January 16, 2025 • 50 mins
Every Spring in northeastern Tennessee, roughly 40 people compete in a marathon they are very unlikely to finish. This is the Barkley Marathons.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know. And we are giving up right out of
the gate on our episode about the Barkley Marathon.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's right, our friend Chad. We want to shout out
our friend Chad Crowley, who we talked about before, who
was the producer and director and showrunner of our TV
show back in the day. I got this idea from
Chad because we had coffee over the holidays and he
is running ultra marathons now, wow, which is a very
(00:44):
Chad thing to do. Like he starts running a handful
of years ago and then now is running ultras. And
I was like, Chad, how long is that? And he
said sixty miles generally, And I said, could you run
to Athens? He said how far is Athens? And said
I can't remember how far? I said, like eighty miles.
He said I could run one hundred miles.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Wow, But he'd need a ride back.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Are you kiddy? He said it might take a while,
but I could probably run one hundred miles. And I'm
just like floored by this idea that people can do this,
and he said, he said, man, you should do a
guys should do an episode on the Barkley Marathons, which
I had heard of before. Oh really, which is this, Yeah,
which is this ultra marathon plus a trail run plus
(01:28):
in the mountains of northeastern Tennessee that is known for
just being a crazy race, a crazy hard race, and
having a really unusual origin story and unusual founder and
just how it's all done. It's just this remarkable story.
And I agree.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, there's a really great documentary from twenty seventeen called
the Barkley Marathon colon the Race that Eats It's Young,
which is a nickname for that race. And there's a
few people in there who are seasoned trail runners, ultrathonors,
like people who know their stuff and have done crazy
things as far as running goes, who are like, this
(02:08):
is far and away the hardest race on the planet, Like,
there's nobody who's doing anything like this, And if you
think you know what you're doing, you're going to be
completely amazed at how far off you are in what
you thought this is going to be, Like, it's that hard.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, you got a chance to watch it.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, it was good. And there was a guy who
was a Special Operations like I guess a former a
Special Ops soldier who was like, I've done crazy stuff
with my body and this like that did nothing to
prepare me for this.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, it was really well done. It's on YouTube, and
I recommend watching it because it really there's a lot
of drama that takes place. The year that they did
the documentary. I think they did it on twenty twelve
or twenty thirteen maybe, oh was it and it came
out in seventeen, you.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Said, okay, so yeah, I was confused at what year
it was.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I think it was twenty twelve or twenty thirteen, and
it was. There's a lot of good drama. So we
don't want to spoil some of the stories that happened,
but uh, I recommend watching. And here we go with
Barkley Marathons.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh okay. So the whole thing about Barkley marathons is
that you can trace them back. I mean you could
start at the very beginning. We talked about in our
what was the one crazy marathon episode we did not
too long ago.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It's on marathons.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
No, it was on a specific marathon, and I think
Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Oh, I don't know. We did want of marathons years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, remember the guy who was running the Human Zoos
at the World's Fair came up with like a he
called it the Special Olympics Marathon. This was months ago.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Man, Hey, you can't remember it either, buddy, all right,
why can't you remember it existed? At least?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yes? Anyway, Oh, get this. Apparently we did an entire
short stuff on Sad's rings and didn't mention it because
I have no recollection of doing a short stuff on
Saturn's rings. Do you?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
I don't remember that?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
You do remember we did a saddern episode that came
out like a few days back.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I'm so mad at you right now, don't you. We're
still getting emails on that one. So yes, I do. Okay,
all right, cool, What LA marathon are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It might not be La, but it was. It was
like just you remember like that one Italian guy I
think he was running in like oh oh oh, he'd
stop and eat people's fruit and yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody.
And there were the two guys from Africa who.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Are remember that now?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah? It was I can't remember where it was or
what the name was, what it was?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, oh boy, people are just screaming at their pod player.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
The sad thing is the whole reason I brought that up, Chuck,
was to say that we went over a lot of
the origins of marathons in that episode, so we don't
need to do that in this episode. That we just
did all that and.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Our Marathons episode. Yeah, anyway, let's not even do that.
The marathon has been a long a long time. Ultra
Marathon started in the nineteen seventies, and that's what we're
really talking about. And this guy Gary Kintrell, aka Lazarus
Lake or laz he's in his seventies now is he
(05:20):
is the creator, along with his friend, of the Barkley Marathon,
whom he named after his friend, a farmer named Barry Barkley.
In the documentary, very sweetly, over the end credits, they
ask him with Barry why he named it after Barry,
and he said, well, he's to help me with a
lot of races, and I don't know it just spit.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, Barkley, he's a farmer, he's never run anything like that.
And he said, I have no idea why he named
it after me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, so there's no real reason, but they're called the
Barkley Marathons. And Cantrell has an interesting story in that
he is a former athlete. He's run supposedly over about
one hundred and fifty thousand miles in his life, but
he smokes camel cigarettes. He just floods his body with
doctor pepper. He's you know, older gentleman now and has
(06:08):
kind of wrecked his legs from all that running, so
he hasn't run for a while. But he got interested
in this as a boy scout in Tennessee as a
teenager or preteen, I guess when he was started doing
backpacking trips that he hated until he found out there
is a great joy in overcoming a hardship and doing
something tough physically and completing a goal and got kind
(06:32):
of hooked on that feeling.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah. He also apparently really liked the idea that if
he continued to work at something, he would continue to improve. Yeah,
that's a big part of he's running. That's a big
part of running. That's a big part of hiking. It's
a big part of everything that's hard while yeah exactly, So, yeah,
he got the bug pretty early on he started running marathons.
(06:54):
I think in nineteen sixty six. He started running. By
high school, he was running marathon and then he started
running ultra marathons. And he was there like right at
the beginning of the ultra marathon craze, which I think
kicked off in nineteen seventy four with California's Western States
one hundred. A guy named Gordy Ainsley set that up.
(07:16):
And so by this time, you know, the ultra marathons
were starting to catch on, and Gary Kintrell was enough
of a runner that he knew of these things. But
he was also married, he was starting to have kids,
he had a job as an accountant, and he just
couldn't travel the country to go participate in ultrathons. So
he started setting his own up around Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah exactly. They first took the form of what he
called journey runs, which is this all sounds fun. If
I was into running, I would do something like this.
But he and his friends would get together and be like,
all right, let's run from Knoxville to Nashville, or let's
run I love the three run. Their idea of a
through run was either from Alabama or Kentucky running to
(08:01):
the other just straight through Tennessee. Let's run through the
state of Tennessee. Right, pretty fun idea they were doing these.
They led to some other kind of legit races. I
think one of the two is still around. He called it,
and he's always had a sense of humor. You can
tell by the way names these things. The last annual
Ball State obviously Volunteer State Road Race, which is a
(08:22):
three hundred and eleven mile run from Missouri to Georgia,
Georgie exactly ten day cut off time, no comfort stations
along the way, you have to source all your own
food and water and shelter along the way. And then
another one called the Idiots Run, which I don't think
(08:43):
is around one hundred and twenty three mile gravel, all
gravel road run.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, that's so bad, that's just such a bad idea. Well,
he called it the Idiots Run for a really good reason. Yeah,
And that's the whole his whole jam is, like he
loves coming up with a kind of race that just
is at the border between the possibility and the impossibility
of human endurance of what the human body can actually do,
(09:12):
Like he wants it just inside of that limit so
that you could, if you push yourself enough, complete this race,
but most people are just not going to be able
to because it's so close to impossible.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah. I mean, many many years the Barkley Marathon has
no finisher at all. Many years no one makes it
to the fifth loop. There are four loops that will
get into all this in a second. It's happening more
and more now, I think just there are more veterans
that come back that once you kind of know the deal,
I say, it gets a little easier, but you know,
(09:50):
a little easier in that it's possible to finish. It's
never easy, but I think the veterans have an advantage
for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, because I think I think the astonishment at how
difficult it is, Yeah, probably takes up a lot of
your mental energy and focus while you're while you're doing
it for the first time, and that Yeah, once you've
even tried it before and even dropped out, you probably
are past that and it's got to be a huge
leg up totally. So we should talk a little bit
(10:19):
about the whole basis of all this, right or do
you want to take a break?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, let's let's talk about where this thing's held right.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Okay, Well, the whole thing is held at Frozen Heads
State Park. It's named after Yeah, it's named after the
tallest peak in this state park. It's in Northeastern Tennessee,
which is kind of guess where Northeastern Tennessee is where
Virginia and North Carolina come together with Tennessee. It's beautiful
area and this will be in the Cumberland Mountains. And
(10:48):
this particular state park is not like the kind you
just you know, go to everybody goes to on the
weekends for picnic. It's pretty remote. It's three hundred and
thirty acres, but this three hundred and thirty acre state
park surrounded by twenty four thousand acres of forest land.
And the whole thing, I guess started with convict leasing.
(11:08):
So this area is like really dark.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, you know, no totally and if you look at
you know, they do these aerial shots in the documentary
of this prison that we're about to talk about, and
it's just you know, it's in the middle of nowhere,
like at the bottom of you know, sort of a
ravine and very inhospitable. I mean, you'd like to think
about places like Alaska being like you know, some of
(11:34):
the most inhospitable places in the United States. But I
mean the mountains of northeastern Tennessee are no joke.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
No, And this area is in hospitable because of its
terrain and in part because of the weather and the elevation.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The whole reason there's a prison there is because back
in the nineteenth century, Tennessee started making money by leasing
its prisoners convicts to mining company. These coal mining companies
just make a little extra on the side from forcing
your prisoners to engage in hard labor. Right. Well, I
think in our man, I need to keep a list
(12:11):
of all of our episodes, like handy because I can't
remember the name of it. But do you remember that
one war, the strike war in the nineteenth century, and
I think coal mines in uh Madawan Mattawan, Yes, thank you.
