The Barkley Marathons – The Race that Eats its Young (2015)…

This is not a misspelling – the Marathons is plural because you must run 5 marathons in 60 hours.

The course is based on the escape route used by James Earl Ray when he and 5 other inmates escaped from Brushy Hill Prison for 60 hours in the hills of Tennessee.

In the first 25 years only 10 people have finished the Barkley Marathons because the terrain is so rugged.  The people who have completed are not virgins to the race and in fact most of the “Barkley Virgins” only make it through one of the five laps.

The course is so tough that they only allow 40 runners per year and the race fee is a shirt that fits the race director (he looks like he needs the shirts), $1.60, and a license plate from where you come from. The race director is an ex-runner (I say that because he chain smokes throughout the whole movie) and him and his friends organized it and still run it.  In fact, Barkley is a runner buddy of theirs.

The race is 5 loops of 26 miles or close enough because the vertical delta is equivalent to climbing Mt. Everest…TWICE!  You will see a lot of the race you have to pull yourself up hillsides using tree limbs and branches for support.  The starting line is a yellow gate that they don’t open you have to go around.

The total distance is 160 miles and you can stop and rest if you want and have the time. The start time is not set and once everyone is signed in and your tent is all set then at anytime the race director will sound a warning using a conch shell to announce the race will start in one hour.  Sometimes it starts at 3 in the morning.  The race featured in the movie started at about 8:00 am, but no one slept because they were all awake waiting for the conch shell.

I did learn some good stuff in this movie.  Did you know that you can pop blisters and use superglue to glue the skin back down and it acts like a few layers of skin?  Who knew the possibilities of super glue!

The movie is about and hour and half, but has some great people.  You won’t know until the very end if the stars are going to make it the full five laps, and then how close you can get to “timing out”.

Enjoyed watching this one, but even I have my limits.

 

NO WAY will I waste a good license plate and $1.60 on this race.