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To complete Tennessee's Barkley Marathons, runners only need to average 2mph for 60 hours. Easy, right? Not so much, Esquire reports in a must-read piece that simultaneously makes the race seem like heaven and hell on Earth.
The Barkley Marathons comprises five loops through Frozen Head State Park. There's about 120,000 feet of elevation change, no aid stations, hidden rocks, inch-long thorns, and two water stations that are usually completely frozen. Runners have to find and tear pages from 13 books while relying on official course directions like, "Look for a weird rock at a confluence of two streams ... and go down a hillside. If it looks too steep, that's the right one." That all leads to scenes like this from a woman less than halfway through the Barkley: "One runner weeps as her support crew shovels macaroni into her mouth."
Read the full story on Newser.com
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