In that episode we talked a lot about what happened
also in Tennessee's coal mines where the labor was taking
on management and it was resulting in wars. Well, one
(12:33):
of the things that resulted out of this in Tennessee
was that the laborers, the free laborers who worked for
the coal mining companies, would frequently help the convicts whose
labor was being leased out by the state escape and
so Tennessee was like, well, fine, we're not doing that anymore.
But undeterred, they just started setting up their own coal
mines and using the prisoners directly instead of leasing them
(12:57):
out exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And they needed somewhere to put those prisoners, so are workers,
I guess slash prisoners. So they built a new prison.
It is called Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. And in the
nineteen thirties a lot of that land eventually became that
great conservation area that we were talking about, those twenty
four thousand acres, and the New Deal era Civilian Conservation
(13:21):
Corps built a lot of trails. It became a natural area,
you know, officially in the nineteen seventies. But there are
these trails there now, not like again, like you said,
not like a lot of state park trails that you
go to. A lot of these trails are still pretty rough.
The prison stayed open. But why we're telling you all
(13:42):
this is for a couple of reasons. One is, at
one point in the race, they navigate through a tunnel,
like a little water channel that goes under the prison,
and that's part of the race route where you're definitely
going to get your feet wet. I don't think we
mentioned you're running through rivers and things, so like wet feet,
and it's just a part of the challenge of this race.
(14:04):
But the prison remained open and James Earl Ray, the
assassin of Martin Luther King Junior, was sent there with
six other men. He escaped in nineteen seventy seven from
Brushing Mountain and spent fifty four hours in that rugged terrain,
eventually being recaptured about eight miles from the prison and
(14:25):
Lazarus Lake. Old laz Cantrell heard this story. Heard they
made it only eight miles in that fifty four hours,
and he said, man, I could travel one hundred miles
through that terrain in fifty four hours. So he invents
this race sort of inspired by this. He said that
(14:45):
he still gets hate mail every year and angry letters
for people that think it's some sort of tribute to
James Earl Ray, and he's like, no, it's the opposite.
It was started because I'm making fun of the fact
that this guy only made it eight miles. We're doing
one hundred, one hundred and thirty.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Really, you want to take a break.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, let's take a break. We know the name of
the marathon, we know where it takes place, we know
who started it and where it came from. And we'll
be back with more of the bark of the marathons
right after this.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes, So, like you said, I think in nineteen seventy seven,
(15:50):
James Lay escapes and Cantrell lived in the area. Said
it was big news at the time, so he was
aware of this, and a few years later he and
his friend Carl Hen known as raw Dog for reasons
that I don't want to ask about, they decided.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
It was in nineteen eighty five months you don't know,
all right, your good point.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
So they decided to hike into the state park. This
is this is a place where he's like, okay, like,
we could totally do so many more than eight miles
and fifty four hours. Let's go check this out and
have fun. And like you said, most of this area
are not nature trails where like there's signs posted there's
a path you can look down and follow, like these
(16:30):
are hard to find trails that you need to know
how to use a compass, a contour map, like all
you have to you have to be good at orienteering
is what it's called, in addition to hiking and putting
up with all sorts of terrible just uncomfortable stuff and
pushing your your limits. So these guys were like, let's
(16:51):
just go for a fun hike for a day.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, And they showed up there. There was a park
ranger that was like, you guys should leave, Like you
shouldn't be out there. It's like, it's not like you
think you're gonna get lost, You're gonna get hurt, You're
gonna need rescue. They ignored him. They did make it through.
They did an eight mile They.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Didn't even like, yeah, no his existence.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, he just walked right by. They made this eight
mile hike, this loop. But it took him a full day,
which is you know, you should be able to hike
much more than eight miles in a day. And it
required a lot of orienteering, like you said, and paying
attention to that kind of thing. And he said, all right,
I think I have an idea here for a race.
(17:35):
Let's make a nearly impossible to finish race. I think
it's kind of hard to tell because there's not a
website for this. You can't get like historical I mean
people have written about it since then, but you can't
get like the official website documentation on this race in
history because it doesn't exist, to keep it very much
under wraps. So the way he tells it on the documentary,
(17:59):
it was always supposed to be one hundred miles, but
no one ever did more than the first three loops
out of the five. Yeah, I think though maybe this
first version was shorter. It was about a fifty to
fifty five mile course. It was held over April Fool's
Day weekend nineteen eighty six, and the initial cutoff was
twenty four hours with thirteen participants in zero people finishing.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, and this is just a fifty to fifty five
mile version, like you said, Officially the current Barkley Marathon
is one hundred mile, and in reality it's also like
one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty miles
based on reports from people who've actually run it.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Right, Yeah, I mean he changes the route every year
a little bit, that's why it varies. But the year
they did the documentary, it was documented at one hundred
and thirty and everybody is like, it's not one hundred
Just stop saying that.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
So the first version, like you said, is three loops,
and it wasn't until two years after the first one
that the somebody completed it. And I mean we're talking
like dozens of people attempting this, and it took three
times before one person finished. And there was something about
(19:13):
this that I don't know if we've mentioned yet. Just
this first version, there was an elevation gain of twenty
four thousand feet. So all of the times you went
up and down, if you count all the ups, it
would equal twenty four thousand feet in elevation that you've
climbed over these three loops. And that is a lot.
(19:34):
And in fact, the guy who finished frozen D fertile. Yeah,
he was just edfertaw until he won, and from then
on he was frozen D fertile. He thought that there
was a misprint in Ultra Running magazine that the elevation
was actually twenty four hundred feet, not twenty four thousand.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah, And I guess we can go ahead and tell
everybody the current iteration, like we said, is supposedly one
hundred but it's really more like one hundred and thirty miles.
It's got a sixty hour time limit and the elevation
is the total elevation climb over that race if you
finish it is sixty thousand feet, which is equivalent to
(20:13):
hawking to walking up and back down Mount Everest twice.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yes, yeah, so yeah, the total elevations one hundred and
twenty thousand, because, yeah, if you go up sixty thousand
feet and you're coming back down, you got to come
down sixty thousand feet. Yes, it's harder to climb up,
but it's not that easy to go down too, especially
if you're on an incline. And that's a big part
of it too, is now diving into things like brianart
and saplings and yeah, it's rough. Like just watching like
(20:42):
the effects on some of the runner's bodies and like
what they were coming back to camp looking.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Like was oh my god, god, I bet some guy
had like a.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Head wound and they show him like slipping on rocks
and hitting his forehead. It was really it's nuts what
these people are doing to themselves.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, I mean their legs are all just because these
briers they have to go through one part which is
a really heavy brier area, but every single person's legs
are just thrashed.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Like it looks like ground meat.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Oh yeah, like disgusting bleeding. Their feet are disgusting and
blistered and and just riddled with I think the one
guy that we'll get to the stops, but the one guy,
they were like, it would take you eight hours to
fully dry your feet out, so you know you can't.
You're not gonna get dry feet, which is a big problem.
(21:32):
And they're basically not sleeping when you when you complete
a loop, you have what's called an interlooper period where
you can do whatever you want. You can take however
much time you want to get. You can get first aid,
you can eat, you can drink, you can rest, you
can change your clothes and socks, you can take a
nap if you want. But that clock is still running,
(21:53):
so how long you wait is up to you. I
think the winner that you said he slept about an
hour total. So just try staying up and awake for
sixty hours in a.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Chair and without drugs.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, exactly. These people are doing this and you know,
we say it's a run, like a lot of this
is hiking and bouldering and walking and crawling, so it's
not like they're running the whole time. But it's just brutal.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, it really is. One of the other things that
really kind of gets this across too, is in what
you said, So you've got sixty hours to finish, and
from the start that clock's always ticking, right, Yeah, but
you're going one hundred and thirty miles. So if you
do the math. Olivia helps us with this, and she
pointed out that goodness, Yeah, you could sleep for two
(22:43):
eight hour nights and still finish this course at a
twenty minute mile pace, which you can basically do on
your hands and knees, and still complete it within the
sixty hour cutoff. So the fact that some people can't
even finish the first loop, yeah, go to show you
how difficult this is. That if we were flat, it
(23:03):
would be beyond easy. But those same those same limits,
the time limit and the length put on this particular
terrain or in this topography is just it changes absolutely everything.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Oh yeah, at this twelve hour time limit per loop
must have come in after the documentary, right.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, that confused me too, because they were finishing in
like thirteen hours and something like that. I didn't get that.
So yeah, I think it must have been a new one.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, I think so. So finishing the three loops. If
you finish three loops, that is considered a fun run,
and that is a designation and that is a huge accomplishment. Yeah,
just to finish the fun run. We should add he
also has a baby Barkley in the Fall, the Berkeley
Barkeley Fall Classic, which is a fifty k so thirty
(23:54):
one miles, and that has about four hundred runners, but
only about thirty five to forty participants are allowed per
year to compete in this thing because of you know,
it's out in nature, so that the state won't let
them have like hundreds of people. Like not a ton
of people can go watch. It's just like family and
I think some you know, former winners can be there
(24:14):
and it's you know, it's pretty small operation because they
just can't you know, run rough shot over the area.
But they have the sixty hours to complete, now twelve
hours per loop. The first loop is run clockwise. The
second loop, which is at night, will go counterclockwise, and
then again day night clockwise counterclockwise. And then this is
(24:37):
pretty devious, the final fifth loop. If you get there,
the first person to finish the fourth gets a choice
which way they want to run, and then they start
splitting people up, because almost everybody runs with a buddy
or two. It really really helps to have someone out
there and they're really helping each other. But at the end,
he's like, you're gonna lose your buddy, which way do
(24:59):
you want to run? And the first person will say,
I'll go clockwise, the next person has to go counterclockwise,
and then they alternate. So at some point, if they
finish that fifth loop, they're going to pass their former
buddy going in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Right, Yeah, And in the documentary, Cantrell points out like
these by this time, these people who had like formed
serious bonds by running together oh total loops, are now
direct competitors. Like, now it's a race because they're in
the fifth loop, and whoever's going to finish in what
time they finish a yeah, yeah, is going to determine
the actual winner, Like now there's a possible winner, yeah,
(25:34):
And everything changes. So I don't they probably don't like
class pans, and then you know they're they're pulled apart,
you know, sadly when they have to go in different
directions at that point.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, I think it's probably it makes it a lot tougher,
but I get the idea that if you make it,
if you're one of the maybe two, maybe three, maximum
four people that are even on the fifth loop, then
that's when things get serious. That's when it turns into
an actual race.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, that's what I took it as too. One thing
that I didn't get I got from context. I didn't
see it anywhere because I guess it's so obvious. No
one thought it needed to be spelled out except me.
