The Barkley Marathons and the Allure of Discomfort

The Barkley Marathons is an yearly multi-working day ultra that involves contributors to bushwack by means of the wilds of Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park in an exertion to complete five around 20-mile loops in less than 60 hrs. The odds of achievements are not higher. Given that the race was established in 1986, only 15 runners have conquered the comprehensive course—out of the additional than 1,000 who have tried out. And nevertheless, even with the point that failure is a thing of a foregone summary, every 12 months hundreds of applicants compete to safe a single of the available 35 to 40 slots. Why, one particular could possibly wonder, are so a lot of eager to court docket their own humiliation?  

That is the concern at the coronary heart of “The Unachievable Race,” a section in this week’s episode of HBO’s True Sporting activities With Bryant Gumbel. The 13-moment documentary incorporates footage from this year’s race, which was held past month and in which, true to type, no person managed to finish more than a few laps. As a person would assume, the episode is geared in direction of a typical audience—“This is not your average marathon”—rather than the ultra aficionados who will either be delighted or mortified that their beloved celebration is getting the 60 Minutes procedure. Not that “The Unattainable Race” feels like a recruitment online video: we see different haunted men and women staggering through the forest and up hillsides so steep that it seems like they need to be wearing a harness. There is a near-up shot of a blister remaining skewered with a needle amid exclamations of agony.

“Are you a sadist?” section host Mary Carillo asks Barkley founder Gary Cantrell, the grizzled impresario of distress who generally goes by Lazarus Lake, or Laz for limited. Cantrell replies that he is not, in reality, a sadist. “People appreciate it,” he says of his torturous function. “There’s just some discomfort associated.” 

But who are these persons? Carillo interviews Greg Armstrong and Liz Canty, two veterans of the ultra circuit who participated in the 2021 version of the race and who exude an intense air that is in all probability an asset when you are about to persevere by hours of tedium and ache. Each regard Cantrell’s model of challenging appreciate as a perverse indicator of passion. “He’s trying to travel us all ridiculous,” Canty states when questioned about Cantrell’s regular assertion that his race is way too difficult for girls. (Girls have taken component in the function for a long time, however all of the finishers to date have been adult men.) “You’ve obtained to goad us a tiny little bit,” she provides. “You just goad a complete gender into obtaining offended and education our butts off.” 

At this year’s race, Canty managed to make the time cutoff for the very first loop. While she would fall short to finish the next loop in advance of the cutoff, she fared greater than Armstrong, who DNF’d on loop one particular, as did about half of these who started out in 2021. Not that Armstrong felt that the pursuit was in vain. 

 “You study so much about your self when you consider yourself to the breaking point,” Armstrong tells Carillo, who is not plenty of of a jerk to question no matter whether 1 of the points you understand about you is that you want a new interest. “You just ruminate in excess of it for many years and you find out and improve. And Laz knows that. That’s why he results in this race.” 

For his part, Laz says that the folks who indicator up for his functions are individuals who are particularly drawn to endeavors exactly where they could not succeed. The uncertainty is the level. “They never want to play in the range of things that they know they can do,” he says.

Ok, wonderful. But as everyone who has at any time gone right after an audacious time intention in a unexciting outdated highway race can attest, trying to do a thing very hard outdoors of your comfort zone does not demand signing up for a 60-hour demise march in the woods. (Also is a DNF that is more or a lot less preordained actually a DNF?) This has generally been my default, road operating snob response any time I listen to the latest exploits of severe ultrarunning, even as the extremely fanatics in my orbit like to remind me that I are living in ignorance of the profound psychological shadowland that a person enters during the remaining levels of a 100-mile race. 

Then once more, who am I to sneer at people who get their kicks by undertaking these absurd functions? In the finish, it is genuinely just a make any difference of degree. The mainstreaming of the marathon in recent a long time has made it effortless to encourage oneself that jogging 26.2 miles is a practical kind of recreation. The extensive bulk of my private acquaintances are non-runners, in the feeling that, for them, something further than at times executing a light jog or taking section in a Thanksgiving 5K is a crystal clear signal of unhinged fanaticism. 

They do not know what they’re missing.