Weather looks decent. A little warm, rain Saturday evening.

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Let food be thy medicine...

John Kelly announced today that he's running it. Not a shock but given his move to the UK this might be his last shot for a few years

If Laz lets Courtney Dauwalter in, she could be the first female finisher [maybe not on her first attempt, but who knows?]

After her performance at Big's Backyard Ultra, I think Laz kinda has a crush on her; and rightly so

He even painted the gate a new color

https://twitter.com/.../1111293866404139011

[or maybe not? Some say it's Photoshopped]

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Gonna have to read his latest blog post sometime this weekend. Stoked to see he's going for completing it a second time. Are there any other runners that have completed it more than twice? I know many have attempted it multiple times, but unsure how many have completed it, and then gone back to do it again.

Brett Maune has finished it twice. Jared Campbell has finished it three times. So if 18 total finishes they have five. Amazing.

Thanks for posting. Great video.

I predict no one finishes.

It was photoshop'ed. Live video on IRun4Ultra's twitter feed is showing that it is the classic yellow we all know and love

Really going out on a limb there...

 
Frozen Head State Park 10 Day Weather
12:24 pm EDT
Print
DAY

DESCRIPTIONHIGH / LOWPRECIPWINDHUMIDITY
TODAY

MAR 29
Cloudy
63°52°
20%
SSW 5 mph45%
SAT

MAR 30
Cloudy
69°37°
20%
SSW 12 mph62%
SUN

MAR 31
AM Clouds/PM Sun
49°28°
20%
N 9 mph54%
MON

APR 1
Mostly Sunny
56°37°
0%
ENE 6 mph40%
TUE

APR 2
AM Showers
55°35°
50%
NNE 4 mph57%

Ok Ok, I also predict the old guy with a beard smokes at least a pack of cigarettes.

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I only watched about 5 seconds of that video before I had to look away... Did I see a hairy man in drag with a Hitler mustache?

Yep
He actually does a strip-tease as the song goes along

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I follow him on strava, he took all the CRs on the course's segments, made it a winter project of his. If anyone can repeat, I think he could.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

According to Keith Dunn’s twitter he was the first runner up Rat Jaw, and the first runner to complete the first loop. The cutoff for completing the first loop is in about 2:15 and so far 17!people (out of the 40 that started) have completed the first loop. The most recent one has decided to drop out after only doing one loop.

As near as I can tell, he is killing it.

Twitter is the only way I have found to follow Barkley.



Edit: Well, he posted on twitter 11 minutes ago that he dropped out.......

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----------------------------
Jason
None of the secrets of success will work unless you do.

John Kelly @RndmForestRunnr

"Thank you so much for the #BM100 support. Long story short: I quit. I was good on time, felt strong, conditions were (relatively) good. But I know what 5 loops takes, & realized I don't have that motivation anymore. And I was no longer having fun. Sorry for any disappointment"

No finishers again this year. No one made it to loop 5.

I CALLED IT!!!

Wow! You must be some sort of psychic! Can you pick my lottery numbers for me, too?

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Quite the feat. /s

I can't pick your lottery numbers with any kind of accuracy. BUT, I can predict this: You will win the lottery exactly the same number of times you finish the Barkley Marathons.

Do scratch-offs count?

Also, I did win a small Pick-6 many years ago

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I was showing somebody the video of him winning last year. After he finished, it looks like he has no idea who or where he is for quite a while. Like somebody waking up from being knocked out from a concussion. It's not a good place to be.

The problem is training for something like that without beginning to hate it. If you're burned out, then every second is another reason to quit after about 10 hours or so of that insanity.

I bet if he hadn't finished it before, he'd have kept going. But once you did achieve something like that, just repeating isn't enough to warrant going that deep. Which tells us all a thing about how hard this race must be, mostly that it is made that extreme just for the sake of it. If it were organized with the option to use navigation or even arrows to point out the course, it probably would not be all that insane anymore (for the seasoned runners anyway, the course still sounds damn hard for even 1 loop).

Of course. Because everything else about the race is sane. :-/

No, still insane, but the big mental issue is usually that they lose hours finding the book, running in circles. So getting some navigation help for that would take a lot of uncertainty away. Remember they can be out there at night coming from opposite directions than before so doing the loop 4 times already might not help that much as you'd hope and you'd still lose most time looking for those small clues.

You're absolutely right in both posts.

Though it's the spirit of the race to make everything difficult, impractical and unpredictable. The challenge isn't just the difficulty of the course, but as per your example, the ability to cope with uncertainty and the unforeseen, from before the conch to however long the runner may be out there.

There's so many ways to make the race "easier" or "saner", but the biggest surprise Laz could ever do, would be to make a change that actually did so.

Newly dropped





* There's a disclaimer on there that Laz let Nicky run with an audio recorder, and some of the shots "on course" were recreated elsewhere and afterwards #fixitinpost

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin