How do you write something about a race that continues to strive to remain a mystery, an enigma. I tapped out on Sunday afternoon, it’s now Wednesday and it’s still difficult to find the right terms to describe “What is the Barkley?” in any sense that can convey what the Barkley actually is. Because for the majority of those who would like a slot, it’s not what they think it is.

I arrived at Frozen Head State Park and the Big Cove Campground a week before the race was to start. Part recovery from travel, part course learning on the candy ass trails and part getting into the culture of the event. It’s that final part that I think most are missing when they think of the Barkley. Hanging out with the Characters, learning about the history of the race, the variations on the course and the unbelievable fight that continues to this day to keep the race alive and well in Frozen Head. The Park Superintendent doesn’t want it there. But there are good people fighting for it and I got to meet those people and feel their passion for the race.

I’d done my research, so I had a very good idea where everything lay on the park map. There were pieces that were difficult to decipher from all the descriptions, but once Nicki Rehn (Aussie/Canadian – but definitely an Aussie twang) showed up with her old maps I was able to piece together the final sections and hear from a fellow Rogainer her interpretation of the course in terms that I could relate to. But Navigating is just one of the myriad of skill sets required to successfully negotiate the Barkley. The tried and true approach for a virgin is just to follow a Vet and learn the lines and book locations. That’s all well and good but if they’re too fast or too slow for your goals or if they don’t know where the books are then eventually it will go bad for you. Actually it will go bad for you anyway.

Sunday to Tuesday I ran parts of the course on the candy ass trails, having a look and getting a feel for the shape of the terrain, the underfoot conditions and the unrelenting steepness of the off trail climbs. If I was able to describe a single climb and the terrain it would look something like a vertical slope up a distinct ridge, with a few rocks here and there. There bush is sparse, mature Oaks, with very little ground cover. Perhaps like running through beech forest with 70% of the tress missing. Sounds easy, and it is, for 1 climb, but each loop has 13 of them.

Loop 1 – Laz finally, to the frustration of the vets, blew the Conch at 10:22 for an 11:22 start. Why? Because exactly 9 hours later it was the end of Civil Twighlight and the 2nd loop would start in the dark for everyone. Book 1 was negotiated with a large group following multiple fun run finishers, Alan and Bev Abbs, we then shot down to Book 2 where Alan may have been playing games and didn’t hit it. Virgin scrapping is taken seriously, Tim Dines and I left them to get a fixed point and came back to the book and then started up Hillpocalypse, at a rough grade of 40% for the next 30 minutes or so. Across to the Garden Spot and Book 3 with another vet, but then a missing turn found us well above where we needed to be for the Buttslide and Book 4 followed quickly by Book 5 and then the complicated descent of Stallion/Fykes Peak to the New River. I dropped the vet I was running with here to catch another going through the now infamous Vagina Book on a new section and then the new descent to Raw Dog Falls. Now the biggest choice of the whole day. Danger Daves Climbing Wall or Pussy Ridge. Danger Daves it was and a scramble up an 80% slope to drop down onto the Barrel and Book 7 before the monumental climb up Rat Jaw and the plummet down to the Prison, the Tunnel and more rock climbing up a vertical wall. Just 2 more huge climb remaining, the Bad Thing and Big Hell with the shitty descent down Zipline to the Beech Fork in between. After the 45 minute run down from Chimney Top, if Laz had the Easy Button out I’d have hit it. But I was under no illusions of how difficult things were going to get. By the time I arrived 3 had already tapped out and in my turn around I heard the bugle play twice more.
Loop 1 – ~9:30 about 12th place

Loop 2 – With a goal to be efficient, Mike Dobies (card carrying beer SNOB) who’d been mentoring me for the week in both the course and beer tasting, had me turned around in 12 minutes and only 25 minutes down on the Abbs, who’d left a trail of virgin carnage in their wake. The night was cold, there is much debate as to how cold it really was. It felt around the -5 Celcius to me, but others will swear black and blue that it was lower than -10C. I was still running in shorts until 1am or so, with an Icebreaker T, Thermal Top and light Shell, eventually putting on thermal pants when I waited for a vet just behind me to help get the correct line through the Garden Spot-Buttslide section. Didn’t quite nail the descent off Stallion this time but still hit the road crossing, then Book 6 where the Abbs had dropped after spending some looking for it. Rat Jaw was now a feared beast as the sun rose and the expectation was a 2 hour climb, but pleasently just 1:20. Night had taken it’s toll on many and slowly those in front came back to us, even at the glacial slowness we were moving. Back at the Yellow gate after a cleanish but somewhat slow 14.5 hour loop and a meagre 4 minutes inside the cut to continue for the 100.

Matt with Barkley RD, Lars.