But it's the same loop, right, Yeah, Okay, so they're
doing the same loop five times, which is why they
do it clockwise and counterclockwise and different ones at day
(26:22):
and night, so that you can't just be like, yep,
I remember this, this is nothing now, I remember exactly
what the trail is. You're super disoriented the first time,
but it's not like you have it down pat after
that first loop necessarily.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, and it definitely doesn't seem like it gets easier
because that they were finishing when they were fresh legged
at loop one, they were finishing in about eight or
nine hours for the fastest times, and then those fastest
people were doing like twelve and thirteen hours on the
next loop through the darkness. Yeah, and we should mention
the weather. You know, it's with these huge elevation changes.
(26:57):
You're going to go from temperatures sometimes in April in
the eighties where it's low to like ten degrees at night.
They have about one hundred gallons of water they put
out randomly on the course, like there are no technical
water stations, but you'll just happen upon a jug of water.
And Laz said that. You know, one year they were
(27:20):
one hundred eight pound blocks of ice because it was
ten degrees at elevation. Yeah, it's just crazy.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
I say, we take a break and talk about how
you would get into this race and then what it's
actually like running it.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Okay, this is.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
All right, so we're back. The race is about to begin.
We should point out to the other thing to keep
in mind is if you quit, quit near the start
finish line, right, because like a lot of people finish
like a loop and they're like, I'm out, or maybe
the two or a lot of people get to that
third fun run and they say that's good enough for me.
The one guy in the documentary quit and it took
(28:30):
him ten hours to navigate back because it's not like
they send somebody out you don't tap out on radio
and they come and get you. Yeah, you just decide
I can't do this anymore, and then you very slowly
walk back to the finish line.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah. And at some point you might as well be like, well,
at least I guess I'm gonna have to finish the
first loop. I might as well keep going that direction.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, No, totally, or if there, I mean, it depends
on where you are. If you're below the halfway point,
a lot of people come back the way they came right.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, So going even back before the start of the race,
you said that the Barkley Marathon has no website, and
that is intentional. The whole thing is meant to be
kept largely a secret. There's not a website. There's not
like some information on this is how you apply. You
have to use basically your investigative skills just to figure
(29:23):
out Gary Cantrell's email to email to ask to apply.
And they make it really really hard to apply for
this because in part they're just weeding out people who
don't have even the beginning of the motivation and dedication
to complete this race. Like if you can't even go
to this trouble to like, really do your research to
(29:45):
figure out how to apply. Then don't even bother trying
to apply. There's no website, no thanks exactly, and if
you do want to imply, you have to cough up
a dollar sixty.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, that's a non refundable application fee. I think most
people send in two single dollar bills because he says
they don't give change. And he every year chooses, you know,
he chooses a range of people. Some of them are
very experienced, some of them are random. Every year he
chooses one human sacrifice that he said the runners even appreciate,
(30:20):
even at the expense of not getting in themselves. He
chooses one person that has no business being there. In
the year of the documentary, that poor guy made it
six hours, yeah before And I knew as soon as
that guy headed out in his camouflage cargo pants, I
was like, this guy, what is he doing? What's he wearing?
(30:42):
So he didn't make it very far?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
No, he didn't. And he was like, this is six
hours man, Like he didn't make it very far at all. Now,
and this guy was way more qualified to do it
than like the average person. Like it wasn't like he
was just some like he went and plopped the guy
out of mc donald's like mid bite of a big
mac and right through him on the trail. Like this
(31:04):
guy was in pretty decent shape, and he thought that
he had a chance. It's not like he's like, yeah,
I'm gonna go be the sacrificial human, right right. He
thought like he was going to try to complete it.
He didn't even I don't even think he made it
halfway through the first loop, did he?
Speaker 1 (31:19):
No? I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
No.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
It was pretty funny and sad. He took it on
the chin like a like a like a big boy though.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, yeah, imagine if he'd started like yelling, you just.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Brought me out here to make fun of me a
little bit. More about the application process, everyone knows it
takes place generally around April Pool's day. They send in
an essay to get in with a weird prompts, like
one year it was what's the most important vegetable group?
One of the women, I think she was in the
documentary that you're Beverly Abs who by the way, that
(31:53):
you're completed the fun run so quite an achievement. She
said she was told to send the application in exactly
at midnight on Christmas Day in the time zone where
Lazarus Lake was, so she had to figure out where
he was at the time. And then she wrote a
poem as her essay and she got in right. And
(32:13):
then once you get in, you get a letter that
says I'm sorry to inform you that you have been accepted. Basically,
misery awaits you.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, that's the whole, the whole jam. The way that
it's treated is like you're like, you're not going to finish,
You're a dummy for even trying. There's this weird kind
of push pull going on that Gary Cantrell established basically
out of the gate that's based on his kind of
impish sense of humor. Yeah, and so that means that like,
(32:44):
you're just as likely to be abused or mocked when
you like quit as you are to be told like, hey,
you completed one loop. That's pretty good just in and
of itself. It just, I guess depends on what his
mood is right then, and a lot of people like,
aren't don't really like this guy that much? They like,
if you don't, if you're not tuned into his sense
(33:05):
of humor, you're probably not gonna like him. You might
find him obnoxious or you know, I might find him
just mean, but if you are tuned into it, I
think he's he's pretty funny. Like reading about him on
paper and reading interviews with him, I was like, I
don't really like this guy. Yeah, and then I saw
him in the documentary. I'm like, oh, okay, saying he's
just hard to translate into a description, and when you
(33:26):
see him talk yourself, you're like, yeah, he's fine.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, he's He's one of the great eccentrics of the world.
And sometimes those people are hard to pin down, you know,
because they'll fit into a box.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
I know.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
But he has to write some other fun things. If
you're a first time runner, you bring a license plate
from your home state or home country and he makes
these cool signs out of them and hangs them up.
If you have to bring a gift as well, if
you are part of the race. If you are a
first time runner, you have to bring an article of clothing.
(34:00):
And the documentary was very funny. He said it kind
of depends what he needs. One year it was a
bunch of white ox for shirts. Another year it was socks,
another year was flannel shirts, and then if you have
finished the race and you come back to race again,
you have to bring him a pack of camel cigarettes.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Yeah, and the camel cigarettes play a big role because
the start of the race is marked officially by him
lighting a cigarette. So everybody's standing there at this gate
that's the official starting line for the race, and just
standing there waiting for him to light the cigarette. And
he finally does and it's like a random time. I
think it was like eight to eleven am when the
(34:36):
whole thing started, and he lights a cigarette and soon
everybody takes off.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, when you get accepted, you know what day it's
going to be on. You go, you camp out in
the campground and you're just sort of waiting for him
to blow the conck. He blows a conk sometime between
midnight and noon on the Saturday of that weekend. You
don't know when it's coming. So if he blows it
at you know, seven am or sometime in the more,
you're up all night. You're not getting sleep because you're
(35:03):
so amped up and ready for this and apprehensive because
you don't know when it starts again. He's just sort
of messing with people. Yeah, and so when he decides
to blow the conk. He blows the conk. That means
you have one hour and everybody you know starts getting
ready to go. At that point there is no prize.
We should also mention the prize is just finishing this thing.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, I mean there's bragging rights for sure. Like you
if you told any ultra marathon runner, you know, trail
runner that you completed the Darkly Marathon, like they would
drop to their knees and start kissing your rings.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, it gets a big.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Deal to have finished this. And yet there's also like
from Gary Cantrell's perspective, from everything that I've read, the
way that he describes it as like he's giving people
an opportunity to push themselves to their maximum possible limits.
Because remember this race is intended to be just inside
(36:02):
the possible human the possibility of the human body. Right, Yeah,
so if you can complete it, like you're doing all
sorts of things that you never thought you were capable
of it, Like your mental endurance is among the greatest
of people walking around. And so yeah, it's way more
than just bragging rights, Like you're if you're into bragging rights,
(36:24):
you're probably not even going to finish the first loop,
Like if that's why you're doing it and you somehow
got accepted, it's not going to translate. So these people
don't care about bragging rights, even though they would have
bragging rights for life.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Totally. I like that one dude, the long hair guy
from Arizona in the documentary that that was his first one.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
He just had a cool vibe. Like everyone had a
pretty cool vibe. Like it's a really as a great
spirit of helping one another out. And during the interloper
periods where they're which is by the way, the only
time they're allowed to have their sort of aid crew
with them, like they don't you know, they can't get
helped along the way. So this is when they see
(37:03):
other people and there's other former winners there, and when
people drop out, they stick around and they're really helping
people get their feet together and they're giving them dry
socks and feeding them and it's just a real great
spirit of sort of camaraderie and helping one and out
another out. It feels like, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, because as people get pared down, the people around
them are like they want to see somebody succeed then.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yeah, for sure, pretty cool, real quick. What else as
far as housekeeping, No GPS, that's a big one. They
can wear a little cheap or they're given a little
cheap watch. And I think they banned altimeters in twenty
fourteen or twelve or something.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Something like that. Either way, you're stripped down to the
bear essentials. Yeah, and you have a map, but you
don't have a copy of their map. They give you
the master map to use to trace the route onto
your own map. He traced it incorrectly. Well, that's ts
for you. And people do get lost like a lot.
