A Springtime Smackdown From Mother Nature
Humanity 0 Mother Nature 40 at the Barkley Marathons reminds everyone who’s boss…
This is the introduction to March’s edition of the Off-Field newsletter, curating monthly tales from the fringes of sport and society. Read it here.
The wind is teasing as Lazarus Lake indicates the race has begun. Lake is a human by the way. One with a beard, steel-rimmed specs, and a red beanie. Although it’s apt that his name makes him sound like an imposing natural barrier.
An hour earlier, he blew on a conch to let the 40 ultra-runners converging at Frozen Head State Park in Morgan County, Tennessee, that they were to prepare themselves for the 2025 Barkley Marathons. Then the race began. Not by the wave of a flag or the firing of a gun. Lake simply lit his cigarette.
The man they call Laz has started this brutal slog with a tab in his mouth since its first edition back in 1986. He’d been inspired by the 1977 prison break by James Earl Ray. The man who shot Martin Luther King Jr had managed to escape nearby Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. But when he was caught 54 hours later, it transpired that he’d only covered eight miles. Lake mocked this measly distance and reckoned he could do at least 100 miles in the same time. Naming the race after his longtime friend and running buddy Barry Barkley, a ruthless endurance event was born.
To call it an ultra-marathon barely scratches the surface. Indeed, with fiendish thorny briars lining the course, scratches are par for the course. Finishers must complete five loops of an unmarked route, navigating it twice clockwise, twice anti-clockwise, and a final lap that alternates based on the leading runner.
Each loop consists of around 20–25 miles of undulating and unforgiving overgrown terrain. Sections with names like the meatgrinder, rat jaw, prison tunnel, and testicle spectacle give some indications as to the horrors that await. Relentless diagonal climbing on all fours means that runners become accustomed to the sight of their blood. If they see an aid station, they’re hallucinating. To prove they’ve completed each loop, they’ll tear pages (corresponding with their race number) from books scattered along the way.
Each drop-out is treated to a live bugle rendition of Taps, sombre tones that are usually heard at military funerals.
Even if they’re unflinching in the face of endless hills, hidden quagmires, leaf-camouflaged rocks, and stabbing shrubs, the task is as much mental as physical. Runners who worship at the altar of Strava will be aghast at the technology ban. No phones, no GPS, no digital record of hell.
Runners are given a map before the race. Make notes. Memorise it. The map will be confiscated before you begin. This isn’t the frolicking orienteering larks you remember from school. In 2006, one runner covered just two miles of the course before being found in a different county 32 hours later.
In 39 years, only 20 people have finished the Barkley Marathons. And yet, three completed the course in 2023, a record. Then last year, it was broken again. Britain’s formidable Jasmin Paris became the first-ever female finisher, joining four others to touch the finishing gate in time.
Lazarus Lake must have been wondering if his fiendish course was finally being conquered by humans increasingly minded to push themselves beyond their limits. As he lit his cigarette and unleashed another 40 runners into the wild, he must have wondered just how many would finish the 2025 edition. Six? Seven? 10 or more?
Two days later, another cigarette burned from a smirking mouth. Nobody had finished.
Zero.
Nada.
Zilch.
Heavy storms in the run-up to the race had turned the canvas into mush. And persistent rain combined with 50mph winds meant that beleaguered runners could only offer brush strokes. Most of the field was eliminated by loop one.
John Kelly, one of last year’s finishers, was the only runner to finish three loops of the course within the cut-off time. Lake describes completing three laps as the “fun run”. Kelly didn’t look like he’d had much fun out there, though he had enough gallows humour to play his own lament on the bugle.
Humanity 0 Mother Nature 40.
As Spring arrives, it was a little reminder of who’s the boss.
In this month’s Off-Field newsletter, we’ve picked out a few more recent sporting examples where nature is the athlete’s main adversary. Away from the sporting arena, and in honour of a fantastic recent trip to Cork, there’s also a tale about the man-made phenomenon that could give any of the planet’s fastest-growing greenery a run for its money: the Irish boozer. Enjoy the selection.
This is an excerpt from the Off-Field newsletter. Subscribe, for free, here
