World’s hardest race where you climb twice Everest’s height and run 100 miles in 60 hours

A UK runner became the first woman to win what may be the most challenging – and unique – marathon in America after running for nearly 60 hours nonstop.

Almost four decades ago in central Tennessee, a man named Gary Cantrell – or Lazarus Lake as he’s affectionately known – created the ‘soul challenging’ Barkley Marathon.

Jasmin Paris is now the first woman to ever finish it. She made it with just one minute and 39 seconds to spare out of 60-hour time limit.

Her accomplishment is incredible. Laz tells Metro.co.uk: ‘She wanted it really bad. We all have our limits but she made the compensations. She’s tough. She paid the price in pain. It’s one of the greatest athletic performances I’ve ever seen.’

Runners in the Barkley challenge go through onerous mountain patches, including a pass nicknamed ‘Rat Jaw’ for its steep cliffs and briar patches, which leave runners bloodied.

But the man behind the most difficult race in the south is almost more impressive than those who manage to finish the gargantuan challenge.

Paying the price in pain

Speaking from his farm in central Tennessee, Laz, former ultra runner himself, said: ‘Barkley runners push themselves to the edge of what people can do and don’t blow up. It’s hard to imagine people can even do it.

‘To excel in the Barkley, you have to be good at everything. You have to run quickly, climb an unbelievable amount, and navigate with a map and compass with weather that changes a lot.

The race is held every year in early spring, before the Tennessee woods bloom with flora and fauna and explodes with pollen.

‘People say “leave nothing but footprints”. During the Barkley, we try not to even leave those.’

‘An extended period of unspeakable suffering’

The Barkley entails runners ascending 60,000ft in elevation – the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest twice – and running 100 miles in 60 hours.

Each time runners complete a clockwise loop, they must do their next loop counterclockwise, which leaves many of them never able to fully understand the trail in the Tennessee backwoods.

The people who know the Barkley trail the best are Laz and his friend Raw Dog – real name Karl Henn. They’ve both been in eastern Tennessee for decades.

But even if a runner has attempted the Barkley before, no one can truly get a grasp on the route – the journey is an onslaught for the senses, with most runners ending up discombobulated and bloodied – if they manage to finish.

Each of the chosen 40 runners receive a handwritten letter prior to the race from Laz, reading: ‘The Barkley amounts to nothing more than an extended period of unspeakable suffering, at the end of which you will ultimately find only failure and humiliation.

‘May your god go with you, Laz.’

The flick of the lighter and a long drag

The Barkley is… quirky, to say the least. Upon mailing an entry fee of $1.60, which has remained unchanged since the race’s creation, the 40 chosen runners also must send Laz a random item of his choosing, which varies each year.

Laz laughs as he adds: ‘I asked for white shirts one year – lots and lots of white button up shirts. I worked as an accountant but would also wear them for running and walking.

‘Then when they were worn down from that, I wore them to work on the farm. Then after that, my wife and I cut them up and use them as rags.’

This year’s item? Pairs of discontinued socks to help prepare for Laz’s 70th birthday cross country walk from Delaware to San Francisco.

Barkleys this year did not disappoint: Laz now has 40 pairs of his beloved discontinued socks as he prepares to set off today for his trek.

First time competitors (virgins) also have to bring a license plate from the state or country they hail from – some runners have come all the way from New Caledonia and Africa, and the plates are displayed proudly each year at the race.

On the day of the race, runners are given a one hour warning from the blare of a conch shell and gather by a faded yellow gate at Frozen Head State Park.

Competitors look on in anticipation and wait for Laz to do the move which marks the beginning of the race – lighting a cigarette – and sends them off, oftentimes with the phrase ‘Good luck, Morons.’

Laz chuckles: ‘The whole cigarette and entry fee, it seemed like a thumb your nose at convention kind of thing – just like the whole race is, really.’

The race also involves hidden books placed by Laz and Raw Dog. When a runner gets to a book, they tear out a page that corresponds to their runner number to bring it back to Laz down below as proof they completed the loop.

Why books?

‘What else has page numbers?’ Laz told the Bitter Southerner.

The lore of Lazarus Lake

As much as the Barkley Marathon has garnered attention from around the world, the main allure for runners is the man behind it.

Laz began running when he was young, first joining his school’s track team, before entering marathons. His grit is admirable: a newspaper reported that he was once shot while running a marathon in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but still finished the race.

Day to day, Gary Cantrell worked as an accountant. So how did he begin going by the moniker Lazarus Lake?

One story claims that the name was that of a man who accidentally emailed him, but other tales seem to allude that during the early years of the Barkley Marathon, if you finished your loop you had to wake up Laz from his tent to log it – akin to waking up the biblical Lazarus from the dead.

But mystery behind both his name and the Barkley’s beginnings is something which Laz seems fond of.

He’s asked a rumour about the Barkley’s beginnings, which claims it’s because he and Mad Dog heard about the botched escape of James Early Ray from a nearby prison.

James Earl Ray, the man who shot and killed Martin Luther King Junior, was jailed in Brushy Mountain State Prison – but escaped one day in 1977.

The tale goes that when Mad Dog and Laz heard that Ray only managed to get 8 miles away from the prison – which is next to Frozen Head State Park, where the race is held – in the 55 hours he was gone.

After hearing the tale, Laz and Mad Dog ‘wagered a mocking bet that someone could probably travel a hundred miles in those woods in the same amount of time’.

‘Is it true?’ I ask. Laz laughs: ‘No, not really. But it’s a persistent tale.’

But Laz explains the real story: in the mid 1980s, Laz and Raw Dog were backpacking through the area around Frozen Head State Park on rugged trails when they had the idea for the Barkley.

Laz said: ‘When we were hiking, we saw trails that looked like they’d be a hell of a hike’

‘I thought, “Man, those would make a race that would challenge people’s soul.”‘

He pauses, before adding: ‘And I knew people who wanted their soul challenged.’

Changing with the times

2024 marked the 38th iteration of the Barkley Marathon, which has remained relatively unchanged since its first year.

But Laz has worked hard to ensure the increasing amount of news media and spectators don’t ruin his unique race: ‘There’s no place for spectators at the Barkley except for in the way. 

‘The trail is their playing field. You wouldn’t stand in front of a goal at a football game, would you?’

As Jasmin crossed the finish line at the faded yellow gate in Frozen Head State Park after completing this year’s Barkley, she collapsed.

The Barkley challenges the very souls of its competitors – and for those who conquer it, like Jasmin, it changes them.

She told BBC: ‘Those final moments have redefined for me what I am capable of.’

Lazarus Lake set out to make a race that thumbs a nose at convention – but has created something that is sure to last for years to come.

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