Mar 13

Mar 13 How to experience the Barkley Marathons yourself - Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee

Even if you are not an ultrarunner, you may have heard of the Barkley Marathons. Reason being, there has been an excellent documentary on it, The Barkley Marathon: The Race That Eats Its Young, and many long form articles written about it, including one recently in Runner’s World. Commonly mentioned topics in these articles are:

The entry process is strange and secretive
The terrain is unforgiving
Very few have finished
It’s inspired from the attempted prison escape by James Earl Ray

Since it’s hard to capture an understanding of something unless you see and experience it first hand, I decided to see the course myself to get an appreciation for why the Barkley Marathons are so hard. On paper it is clearly one of the most difficult ultramarathons given that it is much more than 100 miles (160 km), that’s why there is an “s”, it’s marathons, as in 4 of them. Besides the distance, the elevation gain is 60,000 feet (18,000m). Having done a 100 mile ultramarathon myself, that included 18,000 feet of elevation gain, it is hard to comprehend how one can get so much elevation gain over about the same distance.

I took the occasion of my 50th birthday to travel down to Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee. My friend Brian came along for the ride and we stayed in the town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Oak Ridge is a very interesting place in its own right, since it is where the uranium for the Manhattan Project was refined. The government chose the location for its remoteness but also because there was abundant power necessary to run the centrifuges used to separate out the uranium for nuclear weapons. The buildings used to house the 10s of thousands of workers remain as apartment complexes in the area.

For our run we mapped out a loop course following the main trail in the state park. We aimed for our run to be about 20 miles and designed to hit two points, the lookout tower and the old coal mine that the prisoners worked at. The race director, Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell, based the race on the story about a prisoner who tried to escape the Bushy Mountain State Penitentiary but didn’t get very far because of the rough terrain.

What we learned during the run:

There are dense woods throughout the course
The mountains are very steep
The footing isn’t very easy given roots, rocks, and ruts
We took the easy path, the Barkley course cuts straight up and down the mountains

In the end, we learned a lot about the race, and had a great day out on the trail with excellent weather for a long run. We even got a picture with the iconic yellow starting gate. I got enough of a taste of the Barkley Marathons course to understand the epicness of those few who complete it. I highly recommend that you experience Frozen Head Mountain State Park and include it in your list of ultrarunning destinations! Logistically it’s relatively easy to get to, great lodging options in either Oak Ridge or Knoxville, Tennessee, and is an opportunity to experience something that strikes awe in nearly every ultrarunner.