] 36 29. hi rob you got 25 minutes to start on the 100 do you want to go on i don't think so are you sure 2012 is all about the fun run maybe someday job thank you yeah i work super hard for this this is my sixth sixth attempt this sounds like he wants a chat yeah finally this is an odyssey that spanned over 13 years now i far exceeded what i thought i could do so people have their own concepts of success and failure and they a lot of them by the time that they've been through the ordeal really are not concerned how other people evaluate their performance and they are they make their own judgments about success and failure [Music] you get to decide the route only when you sign up [Applause] [Music] [Music] yeah he was having trouble did you get off course at all stay with them oh yeah it has to be they better not come back to haunt me uh do you want socks please change socks i don't know screw them another banana fig newton's cookie i think i'm ready to go eat it all of it one one bite that's chocolate with caffeine i'm following you i got you at the bag [Applause] i didn't put any enduro lights do you need any no okay do you need another shake good now yeah 173. good luck but brent it's only you know you know around lap four lap five where it would start to really morph into a true race but that it's so rare that you have you know even two people get that far that it just it's a rare event when it happens i i know i would race you know someone who's you know also starting a loop five in the opposite direction and i'm sure they would they would as well are you kind of hoping for that uh yes definitely yeah yeah i it would be really exciting and i think it would help lead to an overall lower time knowing that there's someone out there that can only encourage you to go faster who is it it's alan i didn't make it i was gonna say is this the wrong direction didn't yep it no i had problems on picnic creek oh man you made it yeah who knows where going down pig yeah disappointing how it turned out yeah is that the furthest you go yeah good job who are you with nick and i was with nick and john how strong did they look um john was looking pretty strong not nick uh well nick um i mean he'll probably do pretty well he was kind of up and down [Music] he did almost four loops that put you in pretty thin company yes quitter's road is so long yeah that was awful was it john fegis with you when john did john already come in and now he hasn't come in yet [Music] 46 26 23. he wants to have 11 pages you going straight back out or you need a little break i need a little break i'm not saying sleep i'm just saying just all my feet look so bad i mean it hurts so bad to run oh i'm gonna be running in a lot of pain do you actually have any dry socks oh yeah because all my socks are damp they want to beat each other and they will race their guts out but as as failure for one reason or another overtakes each one of those top guys they become like a de facto crew of the people who are left and when it winnows down to that single runner that's surviving he's got an aid crew that's like a who's who the the amount of knowledge and experience and accomplishments in that group helping him to go on so that someone can succeed while if any one of them were out there with him at the same time they'd be trying to beat him your arms and legs like a scene from passion of the christ i've never had blisters my entire life [Laughter] oh yeah i don't know i don't know if i have anything to pop him with so does somebody have like a little tiny knife there's some surgery on your feet it's going to pay huge dividends 13 hours uh what i would i would poke through try to poke through it so you get two little holes i'll let you do it a little drain out good perfect if you can just poke it right through oh god that hurts so bad what i just did no just like running you just need to muscle through it for 12 more hours i've never seen this i mean here it is there's nothing i can do about the stuff under my macerated feet no it's going to take probably about six to 12 hours to dry out it's like stretched this means i can run though i'll be so happy he does whatever it wants to do john don't let these guys stop you from going back out i know i i do have to get moving am i okay to put a sock on now on this one thanks for being dealing with my feet i got a one hour warranty on that aside from this are you feeling good yeah all right this has never happened before never in history never in history you're part of history john you gotta wait ahead drop off everything you don't need i got a water in the right there right here yes your flask is in there all right one seven thirteen one seven seven you're gonna do it there you go john great job [Applause] [Music] don't turn he doesn't around good man it's hard to believe i don't know it's already sent working so it's time for me to take a nap i didn't fix that you got some sleep it didn't make me better did it [Laughter] i wouldn't say you look rested so what happened while i was there a lot wuter just came back from the tower and both pages were gone both and brett was heading down so they met somewhere so it could be a race what is the record 55 and 56 55. that's gonna fall i don't know there's no telling if it falls who will it be right i didn't think it'd be this close no what a year [Music] so [Music] i always expected to see jared you know around the next corner and then the race would be over you know that i i knew he was going to win [Music] [Applause] i didn't believe i actually won until i got to the gate and did not see jared you know amidst the assembled crowd [Applause] [Music] almost three and a half hours off the course recording let me take your hands this is just unbelievable yeah i couldn't find the first book two hours oh yeah man that's the easy one yeah [Applause] is [Music] thank you [Music] hello [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] right on congratulations glad to be done with that take that stuff off you're a bad bad man you're the eleventh person to finish this he's a hell of a job it's easier than you expected no it wasn't that was brutal simply brutal what was the time yeah what was the time 56 0 0 16. [Music] yeah i would have been lost without this guy seriously so thanks man that was fun y'all made an impressive team yeah the camaraderie of competition i hear people that talk about you know they well the competition is just too hardcore for them or they they feel like it's too rough and but there's a closeness between people that you compete with one of my best friends in my life was a guy i competed against for three years in high school and it was it was something we shared and they share that out here and especially in this situation where the possibility of success is so low is anyone else out on the fifth loop as soon as i got out in the middle of nowhere when i was out like um on the spectacle and kind of just it's hot and just out there by myself and i knew everybody else in the entire race was done it was just me i was the only one on the course i started to like really panic there was this focus in growing up to be conservative when it comes to your future and have some good plan for retirement then travel and see the world and do all this fun stuff when you retire [Music] i was really good about that but then yeah so then like kind of in one year i had a series of a few deaths in the family and then i i was in a relationship for like ten years and that ended and so it was like all this crap just all happened within one calendar and it was it was all it was awful [Music] one of the deaths in this in this case involved was my father [Music] who has done just what he told me and saved all this money for him and my mom to travel the world and he passed away one year before his retirement [Music] that's when i realized that you gotta live god you gotta live your life [Music] i used to when i would go out on trails and hike and run i never really thought about just turning things off and taking in the beauty of it and there would have been a day when i would have been like oh that's cool kept walking but now i really try to just be like okay stop and realize how lucky i am to be seeing the cool things that i'm seeing and suck the marrow out of this because you could get hit by a bus tomorrow man like this is amazing this world we live in [Music] oh i really don't want to get my feet wet [Applause] hmm [Music] so [Music] veggies is out there somewhere yeah yep didn't expect that you gotta move yeah he's got no room for air and you can't ride off somebody because you don't know how how much they can come up with from deep down inside but they're really up against the clocks [Music] [Music] [Music] that'll be the tightest that anyone's finished it [Music] [Music] okay eh [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] 59 41 21. awesome there's a chair right behind you 41 more things yep right here awesome that was easy way to go john congratulations awesome awesome i guess there's a formality let's pray for 11. i counted it yeah how does it feel to be the slowest man ever to finish this race great job that's fantastic the whole reason for the barkley is so that you basically crawl across the finish line barely and you are so shredded and ripped up that you couldn't have gone out for another 20 minutes i'm like that that is exactly my experience like i mean i finished with barely enough time and i my feet were destroyed and i was dehydrated and i was hallucinating and i was just like every possible thing there's no way i could have like run another two miles there's no way i was totally at the absolute limit so many people told me when even before i knew i wanted to do it just that like you have to be super elite to finish barkley and i just refused to believe that i was like i think if you really want it bad enough joe schmo like me can finish and you're it's not going to be pretty and it's not going to be fun but it's going to be possible you're finishing over 13 [Music] man can only enjoy that which acquires with hard work and toil the harder you work for something the more you enjoy that if something is easy how much reward is there i think people that go through this they're better for it they're not made of better stuff than other people but they're better for what they've asked of themselves what a year [Music] something we never asked you about is the name of the barclay and where that came from [Music] it's named after barry barkley hello my name is barry barkley a friend of mine named the foot race after me is called the barkley marathons and i have no idea why he did it we didn't know he'd make him famous how did you decide to name the race after dr barry well he'd been an invaluable help in other races we put on and it was just something about the character of the race that i thought it fit now the name is well known all over the world probably if we had named it something different it would not have had this kind of success the barkley marathons it has its own ring to it have you ever finished the barclay no i never came anywhere close so even when you said that i could do 100 miles in that time i was young and cocky [Music] it's holy ghost of powers shut up in my bones i've got the one desire to make heaven my own [Applause] [Music] well it'll make you happy it'll set you free it'll make you love your neighbor it's workout charity [Applause] [Music] it's resurrection power shut up in my bones it's got the same power there is jesus from the two [Music] jesus shut up in my bones [Music]

Channel: Rastislav Novak

Views: 18,454

Rating: 4.951807 out of 5

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Id: qelHNB509zM

Length: 89min 49sec (5389 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021