There was one guy who oh, man, don't remember what
(38:08):
year it was, Oh, in two thousand and six. Yeah,
this guy wandered off the course and spent thirty two
hours trying to get back. Man, And in the end
he only did like two miles of the actual course.
He wandered so far off course. So the way he
put it, he did sixteen hour miles in this race.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
God, I felt so bad for that guy.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, And then what else.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Chuck, this isn't And to me, this is kind of
one of the coolest things because the whole time, until
we had gotten to this part, I was like, well,
how do they know that people are running that route
because they're not staked out along the way. In the
documentary they had some people staked out a little bit
just to get some footage, but it's not like they
have people at checkpoints that are making sure they're on
the route and all that. He did something pretty lo
(38:56):
fi and genius, which was he puts ten books out
ten to twelve depending on the year, at different points
along the way, and you have to rip the page
out corresponding to your BIB number, and that is the
proof that you ran the real route. You have to
show up with depending on how many books, ten or
eleven pages when you touch that start finish line, and
(39:18):
you have to turn them over to Cantrell and he
has to look them over and verify it.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, and I'm guessing that they they are the books
in the same place every time.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Ah, that I'm not sure about.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
But I do know that they hide them. They're not
just always out in plain sight. Like the one of
the things you're having to stay oriented, you're having to
push your body and endure, and then you're also at
the same time having to make sure you don't trop
past one of the books. So you have to backtrack
and get the page out.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah. I mean the one guy the year of the
documentary that won and set the record. I think he
said he spent a couple of hours looking for the book.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I would lose my mind. Man.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And also if you're like, well, how do you get
the same page eleven times? Do you get a different
BIB number? Free loop? So you would be tearing out
a different page each time.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, And I think there was a story just last year.
In fact, there was a French runner who got to
the final loop to find that a book was gone.
There was a day hiker that thought the race was
over and took the book as a memento, so he's like,
what do I do? He completed the race and when
he got back to the gate, they had turned the
book in, so they counted that.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
That's awesome. Yeah. I've read about one runner too, who
I think this. I don't remember what year was, maybe
twenty sixteen or seventeen. He made it. He showed up
six seconds after time. Oh my god. But he had
all his pages and they said like he was just
(40:46):
collapsed on the ground and he said, I have all
my pages. But he didn't make it by six seconds.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
You know, I bet that he feels a great sense
of accomplishment, though I would think, so sure finished that
thing six seconds, be damned. You know, you'd have.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
To be one hell of a perfectionist to be like,
well I failed technically, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
I think there was one more piece of housekeeping here.
Oh that's right. When a runner gives up, a guy
named Dave Hen, who is a race volunteer, plays taps
on a bugle.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, and that's Carl raw Dog Hen's son.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Oh is it it is raw Dog Junior?
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, Little raw Dog.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Or the third Yeah, he said.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
He said that he thinks the reason why is because
it's just one final punishment for you from Gary Cantrell
to basically be humiliated with taps. And on the on
the other side, some runners when they finish, especially when
they actually complete the race, he has one of those staples,
easy buttons, Yeah, that they press and when you press it,
(41:58):
a voice goes that was easy.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah. It was really fun to watch. It was someone
just like on their last leg literally, like you're bleeding
at the legs and he's like hit the button right
because that was easy.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yeah. The guy who was on the documentary was I
think his name was John Kelly. He finished second of
two I think that year, maybe three, and he they
show him and he's just totally out of it, like
he's sitting on a chair with people surrounded surrounding him
talking and yeah, yeah, he's just in another world, like
(42:32):
totally out of his skull because he hadn't slept at
all like that whole time.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, sixty hours.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Man. The one guy that couldn't in the documentary that
tapped out and was just like crying.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Oh I don't remember him, which one?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Uh boy, that was tough. He had kind of dark,
curly hair and he was pretty pumped up going into
it about his chances and yeah, I mean, what can
you say about a race where like whatever, probably ninety
eight percent of the people had never been right, maybe
more maybe ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
That was a well. Yeah, so I think officially twenty
out of one thousand plus people have finished. So I'm
sure we have some sixth graders who can calculate that
for us and send it in.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Let me see last I'm sorry. This year there were
a record five people completed it, and that is I
think the maximum before that may have been three, maybe four,
but usually it's one, maybe two or zero last. I'm sorry.
This year a woman was a finisher for the first time. Yes,
me and Paris or Perry. I don't know how she
(43:39):
pronounces it. She came in two minutes short of the
deadline to finish that race.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah, so she finished with two minutes last.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Right, that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, it really is. And one of the reasons it's
incredible is because Gary Cantrell. This is another reason a
lot of people don't like him. For years and years
and years, he would say publicly, there's no woman out
there who could possibly finish this race. Yes, And you know,
he was criticized for saying that kind of thing because
there's plenty of amazing women marathonors and ultrath honors and
(44:09):
trail runners. And he defended it by basically saying, if
a woman could defeat this, it would be exactly the
kind of woman who would need to hear somebody say
something like a woman would never be able to complete this.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah, I agree, got yeah, And I don't know if
I'm being an apologist, but I got the idea that
a lot of that was sort of goating. Yes, someone
to finish, Like that's how I took it too. Yeah,
Like deep down he's like, there's going to be a
woman that's going to do this, and maybe I need
to stoke the fire a little bit, right.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
So finally, yes, I think Jasmine Paris's She's a brit
who teaches at the University of Scotland. Did you say
that part?
Speaker 1 (44:48):
No, I also said Jasmin Peris.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
I know that was just correcting you. Oh, I'm sure
it was Jasmine per Jesmond Pieri.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Who else? In twenty twenty four, a mechanic engineer named
Jared Campbell became the first four time finisher. He's in
the documentary and an interesting just sort of side note
in this and Lyvia pointed out, but then when you
watch the documentary it really hits home is that it
seems like this race and ultra marathoning and this sort
(45:17):
of endurancing attracts people of very, very high intelligence. I
felt like every person they interviewed were like, I'm an engineer,
I'm a I'm a scientist. And they talked to almost
called him Barkley to Lazarus about this to Cantrell in
the documentary and he said, yeah, he said those are
the achievers in life. Those are the people that go
(45:38):
to graduate school and go to get their doctoral thesis,
and people who set hard goals and accomplish them. It
just sort of fits. And I never really thought about
that that tie. But I don't think there's a lot
of dumb dumbs that do stuff like this.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
No, although even though dumb dumb to do.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
It, it's a weird dichotomy.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yep, I say. We finished on the story of John
Fega Veresi.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
All right, let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
He was a runner in oh, I don't know what
year he ran, but he was an experienced ultra marathon runner.
He participated in the Bad Water ultra marathon, which runs
through Death Valley one hundred and thirty five miles. Yeah,
and he was like, this is that's nothing I'm paraphrasing. Yeah,
(46:24):
I'm sure he wouldn't say this, but he was basically
like that, you can't even really compare the two. And
he completed it, and he was so incoherent from sleep
deprivation that he apparently didn't remember like downing a pint
of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, like at the finish line.
He had no idea that he'd done that, and he
(46:46):
spent the next day and a half just laying around
the campground recovering. So after that time he's like, all right,
I guess I'll drive home, and he started falling asleep
on the way home, so he had to stop and
check himself into a hotel, where he slept for an
another sixteen hours.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Man, that's called human exhaustion.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, and I say we quietly close the door and
leave John to his slumber and go on to a listener. Mayl.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
I do want to shout out the record though, Brett Mahn,
who is one or a few times now, I think
he's a physicist. The record, current record right now is
lies with Brett at fifty two hours, three minutes and
eight seconds. Very nice, just incredible.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
You woke John up. That's right.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Sorry, John, come back and sleep. Here's your chubby hobby.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
That's the best.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
I can't find it anymore.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
I can't either.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
It's people say it exists. I get pictures occasionally emails,
but it doesn't exist in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
That's said. What did Alena do to be so punished?
Speaker 1 (48:00):
I don't know. I don't need ice cream anymore anyway,
Which is the saddest part of this story. All right,
I'm gonna call this a lake versus pond. We got
quite a few emails, by the way, I want to
mention one differentiator we saw said that the difference they
heard between lake versus pond is if sunlight can reach
the bottom. If it can, then it's a pond. If
(48:23):
it can't, then it's a lake. But this comes from Mark. Hey, guys,
the answer, I think depends on who you asked. But
as an ambassador from the land of ten thousand Lakes, Minnesota,
which is technically and forty two lakes, perhaps I have
a bit of clout. Most folks would assume the difference
has something to do with size and depth. It's not
quite that simple, though. According to a twenty twelve CBS
(48:45):
News article, retired DNR water supervisor Glenn Yackle suggests that
a lake needs to be large enough and deep enough
to allow for wave action to be considered a lake
that can clear vegetation from its shoreline. Pond, on the
other hand, lacks this wave action, meaning its shoreline is
typically surrounded by vegetation without clear boundaries. But guys, it
(49:07):
gets even more complicated. Government agencies often have regulatory thresholds
that lead to discrepancies per state. For example, here in Minnesota,
with our eight and forty two lakes has fewer lakes
than Wisconsin. And any Wisconsin I will gleefully point out
that they have fifteen thousand. But here's where the differences
come into play. While they do have fifteen thousand lakes,
(49:29):
their definition includes a body of water with an area
of at least two point five acres. In Minnesota, our
standards are higher, and to qualify as a lake here
we must cover at least ten acres. If we lowered
our threshold to match Wisconsin's, we wouldn't dare dream of it,
though we'd have over twenty thousand lakes.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Wow, took. I feel more lake informed than I ever
have been in my entire life for real.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
That is from Mark Mark's had always pleasure to listen
to you guys with my boys who are six and
seven and big fans, and Mark had replied with their names,
and I'm very frustrated because I cannot find that reply.
