Running
Held since 1986, the Barkley Marathons is as notorious as it is near impossible. One record-breaking fell runner who took on the brutal 160km course in Tennessee, USA talks us through it.
"It's really hard to find that point where impossibility is just so close," says Lazarus Lake (real name Gary Cantrell), the mastermind behind the spirit-crushing Barkley Marathons race that's been described as a "Satanic running adventure" by former competitors.
The merciless ultramarathon has been going since 1986, but rose to prominence following the 2014 documentary The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, where details of the normally top-secret race were revealed to the public.
Even the entry procedure is locked down: you need to email Laz on a certain day with an essay about why he should pick you, along with an entry fee of $1.60. If you're one of the 40 or so 'lucky' ones chosen, you'll receive a letter of condolence welcoming you to the race. Barkley virgins then need to bring a car number plate from their home town when they register for the race in Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee, where they are given access to a map of the course that reveals the locations of the books.
The exact route changes slightly every year – only 15 people have finished the race within the time limit, and every time someone finishes, Laz makes the race harder. The race could start any time between midnight and noon (you get an hour's notice signalled by Laz blowing a conch). GPS watches and mobile phones are banned. It is, as Laz says, set up for runners to fail, but there's something about this unrelenting sufferfest that hooks runners like the race's deadly saw briars ensnare body parts.
This year's event took place during the last weekend of March, and the UK had one entrant, who stood as good a chance as anyone of completing the five unmarked laps of roughly 32km within the required 60 hours, locating the hidden books along the way and ripping out a page to prove they've done the full loop.
Enter, then, Nicky Spinks, who already holds two records that beggar belief – the Double Bob Graham Round and Double Ramsay Round, a pair of almost superhuman feats of endurance that mere mortals struggle to get their heads round. Her Double Ramsay in particular – 193km, scaling 48 peaks and nearly 18,288m of ascent (double the height of Everest). She completed it in 55 hours, something no human prior to her has achieved.
If anyone was going to be the first female competitor to finish this race, you would have thought Spinks stood a chance.
How did you research this notoriously secretive race?
Finding out the route would have been nice, but no one will tell you, and there's nothing out there. I studied the map and tried to get my head around where the valleys are. I also tried to find out what kit people were using, what worked and what mistakes they'd made that I could try to avoid, like failing head torches, snapping poles, or not taking enough food. Laz is really strict – once you've gone past the starting gate, you can't come back and pick a map up.
What did your training involve?
I'm not allowed to say how you get a place, but you have to start training before you know you are in, and then keep going with it. I train continually anyway, so it’s not like I have a break, even though sometimes my sports masseuse says I should.
Once I found out I was confirmed, I ramped up my training. I don't tend to do more than 65km in an average week, and if I go to Wales training for a weekend that goes up to 95km. I can't get out for hours and hours because of my farmwork.
I tend do a relatively low mileage, but with lots of elevation, so in Wales I'd do 3,500m of climbing in 25km. If you do that back-to-back it really impacts upon your legs, especially if you follow it with a hard week of running. I had confidence in my legs – if I could go at a pace they could maintain, then I would be fine.
To complete the whole Barkley you should do the first loop in less than 10 hours, but it was so hot that I didn't want to go any faster, as I was sweating enough as it was
Can you train for the sleep deprivation involved with the Barkley?
I find with being a farmer I get it anyway. Most of February I was up a lot in the night calving, and sometimes missed a night's sleep. I just try to get on with it, no power naps or anything. Just power through.
What was your plan for loop one?
I was aiming to pair up with a veteran, as they know the route. It's the okay thing to do – everyone knows that the more pairs of eyes there are the better, and we can all help each other navigate and find the books. I spotted Stephanie [Case] and I knew she did it last year, and there was a guy called Michael who'd done it before. Billy Read from Ireland was also a virgin, so his plan was the same as mine – latch on to someone and be as nice as possible.
The course is famous for its nasty saw briars [spiked plants]. How bad were they?
I have some orienteering friends who told me about 'bramble bashers', so I bought a couple of pairs. They’re like foam-padded gators and they were absolutely brilliant, but because it was so hot I went with shorts, so the top half of my legs got ripped up.
Did the first loop go as well as expected?
To complete the whole Barkley you should do the first loop in less than 10 hours, but it was so hot I didn't want to go any faster, as I was sweating enough as it was. We were hopeful we could do the second loop in about the same time, 11.5 hours.
I spent hours trying to work out how to ask Stephanie if she minded me coming on the second loop with her. I'd been totally useless, and maybe she'd have preferred to have been on her own, but when I broached the subject she said it would be lovely to run with me on loop two.
So, talk us through the second…
We'd taken more clothes, as there was supposed to be a shower coming in, but as we climbed it started raining hard. At the first book, we put our extra clothes on and you could feel a cold wind, and then we went into some of the famous Barkley fog. And soon, instead of running down the hillside, we were falling.
The rain made the ground lethal. Even in my inov-8 Mudclaws, when the ground got steep the leaf mulch on the top just moved with it, so you'd start sliding and you'd have to stop yourself from careering down by grabbing a tree. We found a couple of books and then we started talking about the cut-off, and how much time we had. My temperature was dropping – we warmed up on the climbs, got colder on the tops, but it was the descents that were making us cold, as we couldn't run.
At what point did you know it was over?
We were coming to a book, and we saw somebody running down towards us the wrong way. When he got to us, he was very happy to see some other people and asked us the way to the campsite. He was actually on loop one and had been lost for about five hours. That always puts the idea in your head, 'he's giving up, that might be nice', but I still thought, even though I was frozen, 'I'm not giving up'. Stephanie said, "We’re not quitting, are we?" I said, "No, no, I can manage with the cold."
Every time we stopped, we both started shivering, though. Then the rain turned to hail – the temperature had gone from 20°C to -5°C. We were just about to carry on when Stephanie stopped, and I knew what she was going to say. It was a relief, as I was beginning to think I was becoming a bit of a liability. I was so near to the edge, shivering, that your brain stops working properly, so it's hard. We’d lost so much time by then that there was no way we were going to make the loop, so when we decided to head back it was definite relief. Your mind turns to hot showers and hot food.
All of us were disappointed, as the only reason we'd had to pull out was that we hadn't taken full winter gear. We all needed three more layers of clothing, hats and stuff, and it's always annoying when you know it's all back at camp. But that’s how it is.
How did the suffering compare to your double rounds?
It was similar to the Double Ramsay, but the opposite end of the spectrum – I was way too hot in the Ramsay and too cold in the Barkley. People say that the hills are steep in the Barkley, but they weren't as steep as some climbs in Scotland and Wales. It definitely ranks up there with the sufferfest of the Ramsay, though.
Can you see why runners get obsessed with the Barkley Marathons?
During the run back to camp, Stephanie asked if I was going to come back, and I said no. She laughed and said she'd talk to me tomorrow. The day after, you start going through what you should have done, and then you think, 'Why don't I give it another go? It wasn't that bad, if I'd just had more clothes...'. However, people go back and then there's something else that throws them. I do tend to go back and attempt things again, though.
What advice would you give to anyone 'lucky' enough to get in?
You have to know how to navigate and be comfortable going off trails and paths. Get lots of hills in: the elevation in each loop is massive, and you're going up and down all of the time. Mentally, I try to prepare by thinking of all the things that might go wrong and how I'd cope with them. I read a lot about it and listened to podcasts, so that helped me know what I was in for. But it never got that hard that I needed to persuade myself to keep going – the main problem was trying to figure out how to keep myself warm enough to keep going.
Follow Nicky Spinks on Instagram here.
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