“The weather and the course got the better of everybody this year,” said Geoff Langford of Ridgeline Events, Robbins’ friend and business partner. This was the first year since 2015 that no runners finished. Since 1986, only 15 runners have completed all five loops. Last year, at some point on the fifth and final loop, he got confused in fog on the unmarked course and arrived at the finish line from the wrong direction. Using maps, participants guide themselves five times through an unmarked 32-kilometre loop with no aid stations, and only two water stops.Įach year has been an emotional defeat for Robbins. Or, if you’re insane, pony up $1.60 and attempt to register.At the 2018 Barkley Marathons, it was the course - not its runners - that was the victor again.įor North Vancouver’s Gary Robbins, it was the third time he was bested by the 160-kilometre ultramarathon through Tennessee backcountry. (It appears Robbins hit all the checkpoints, but may have inadvertently took a two-mile shortcut because of issues with fog.)Ī documentary about the race, The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, is on Netflix, and you can watch the trailer below. “It’s a story for the ages,” Cantrell told Canadian Running Magazine of Robbins’s finish, which has since become a matter of some dispute.

Inspired by MLK assassin James Earl Ray’s attempted prison break in the same area in 1977 - he was only able to traverse eight miles in 55 hours - Barkley creator Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell fashioned the race as a way to prove he could do better, and named it for his running partner, Barry Barkley.Ĭantrell was at the finish line for this year’s race to meet Robbins and inform him of his fate.

Robbins is far from the first to be bested by the 100-mile ultramarathon (only 15 people have completed the race since 1986, including John Kelly this year) and he won’t be last to fall short during the annual event, which is held in Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee every March or April. 002778% of the time allotted for competitors to complete the race - represent a fraction of the time Robbins spent preparing, not to mention how long he’ll regret his finish. But one of them states that a finisher must cross the line in 60 hours - or 216,000 seconds.

There are few rules in the Barkley Marathons, quite possibly the most difficult endurance race in the United States, if not the entire world.

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