So let me just say Mark and sons of Mark,
thank you for the sport.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yes, and I can vouch for Chuck Mark. We just
edited out many minutes of him searching for that email,
so he really did give it a try.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Sorry, guys, but they're six and seven, so maybe that's
for the best.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Right. If you want to be like Mark and his
unnamed sons, you can write to us as well. Send
us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know. And we are giving up right out of
the gate on our episode about the Barkley Marathon.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's right, our friend Chad. We want to shout out
our friend Chad Crowley, who we talked about before, who
was the producer and director and showrunner of our TV
show back in the day. I got this idea from
Chad because we had coffee over the holidays and he
is running ultra marathons now, wow, which is a very
(00:44):
Chad thing to do. Like he starts running a handful
of years ago and then now is running ultras. And
I was like, Chad, how long is that? And he
said sixty miles generally, And I said, could you run
to Athens? He said how far is Athens? And said
I can't remember how far? I said, like eighty miles.
He said I could run one hundred miles.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Wow, But he'd need a ride back.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Are you kiddy? He said it might take a while,
but I could probably run one hundred miles. And I'm
just like floored by this idea that people can do this,
and he said, he said, man, you should do a
guys should do an episode on the Barkley Marathons, which
I had heard of before. Oh really, which is this, Yeah,
which is this ultra marathon plus a trail run plus
(01:28):
in the mountains of northeastern Tennessee that is known for
just being a crazy race, a crazy hard race, and
having a really unusual origin story and unusual founder and
just how it's all done. It's just this remarkable story.
And I agree.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, there's a really great documentary from twenty seventeen called
the Barkley Marathon colon the Race that Eats It's Young,
which is a nickname for that race. And there's a
few people in there who are seasoned trail runners, ultrathonors,
like people who know their stuff and have done crazy
things as far as running goes, who are like, this
(02:08):
is far and away the hardest race on the planet, Like,
there's nobody who's doing anything like this, And if you
think you know what you're doing, you're going to be
completely amazed at how far off you are in what
you thought this is going to be, Like, it's that hard.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, you got a chance to watch it.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, it was good. And there was a guy who
was a Special Operations like I guess a former a
Special Ops soldier who was like, I've done crazy stuff
with my body and this like that did nothing to
prepare me for this.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, it was really well done. It's on YouTube, and
I recommend watching it because it really there's a lot
of drama that takes place. The year that they did
the documentary. I think they did it on twenty twelve
or twenty thirteen maybe, oh was it and it came
out in seventeen, you.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Said, okay, so yeah, I was confused at what year
it was.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I think it was twenty twelve or twenty thirteen, and
it was. There's a lot of good drama. So we
don't want to spoil some of the stories that happened,
but uh, I recommend watching. And here we go with
Barkley Marathons.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh okay. So the whole thing about Barkley marathons is
that you can trace them back. I mean you could
start at the very beginning. We talked about in our
what was the one crazy marathon episode we did not
too long ago.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It's on marathons.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
No, it was on a specific marathon, and I think
Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Oh, I don't know. We did want of marathons years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, remember the guy who was running the Human Zoos
at the World's Fair came up with like a he
called it the Special Olympics Marathon. This was months ago.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Man, Hey, you can't remember it either, buddy, all right,
why can't you remember it existed? At least?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yes? Anyway, Oh, get this. Apparently we did an entire
short stuff on Sad's rings and didn't mention it because
I have no recollection of doing a short stuff on
Saturn's rings. Do you?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
I don't remember that?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
You do remember we did a saddern episode that came
out like a few days back.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I'm so mad at you right now, don't you. We're
still getting emails on that one. So yes, I do. Okay,
all right, cool, What LA marathon are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It might not be La, but it was. It was
like just you remember like that one Italian guy I
think he was running in like oh oh oh, he'd
stop and eat people's fruit and yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody.
And there were the two guys from Africa who.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Are remember that now?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah? It was I can't remember where it was or
what the name was, what it was?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, oh boy, people are just screaming at their pod player.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
The sad thing is the whole reason I brought that up, Chuck,
was to say that we went over a lot of
the origins of marathons in that episode, so we don't
need to do that in this episode. That we just
did all that and.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Our Marathons episode. Yeah, anyway, let's not even do that.
The marathon has been a long a long time. Ultra
Marathon started in the nineteen seventies, and that's what we're
really talking about. And this guy Gary Kintrell, aka Lazarus
Lake or laz he's in his seventies now is he
(05:20):
is the creator, along with his friend, of the Barkley Marathon,
whom he named after his friend, a farmer named Barry Barkley.
In the documentary, very sweetly, over the end credits, they
ask him with Barry why he named it after Barry,
and he said, well, he's to help me with a
lot of races, and I don't know it just spit.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, Barkley, he's a farmer, he's never run anything like that.
And he said, I have no idea why he named
it after me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, so there's no real reason, but they're called the
Barkley Marathons. And Cantrell has an interesting story in that
he is a former athlete. He's run supposedly over about
one hundred and fifty thousand miles in his life, but
he smokes camel cigarettes. He just floods his body with
doctor pepper. He's you know, older gentleman now and has
(06:08):
kind of wrecked his legs from all that running, so
he hasn't run for a while. But he got interested
in this as a boy scout in Tennessee as a
teenager or preteen, I guess when he was started doing
backpacking trips that he hated until he found out there
is a great joy in overcoming a hardship and doing
something tough physically and completing a goal and got kind
(06:32):
of hooked on that feeling.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah. He also apparently really liked the idea that if
he continued to work at something, he would continue to improve. Yeah,
that's a big part of he's running. That's a big
part of running. That's a big part of hiking. It's
a big part of everything that's hard while yeah exactly, So, yeah,
he got the bug pretty early on he started running marathons.
(06:54):
I think in nineteen sixty six. He started running. By
high school, he was running marathon and then he started
running ultra marathons. And he was there like right at
the beginning of the ultra marathon craze, which I think
kicked off in nineteen seventy four with California's Western States
one hundred. A guy named Gordy Ainsley set that up.
(07:16):
And so by this time, you know, the ultra marathons
were starting to catch on, and Gary Kintrell was enough
of a runner that he knew of these things. But
he was also married, he was starting to have kids,
he had a job as an accountant, and he just
couldn't travel the country to go participate in ultrathons. So
he started setting his own up around Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah exactly. They first took the form of what he
called journey runs, which is this all sounds fun. If
I was into running, I would do something like this.
But he and his friends would get together and be like,
all right, let's run from Knoxville to Nashville, or let's
run I love the three run. Their idea of a
through run was either from Alabama or Kentucky running to
(08:01):
the other just straight through Tennessee. Let's run through the
state of Tennessee. Right, pretty fun idea they were doing these.
They led to some other kind of legit races. I
think one of the two is still around. He called it,
and he's always had a sense of humor. You can
tell by the way names these things. The last annual
Ball State obviously Volunteer State Road Race, which is a
(08:22):
three hundred and eleven mile run from Missouri to Georgia,
Georgie exactly ten day cut off time, no comfort stations
along the way, you have to source all your own
food and water and shelter along the way. And then
another one called the Idiots Run, which I don't think
(08:43):
is around one hundred and twenty three mile gravel, all
gravel road run.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, that's so bad, that's just such a bad idea. Well,
he called it the Idiots Run for a really good reason. Yeah,
And that's the whole his whole jam is, like he
loves coming up with a kind of race that just
is at the border between the possibility and the impossibility
of human endurance of what the human body can actually do,
(09:12):
Like he wants it just inside of that limit so
that you could, if you push yourself enough, complete this race,
but most people are just not going to be able
to because it's so close to impossible.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah. I mean, many many years the Barkley Marathon has
no finisher at all. Many years no one makes it
to the fifth loop. There are four loops that will
get into all this in a second. It's happening more
and more now, I think just there are more veterans
that come back that once you kind of know the deal,
I say, it gets a little easier, but you know,
(09:50):
a little easier in that it's possible to finish. It's
never easy, but I think the veterans have an advantage
for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, because I think I think the astonishment at how
difficult it is, Yeah, probably takes up a lot of
your mental energy and focus while you're while you're doing
it for the first time, and that Yeah, once you've
even tried it before and even dropped out, you probably
are past that and it's got to be a huge
leg up totally. So we should talk a little bit
(10:19):
about the whole basis of all this, right or do
you want to take a break?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, let's let's talk about where this thing's held right.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Okay, Well, the whole thing is held at Frozen Heads
State Park. It's named after Yeah, it's named after the
tallest peak in this state park. It's in Northeastern Tennessee,
which is kind of guess where Northeastern Tennessee is where
Virginia and North Carolina come together with Tennessee. It's beautiful
area and this will be in the Cumberland Mountains. And
(10:48):
this particular state park is not like the kind you
just you know, go to everybody goes to on the
weekends for picnic. It's pretty remote. It's three hundred and
thirty acres, but this three hundred and thirty acre state
park surrounded by twenty four thousand acres of forest land.
And the whole thing, I guess started with convict leasing.
(11:08):
So this area is like really dark.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, you know, no totally and if you look at
you know, they do these aerial shots in the documentary
of this prison that we're about to talk about, and
it's just you know, it's in the middle of nowhere,
like at the bottom of you know, sort of a
ravine and very inhospitable. I mean, you'd like to think
about places like Alaska being like you know, some of
(11:34):
the most inhospitable places in the United States. But I
mean the mountains of northeastern Tennessee are no joke.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
No, And this area is in hospitable because of its
terrain and in part because of the weather and the elevation.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The whole reason there's a prison there is because back
in the nineteenth century, Tennessee started making money by leasing
its prisoners convicts to mining company. These coal mining companies
just make a little extra on the side from forcing
your prisoners to engage in hard labor. Right. Well, I
think in our man, I need to keep a list
(12:11):
of all of our episodes, like handy because I can't
remember the name of it. But do you remember that
one war, the strike war in the nineteenth century, and
I think coal mines in uh Madawan Mattawan, Yes, thank you.
In that episode we talked a lot about what happened
also in Tennessee's coal mines where the labor was taking
on management and it was resulting in wars. Well, one
(12:33):
of the things that resulted out of this in Tennessee
was that the laborers, the free laborers who worked for
the coal mining companies, would frequently help the convicts whose
labor was being leased out by the state escape and
so Tennessee was like, well, fine, we're not doing that anymore.