Loop 3 – having joked at the gate that I wished I was slower so that I didn’t have to go back out there, the reality was I felt fantastic. Legs obviously tired, but mentally alert and ready to tackle each of the climbs one at a time as efficiently as possible and carry on getting pages until Laz said I couldn’t anymore. The 3rd Loop is the 1st in Reverse. So I left the gate, now in 4th, staring at a 1.5-2 hour climb up over Rough Ridge and on further to Chimney Top. It was going fine until the last steep upper section and I found myself lying on the ground (sounds familiar to Ben & Blake at Buffalo last year). I have no idea what happened which threw all sorts of doubts into my head. I dropped back to the saddle and lay in the sun and napped for a few minutes. But I think I’d already quit. I was disconcerting to know that there were places I was going where collapse could cause a lot of problems for a lot of people, at the Barkley you rescue yourself. In the 30 years of running, no one has ever needed to be rescued. They ALL find their own way back to the yellow gate. As it turns out, everyone around me also tapped out or endured a long 2nd night completing the loop only to be tapped out at the gate. Three even tapped out within 1km of where I lay on the course. All strong people, all found a limit that seems so short, but going further and further away from the gate with some many hours to face alone, it gets to you.

The Barkley attacks you, but it is addictive. It is not the race the many who seek to do it, think it is. Please don’t ask for the details, especially if you’re a girl, the race is too hard for girls. Laz genuinely wants people to do well, he doesn’t need to extend the already extensive list of people with no hope of anything more than 1 loop. Yes It is actually hard to get around 1 loop. The ground conditions, while OK by NZ standards, are rough. If you want to line up, you should consider yourself one of the best Adventure racers or Rogainers in the Country. The closest I can get to describing how hard it is, is to imagine doing the Motatapu Adventure Race, from Fernburn to Macetown, then return, then go back to Macetown etc etc. Now imagine doing the out and back and it feels easy. That is as close as I can get to describing how monumentaly hard and unrelenting the course is.

A huge thanks to Ultimate Direction for all the gear, there were numerous PB Adventure Vests on course and it was fun camping with the US Ambassador Heather Anderson. Also to Andrew and Heather at Enduro Safety for their support.

Have I Been Training – No!

Amongst other questions where have is swapped with: what, why or how, the have has been a common theme. The answer is generally the same and I am honest when I say No. I haven’t been doing anything really specific for the Barkley Marathons. The BCR boss sent me a link from another Barkley entrant, http://runsteep.com/2015/03/04/redefining-what-steep-is/ , apparently they have been training. I’ve been in contact with a couple of other entrants as well. They too have been training, if Godzone counts as training that is. To me Godzone makes Barkley look like a 5k fun run. One team took 64 hours for the 24km Albert Burn Trek.

I have known and read about the Barkley for nearly as long as I have been running. Whilst many people have placed it on their bucket lists, I doubt that many of them have actually studied it. Have they gone and searched for the Topomaps, deciphered the race reports, plotted the course, stalked strava, learned to navigate, failed at navigating, got lost, suffered, suffered again and still wondered what is next. Have you got the e-mail address, the e-mail list, the university degree(s), the right degrees and most importantly the right date and time to submit your entry. Do you have that point of difference that will get you selected?

Over a long period of time I collected nearly all the things that would make an entry worthwhile and thanks to the connections with Ultimate Direction I got the final piece of the puzzle confirmed last year at a time when I thought I had one and only one shot at entering. Any older and I think I might be on the downslide or just wanting to put more time into family life. So I had one shot and that was all it took. My luck run out and I was given a high enough weighting that I would need to book Tickets to Wartburg, Tennessee. Since then, I haven’t trained for it.

What I have done is just carry-on doing the things I’d normally do, after all, how do you train for a race that takes 60 hours and has some 20,000 meters of climb? One thing I did know was that turning up injury free was going to be the goal and trust that general condition would be enough.

So nothing specific to training for Barkley, just out and about doing events, having fun and organising my own events. Work gets in the way, there’s fun things to do with the family. I have enough issues with OCD and running so keeping the Barkley under control hasn’t always been easy. I’ve dropped runs, I’ve quit races all with the long term goal of turning up fresh and injury free.

“How many loops are you going to do?” - ALL OF THEM.

Coverage – there is no coverage of the race, there is no website, there may be sporadic and random posts on Facebook or somewhere else. I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t even know when it starts.Sometime on Sunday march 29 (NZ Time). Actually I do know, there will be sporadic coverage on twitter which I don’t think you need to be signed up for. #bm100

So one final thought, everything you read about the Barkley is probably a lie, I might write more lies once I’m at the Yellow Gate, but in the meantime enjoy the above long trailer for the Documentary.