The Barkley is limited to only 40 runners, carefully selected by Lazarus Lake, though each year many more athletes hope to gain a start. Lake, somewhat familiar with the region from his trail running adventures, mockingly proclaimed that he ‘could do at least 100 miles in that time,’ and thus the Barkley Marathons was born. Ray managed to cover a mere 8 miles after running for 55 hours in the woods. The race boasts a strict 60-hour cut-off and is the brainchild of Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell, an eccentric former trail runner, who, according to hearsay, was inspired to mimic the 1977 escape of James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jnr, from nearby Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. The Barkley, as it is commonly known, consists of 5 loops of a ‘nominal’ 20 mile course, which is actually closer to 26 miles. Since 1986, the Barkley Marathons have been held in late March or early April each year in Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, a landscape marked by an endless expanse of isolated and densely forested plateaus and peaks. Barkley very often did this to its runners.
“Amid all the discomfort, it was kind of entertaining to watch all of this happening before me actually.” And so, with madness unravelling around him, he kept on running. “I was aware of things not being reality,” he says. He was familiar with its unpredictability and utter absurdity. All around him the gentle sound of running water from creeks and small waterfalls, typically offering a soothing natural backdrop, suddenly morphed into a choir of chanting voices, an unnerving soundtrack that filled his muddled mind.īut Robbins, the decorated ultra-runner from North Vancouver who has run some of the world’s toughest trails, had been to this place before. Random numbers appeared on trees and then disappeared into the blurred landscape, only to return on different trees and then depart once more. And Robbins was on the brink of becoming the first Canadian to ever finish.įaces, like ghostly apparitions, came to life within hanging leaves on tree boughs. It was deep into the Barkley Marathons, the hardest foot race in the world. Mixed with immense mental fatigue, his mind began to buckle and veer off course into a warped, hallucogenic haze. The physical exhaustion was easy to recognise.
For 60 hours through night and day he’d relentlessly propelled himself forward through the harsh terrain of the vast Tennessee wilderness. Gary Robbins hadn’t slept a wink for several days. Read what happens when this Canadian ultra runner and endurance coach gets his shot at going 'Out There'
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