But undeterred, they just started setting up their own coal
mines and using the prisoners directly instead of leasing them
(12:57):
out exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And they needed somewhere to put those prisoners, so are workers,
I guess slash prisoners. So they built a new prison.
It is called Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. And in the
nineteen thirties a lot of that land eventually became that
great conservation area that we were talking about, those twenty
four thousand acres, and the New Deal era Civilian Conservation
(13:21):
Corps built a lot of trails. It became a natural area,
you know, officially in the nineteen seventies. But there are
these trails there now, not like again, like you said,
not like a lot of state park trails that you
go to. A lot of these trails are still pretty rough.
The prison stayed open. But why we're telling you all
(13:42):
this is for a couple of reasons. One is, at
one point in the race, they navigate through a tunnel,
like a little water channel that goes under the prison,
and that's part of the race route where you're definitely
going to get your feet wet. I don't think we
mentioned you're running through rivers and things, so like wet feet,
and it's just a part of the challenge of this race.
(14:04):
But the prison remained open and James Earl Ray, the
assassin of Martin Luther King Junior, was sent there with
six other men. He escaped in nineteen seventy seven from
Brushing Mountain and spent fifty four hours in that rugged terrain,
eventually being recaptured about eight miles from the prison and
(14:25):
Lazarus Lake. Old laz Cantrell heard this story. Heard they
made it only eight miles in that fifty four hours,
and he said, man, I could travel one hundred miles
through that terrain in fifty four hours. So he invents
this race sort of inspired by this. He said that
(14:45):
he still gets hate mail every year and angry letters
for people that think it's some sort of tribute to
James Earl Ray, and he's like, no, it's the opposite.
It was started because I'm making fun of the fact
that this guy only made it eight miles. We're doing
one hundred, one hundred and thirty.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Really, you want to take a break.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, let's take a break. We know the name of
the marathon, we know where it takes place, we know
who started it and where it came from. And we'll
be back with more of the bark of the marathons
right after this.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes, So, like you said, I think in nineteen seventy seven,
(15:50):
James Lay escapes and Cantrell lived in the area. Said
it was big news at the time, so he was
aware of this, and a few years later he and
his friend Carl Hen known as raw Dog for reasons
that I don't want to ask about, they decided.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
It was in nineteen eighty five months you don't know,
all right, your good point.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
So they decided to hike into the state park. This
is this is a place where he's like, okay, like,
we could totally do so many more than eight miles
and fifty four hours. Let's go check this out and
have fun. And like you said, most of this area
are not nature trails where like there's signs posted there's
a path you can look down and follow, like these
(16:30):
are hard to find trails that you need to know
how to use a compass, a contour map, like all
you have to you have to be good at orienteering
is what it's called, in addition to hiking and putting
up with all sorts of terrible just uncomfortable stuff and
pushing your your limits. So these guys were like, let's
(16:51):
just go for a fun hike for a day.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, And they showed up there. There was a park
ranger that was like, you guys should leave, Like you
shouldn't be out there. It's like, it's not like you
think you're gonna get lost, You're gonna get hurt, You're
gonna need rescue. They ignored him. They did make it through.
They did an eight mile They.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Didn't even like, yeah, no his existence.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, he just walked right by. They made this eight
mile hike, this loop. But it took him a full day,
which is you know, you should be able to hike
much more than eight miles in a day. And it
required a lot of orienteering, like you said, and paying
attention to that kind of thing. And he said, all right,
I think I have an idea here for a race.
(17:35):
Let's make a nearly impossible to finish race. I think
it's kind of hard to tell because there's not a
website for this. You can't get like historical I mean
people have written about it since then, but you can't
get like the official website documentation on this race in
history because it doesn't exist, to keep it very much
under wraps. So the way he tells it on the documentary,
(17:59):
it was always supposed to be one hundred miles, but
no one ever did more than the first three loops
out of the five. Yeah, I think though maybe this
first version was shorter. It was about a fifty to
fifty five mile course. It was held over April Fool's
Day weekend nineteen eighty six, and the initial cutoff was
twenty four hours with thirteen participants in zero people finishing.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, and this is just a fifty to fifty five
mile version, like you said, Officially the current Barkley Marathon
is one hundred mile, and in reality it's also like
one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty miles
based on reports from people who've actually run it.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Right, Yeah, I mean he changes the route every year
a little bit, that's why it varies. But the year
they did the documentary, it was documented at one hundred
and thirty and everybody is like, it's not one hundred
Just stop saying that.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
So the first version, like you said, is three loops,
and it wasn't until two years after the first one
that the somebody completed it. And I mean we're talking
like dozens of people attempting this, and it took three
times before one person finished. And there was something about
(19:13):
this that I don't know if we've mentioned yet. Just
this first version, there was an elevation gain of twenty
four thousand feet. So all of the times you went
up and down, if you count all the ups, it
would equal twenty four thousand feet in elevation that you've
climbed over these three loops. And that is a lot.
(19:34):
And in fact, the guy who finished frozen D fertile. Yeah,
he was just edfertaw until he won, and from then
on he was frozen D fertile. He thought that there
was a misprint in Ultra Running magazine that the elevation
was actually twenty four hundred feet, not twenty four thousand.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah, And I guess we can go ahead and tell
everybody the current iteration, like we said, is supposedly one
hundred but it's really more like one hundred and thirty miles.
It's got a sixty hour time limit and the elevation
is the total elevation climb over that race if you
finish it is sixty thousand feet, which is equivalent to
(20:13):
hawking to walking up and back down Mount Everest twice.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yes, yeah, so yeah, the total elevations one hundred and
twenty thousand, because, yeah, if you go up sixty thousand
feet and you're coming back down, you got to come
down sixty thousand feet. Yes, it's harder to climb up,
but it's not that easy to go down too, especially
if you're on an incline. And that's a big part
of it too, is now diving into things like brianart
and saplings and yeah, it's rough. Like just watching like
(20:42):
the effects on some of the runner's bodies and like
what they were coming back to camp looking.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Like was oh my god, god, I bet some guy
had like a.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Head wound and they show him like slipping on rocks
and hitting his forehead. It was really it's nuts what
these people are doing to themselves.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, I mean their legs are all just because these
briers they have to go through one part which is
a really heavy brier area, but every single person's legs
are just thrashed.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Like it looks like ground meat.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Oh yeah, like disgusting bleeding. Their feet are disgusting and
blistered and and just riddled with I think the one
guy that we'll get to the stops, but the one guy,
they were like, it would take you eight hours to
fully dry your feet out, so you know you can't.
You're not gonna get dry feet, which is a big problem.
(21:32):
And they're basically not sleeping when you when you complete
a loop, you have what's called an interlooper period where
you can do whatever you want. You can take however
much time you want to get. You can get first aid,
you can eat, you can drink, you can rest, you
can change your clothes and socks, you can take a
nap if you want. But that clock is still running,
(21:53):
so how long you wait is up to you. I
think the winner that you said he slept about an
hour total. So just try staying up and awake for
sixty hours in a.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Chair and without drugs.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, exactly. These people are doing this and you know,
we say it's a run, like a lot of this
is hiking and bouldering and walking and crawling, so it's
not like they're running the whole time. But it's just brutal.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, it really is. One of the other things that
really kind of gets this across too, is in what
you said, So you've got sixty hours to finish, and
from the start that clock's always ticking, right, Yeah, but
you're going one hundred and thirty miles. So if you
do the math. Olivia helps us with this, and she
pointed out that goodness, Yeah, you could sleep for two
(22:43):
eight hour nights and still finish this course at a
twenty minute mile pace, which you can basically do on
your hands and knees, and still complete it within the
sixty hour cutoff. So the fact that some people can't
even finish the first loop, yeah, go to show you
how difficult this is. That if we were flat, it
(23:03):
would be beyond easy. But those same those same limits,
the time limit and the length put on this particular
terrain or in this topography is just it changes absolutely everything.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Oh yeah, at this twelve hour time limit per loop
must have come in after the documentary, right.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, that confused me too, because they were finishing in
like thirteen hours and something like that. I didn't get that.
So yeah, I think it must have been a new one.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, I think so. So finishing the three loops. If
you finish three loops, that is considered a fun run,
and that is a designation and that is a huge accomplishment. Yeah,
just to finish the fun run. We should add he
also has a baby Barkley in the Fall, the Berkeley
Barkeley Fall Classic, which is a fifty k so thirty
(23:54):
one miles, and that has about four hundred runners, but
only about thirty five to forty participants are allowed per
year to compete in this thing because of you know,
it's out in nature, so that the state won't let
them have like hundreds of people. Like not a ton
of people can go watch. It's just like family and
I think some you know, former winners can be there
(24:14):
and it's you know, it's pretty small operation because they
just can't you know, run rough shot over the area.
But they have the sixty hours to complete, now twelve
hours per loop. The first loop is run clockwise. The
second loop, which is at night, will go counterclockwise, and
then again day night clockwise counterclockwise. And then this is
(24:37):
pretty devious, the final fifth loop. If you get there,
the first person to finish the fourth gets a choice
which way they want to run, and then they start
splitting people up, because almost everybody runs with a buddy
or two. It really really helps to have someone out
there and they're really helping each other. But at the end,
he's like, you're gonna lose your buddy, which way do
(24:59):
you want to run? And the first person will say,
I'll go clockwise, the next person has to go counterclockwise,
and then they alternate. So at some point, if they
finish that fifth loop, they're going to pass their former
buddy going in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Right, Yeah, And in the documentary, Cantrell points out like
these by this time, these people who had like formed
serious bonds by running together oh total loops, are now
direct competitors. Like, now it's a race because they're in
the fifth loop, and whoever's going to finish in what
time they finish a yeah, yeah, is going to determine
the actual winner, Like now there's a possible winner, yeah,
(25:34):
And everything changes. So I don't they probably don't like
class pans, and then you know they're they're pulled apart,
you know, sadly when they have to go in different
directions at that point.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, I think it's probably it makes it a lot tougher,
but I get the idea that if you make it,
if you're one of the maybe two, maybe three, maximum
four people that are even on the fifth loop, then
that's when things get serious. That's when it turns into
an actual race.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, that's what I took it as too. One thing
that I didn't get I got from context. I didn't
see it anywhere because I guess it's so obvious. No
one thought it needed to be spelled out except me.
But it's the same loop, right, Yeah, Okay, so they're
doing the same loop five times, which is why they
do it clockwise and counterclockwise and different ones at day
(26:22):
and night, so that you can't just be like, yep,
I remember this, this is nothing now, I remember exactly
what the trail is. You're super disoriented the first time,
but it's not like you have it down pat after
that first loop necessarily.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, and it definitely doesn't seem like it gets easier
because that they were finishing when they were fresh legged
at loop one, they were finishing in about eight or
nine hours for the fastest times, and then those fastest
people were doing like twelve and thirteen hours on the
next loop through the darkness. Yeah, and we should mention
the weather. You know, it's with these huge elevation changes.
(26:57):
You're going to go from temperatures sometimes in April in
the eighties where it's low to like ten degrees at night.
They have about one hundred gallons of water they put
out randomly on the course, like there are no technical
water stations, but you'll just happen upon a jug of water.
And Laz said that. You know, one year they were
(27:20):
one hundred eight pound blocks of ice because it was
ten degrees at elevation. Yeah, it's just crazy.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
I say, we take a break and talk about how
you would get into this race and then what it's
actually like running it.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Okay, this is.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
All right, so we're back. The race is about to begin.
We should point out to the other thing to keep
in mind is if you quit, quit near the start
finish line, right, because like a lot of people finish
like a loop and they're like, I'm out, or maybe
the two or a lot of people get to that
third fun run and they say that's good enough for me.
The one guy in the documentary quit and it took
(28:30):
him ten hours to navigate back because it's not like
they send somebody out you don't tap out on radio
and they come and get you. Yeah, you just decide
I can't do this anymore, and then you very slowly
walk back to the finish line.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah. And at some point you might as well be like, well,
at least I guess I'm gonna have to finish the
first loop. I might as well keep going that direction.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, No, totally, or if there, I mean, it depends
on where you are. If you're below the halfway point,
a lot of people come back the way they came right.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, So going even back before the start of the race,
you said that the Barkley Marathon has no website, and
that is intentional. The whole thing is meant to be
kept largely a secret. There's not a website. There's not
like some information on this is how you apply. You
have to use basically your investigative skills just to figure
(29:23):
out Gary Cantrell's email to email to ask to apply.
And they make it really really hard to apply for
this because in part they're just weeding out people who
don't have even the beginning of the motivation and dedication
to complete this race. Like if you can't even go
to this trouble to like, really do your research to
(29:45):
figure out how to apply. Then don't even bother trying
to apply. There's no website, no thanks exactly, and if
you do want to imply, you have to cough up
a dollar sixty.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, that's a non refundable application fee. I think most
people send in two single dollar bills because he says
they don't give change. And he every year chooses, you know,
he chooses a range of people. Some of them are
very experienced, some of them are random. Every year he
chooses one human sacrifice that he said the runners even appreciate,
(30:20):
even at the expense of not getting in themselves. He
chooses one person that has no business being there. In
the year of the documentary, that poor guy made it
six hours, yeah before And I knew as soon as
that guy headed out in his camouflage cargo pants, I
was like, this guy, what is he doing? What's he wearing?
(30:42):
So he didn't make it very far?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
No, he didn't. And he was like, this is six
hours man, Like he didn't make it very far at all. Now,
and this guy was way more qualified to do it
than like the average person. Like it wasn't like he
was just some like he went and plopped the guy
out of mc donald's like mid bite of a big
mac and right through him on the trail. Like this
(31:04):
guy was in pretty decent shape, and he thought that
he had a chance. It's not like he's like, yeah,
I'm gonna go be the sacrificial human, right right. He
thought like he was going to try to complete it.
He didn't even I don't even think he made it
halfway through the first loop, did he?
Speaker 1 (31:19):
No? I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
No.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
It was pretty funny and sad. He took it on
the chin like a like a like a big boy though.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, yeah, imagine if he'd started like yelling, you just.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Brought me out here to make fun of me a
little bit. More about the application process, everyone knows it
takes place generally around April Pool's day. They send in
an essay to get in with a weird prompts, like
one year it was what's the most important vegetable group?
One of the women, I think she was in the
documentary that you're Beverly Abs who by the way, that
(31:53):
you're completed the fun run so quite an achievement. She
said she was told to send the application in exactly
at midnight on Christmas Day in the time zone where
Lazarus Lake was, so she had to figure out where
he was at the time. And then she wrote a
poem as her essay and she got in right. And
(32:13):
then once you get in, you get a letter that
says I'm sorry to inform you that you have been accepted. Basically,
misery awaits you.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, that's the whole, the whole jam. The way that
it's treated is like you're like, you're not going to finish,
You're a dummy for even trying. There's this weird kind
of push pull going on that Gary Cantrell established basically
out of the gate that's based on his kind of
impish sense of humor. Yeah, and so that means that like,
(32:44):
you're just as likely to be abused or mocked when
you like quit as you are to be told like, hey,
you completed one loop. That's pretty good just in and
of itself. It just, I guess depends on what his
mood is right then, and a lot of people like,
aren't don't really like this guy that much? They like,
if you don't, if you're not tuned into his sense
(33:05):
of humor, you're probably not gonna like him. You might
find him obnoxious or you know, I might find him
just mean, but if you are tuned into it, I
think he's he's pretty funny. Like reading about him on
paper and reading interviews with him, I was like, I
don't really like this guy. Yeah, and then I saw
him in the documentary. I'm like, oh, okay, saying he's
just hard to translate into a description, and when you
(33:26):
see him talk yourself, you're like, yeah, he's fine.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, he's He's one of the great eccentrics of the world.
And sometimes those people are hard to pin down, you know,
because they'll fit into a box.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
I know.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
But he has to write some other fun things. If
you're a first time runner, you bring a license plate
from your home state or home country and he makes
these cool signs out of them and hangs them up.
If you have to bring a gift as well, if
you are part of the race. If you are a
first time runner, you have to bring an article of clothing.
(34:00):
And the documentary was very funny. He said it kind
of depends what he needs. One year it was a
bunch of white ox for shirts. Another year it was socks,
another year was flannel shirts, and then if you have
finished the race and you come back to race again,
you have to bring him a pack of camel cigarettes.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Yeah, and the camel cigarettes play a big role because
the start of the race is marked officially by him
lighting a cigarette. So everybody's standing there at this gate
that's the official starting line for the race, and just
standing there waiting for him to light the cigarette. And
he finally does and it's like a random time. I
think it was like eight to eleven am when the
(34:36):
whole thing started, and he lights a cigarette and soon
everybody takes off.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, when you get accepted, you know what day it's
going to be on. You go, you camp out in
the campground and you're just sort of waiting for him
to blow the conck. He blows a conk sometime between
midnight and noon on the Saturday of that weekend. You
don't know when it's coming. So if he blows it
at you know, seven am or sometime in the more,
you're up all night. You're not getting sleep because you're
(35:03):
so amped up and ready for this and apprehensive because
you don't know when it starts again. He's just sort
of messing with people. Yeah, and so when he decides
to blow the conk. He blows the conk. That means
you have one hour and everybody you know starts getting
ready to go. At that point there is no prize.
We should also mention the prize is just finishing this thing.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, I mean there's bragging rights for sure. Like you
if you told any ultra marathon runner, you know, trail
runner that you completed the Darkly Marathon, like they would
drop to their knees and start kissing your rings.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, it gets a big.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Deal to have finished this. And yet there's also like
from Gary Cantrell's perspective, from everything that I've read, the
way that he describes it as like he's giving people
an opportunity to push themselves to their maximum possible limits.
Because remember this race is intended to be just inside
(36:02):
the possible human the possibility of the human body. Right, Yeah,
so if you can complete it, like you're doing all
sorts of things that you never thought you were capable
of it, Like your mental endurance is among the greatest
of people walking around. And so yeah, it's way more
than just bragging rights, Like you're if you're into bragging rights,
(36:24):
you're probably not even going to finish the first loop,
Like if that's why you're doing it and you somehow
got accepted, it's not going to translate. So these people
don't care about bragging rights, even though they would have
bragging rights for life.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Totally. I like that one dude, the long hair guy
from Arizona in the documentary that that was his first one.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
He just had a cool vibe. Like everyone had a
pretty cool vibe. Like it's a really as a great
spirit of helping one another out. And during the interloper
periods where they're which is by the way, the only
time they're allowed to have their sort of aid crew
with them, like they don't you know, they can't get
helped along the way. So this is when they see
(37:03):
other people and there's other former winners there, and when
people drop out, they stick around and they're really helping
people get their feet together and they're giving them dry
socks and feeding them and it's just a real great
spirit of sort of camaraderie and helping one and out
another out. It feels like, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, because as people get pared down, the people around
them are like they want to see somebody succeed then.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yeah, for sure, pretty cool, real quick. What else as
far as housekeeping, No GPS, that's a big one. They
can wear a little cheap or they're given a little
cheap watch. And I think they banned altimeters in twenty
fourteen or twelve or something.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Something like that. Either way, you're stripped down to the
bear essentials. Yeah, and you have a map, but you
don't have a copy of their map. They give you
the master map to use to trace the route onto
your own map. He traced it incorrectly. Well, that's ts
for you. And people do get lost like a lot.
There was one guy who oh, man, don't remember what
(38:08):
year it was, Oh, in two thousand and six. Yeah,
this guy wandered off the course and spent thirty two
hours trying to get back. Man, And in the end
he only did like two miles of the actual course.
He wandered so far off course. So the way he
put it, he did sixteen hour miles in this race.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
God, I felt so bad for that guy.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, And then what else.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Chuck, this isn't And to me, this is kind of
one of the coolest things because the whole time, until
we had gotten to this part, I was like, well,
how do they know that people are running that route
because they're not staked out along the way. In the
documentary they had some people staked out a little bit
just to get some footage, but it's not like they
have people at checkpoints that are making sure they're on
the route and all that. He did something pretty lo
(38:56):
fi and genius, which was he puts ten books out
ten to twelve depending on the year, at different points
along the way, and you have to rip the page
out corresponding to your BIB number, and that is the
proof that you ran the real route. You have to
show up with depending on how many books, ten or
eleven pages when you touch that start finish line, and
(39:18):
you have to turn them over to Cantrell and he
has to look them over and verify it.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, and I'm guessing that they they are the books
in the same place every time.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Ah, that I'm not sure about.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
But I do know that they hide them. They're not
just always out in plain sight. Like the one of
the things you're having to stay oriented, you're having to
push your body and endure, and then you're also at
the same time having to make sure you don't trop
past one of the books. So you have to backtrack
and get the page out.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah. I mean the one guy the year of the
documentary that won and set the record. I think he
said he spent a couple of hours looking for the book.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I would lose my mind. Man.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And also if you're like, well, how do you get
the same page eleven times? Do you get a different
BIB number? Free loop? So you would be tearing out
a different page each time.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, And I think there was a story just last year.
In fact, there was a French runner who got to
the final loop to find that a book was gone.
There was a day hiker that thought the race was
over and took the book as a memento, so he's like,
what do I do? He completed the race and when
he got back to the gate, they had turned the
book in, so they counted that.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
That's awesome. Yeah. I've read about one runner too, who
I think this. I don't remember what year was, maybe
twenty sixteen or seventeen. He made it. He showed up
six seconds after time. Oh my god. But he had
all his pages and they said like he was just
(40:46):
collapsed on the ground and he said, I have all
my pages. But he didn't make it by six seconds.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
You know, I bet that he feels a great sense
of accomplishment, though I would think, so sure finished that
thing six seconds, be damned. You know, you'd have.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
To be one hell of a perfectionist to be like,
well I failed technically, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
I think there was one more piece of housekeeping here.
Oh that's right. When a runner gives up, a guy
named Dave Hen, who is a race volunteer, plays taps
on a bugle.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, and that's Carl raw Dog Hen's son.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Oh is it it is raw Dog Junior?
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, Little raw Dog.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Or the third Yeah, he said.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
He said that he thinks the reason why is because
it's just one final punishment for you from Gary Cantrell
to basically be humiliated with taps. And on the on
the other side, some runners when they finish, especially when
they actually complete the race, he has one of those staples,
easy buttons, Yeah, that they press and when you press it,
(41:58):
a voice goes that was easy.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah. It was really fun to watch. It was someone
just like on their last leg literally, like you're bleeding
at the legs and he's like hit the button right
because that was easy.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yeah. The guy who was on the documentary was I
think his name was John Kelly. He finished second of
two I think that year, maybe three, and he they
show him and he's just totally out of it, like
he's sitting on a chair with people surrounded surrounding him
talking and yeah, yeah, he's just in another world, like
(42:32):
totally out of his skull because he hadn't slept at
all like that whole time.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, sixty hours.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Man. The one guy that couldn't in the documentary that
tapped out and was just like crying.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Oh I don't remember him, which one?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Uh boy, that was tough. He had kind of dark,
curly hair and he was pretty pumped up going into
it about his chances and yeah, I mean, what can
you say about a race where like whatever, probably ninety
eight percent of the people had never been right, maybe
more maybe ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
That was a well. Yeah, so I think officially twenty
out of one thousand plus people have finished. So I'm
sure we have some sixth graders who can calculate that
for us and send it in.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Let me see last I'm sorry. This year there were
a record five people completed it, and that is I
think the maximum before that may have been three, maybe four,
but usually it's one, maybe two or zero last. I'm sorry.
This year a woman was a finisher for the first time. Yes,
me and Paris or Perry. I don't know how she
(43:39):
pronounces it. She came in two minutes short of the
deadline to finish that race.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah, so she finished with two minutes last.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Right, that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, it really is. And one of the reasons it's
incredible is because Gary Cantrell. This is another reason a
lot of people don't like him. For years and years
and years, he would say publicly, there's no woman out
there who could possibly finish this race. Yes, And you know,
he was criticized for saying that kind of thing because
there's plenty of amazing women marathonors and ultrath honors and
(44:09):
trail runners. And he defended it by basically saying, if
a woman could defeat this, it would be exactly the
kind of woman who would need to hear somebody say
something like a woman would never be able to complete this.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah, I agree, got yeah, And I don't know if
I'm being an apologist, but I got the idea that
a lot of that was sort of goating. Yes, someone
to finish, Like that's how I took it too. Yeah,
Like deep down he's like, there's going to be a
woman that's going to do this, and maybe I need
to stoke the fire a little bit, right.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
So finally, yes, I think Jasmine Paris's She's a brit
who teaches at the University of Scotland. Did you say
that part?
Speaker 1 (44:48):
No, I also said Jasmin Peris.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
I know that was just correcting you. Oh, I'm sure
it was Jasmine per Jesmond Pieri.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Who else? In twenty twenty four, a mechanic engineer named
Jared Campbell became the first four time finisher. He's in
the documentary and an interesting just sort of side note
in this and Lyvia pointed out, but then when you
watch the documentary it really hits home is that it
seems like this race and ultra marathoning and this sort
(45:17):
of endurancing attracts people of very, very high intelligence. I
felt like every person they interviewed were like, I'm an engineer,
I'm a I'm a scientist. And they talked to almost
called him Barkley to Lazarus about this to Cantrell in
the documentary and he said, yeah, he said those are
the achievers in life. Those are the people that go
(45:38):
to graduate school and go to get their doctoral thesis,
and people who set hard goals and accomplish them. It
just sort of fits. And I never really thought about
that that tie. But I don't think there's a lot
of dumb dumbs that do stuff like this.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
No, although even though dumb dumb to do.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
It, it's a weird dichotomy.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yep, I say. We finished on the story of John
Fega Veresi.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
All right, let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
He was a runner in oh, I don't know what
year he ran, but he was an experienced ultra marathon runner.
He participated in the Bad Water ultra marathon, which runs
through Death Valley one hundred and thirty five miles. Yeah,
and he was like, this is that's nothing I'm paraphrasing. Yeah,
(46:24):
I'm sure he wouldn't say this, but he was basically
like that, you can't even really compare the two. And
he completed it, and he was so incoherent from sleep
deprivation that he apparently didn't remember like downing a pint
of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, like at the finish line.
He had no idea that he'd done that, and he
(46:46):
spent the next day and a half just laying around
the campground recovering. So after that time he's like, all right,
I guess I'll drive home, and he started falling asleep
on the way home, so he had to stop and
check himself into a hotel, where he slept for an
another sixteen hours.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Man, that's called human exhaustion.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, and I say we quietly close the door and
leave John to his slumber and go on to a listener. Mayl.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
I do want to shout out the record though, Brett Mahn,
who is one or a few times now, I think
he's a physicist. The record, current record right now is
lies with Brett at fifty two hours, three minutes and
eight seconds. Very nice, just incredible.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
You woke John up. That's right.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Sorry, John, come back and sleep. Here's your chubby hobby.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
That's the best.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
I can't find it anymore.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
I can't either.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
It's people say it exists. I get pictures occasionally emails,
but it doesn't exist in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
That's said. What did Alena do to be so punished?
Speaker 1 (48:00):
I don't know. I don't need ice cream anymore anyway,
Which is the saddest part of this story. All right,
I'm gonna call this a lake versus pond. We got
quite a few emails, by the way, I want to
mention one differentiator we saw said that the difference they
heard between lake versus pond is if sunlight can reach
the bottom. If it can, then it's a pond. If
(48:23):
it can't, then it's a lake. But this comes from Mark. Hey, guys,
the answer, I think depends on who you asked. But
as an ambassador from the land of ten thousand Lakes, Minnesota,
which is technically and forty two lakes, perhaps I have
a bit of clout. Most folks would assume the difference
has something to do with size and depth. It's not
quite that simple, though. According to a twenty twelve CBS
(48:45):
News article, retired DNR water supervisor Glenn Yackle suggests that
a lake needs to be large enough and deep enough
to allow for wave action to be considered a lake
that can clear vegetation from its shoreline. Pond, on the
other hand, lacks this wave action, meaning its shoreline is
typically surrounded by vegetation without clear boundaries. But guys, it
(49:07):
gets even more complicated. Government agencies often have regulatory thresholds
that lead to discrepancies per state. For example, here in Minnesota,
with our eight and forty two lakes has fewer lakes
than Wisconsin. And any Wisconsin I will gleefully point out
that they have fifteen thousand. But here's where the differences
come into play. While they do have fifteen thousand lakes,
(49:29):
their definition includes a body of water with an area
of at least two point five acres. In Minnesota, our
standards are higher, and to qualify as a lake here
we must cover at least ten acres. If we lowered
our threshold to match Wisconsin's, we wouldn't dare dream of it,
though we'd have over twenty thousand lakes.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Wow, took. I feel more lake informed than I ever
have been in my entire life for real.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
That is from Mark Mark's had always pleasure to listen
to you guys with my boys who are six and
seven and big fans, and Mark had replied with their names,
and I'm very frustrated because I cannot find that reply.
So let me just say Mark and sons of Mark,
thank you for the sport.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yes, and I can vouch for Chuck Mark. We just
edited out many minutes of him searching for that email,
so he really did give it a try.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Sorry, guys, but they're six and seven, so maybe that's
for the best.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Right. If you want to be like Mark and his
unnamed sons, you can write to us as well. Send
us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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