The Barkley Marathons - The Immortal Horizon

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Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts most of the time because this is the internet and that's how it works now.

I'm Noah.

I'm going to be firing the starting gun on tonight's episode, but firing a starting gun is no fun if you don't have anybody to fire it at.

So also joining me tonight are this week's Una athletes, Cecil and Heath.

Okay, I tried to wear a singlet once.

It didn't work out.

Well, it worked very nice.

I needed like a doublet or a triplet.

I pleasure,

Heath.

And also joining us tonight are two guys that belong to whatever the categorization just below UNA athlete is.

Tom and Eli.

I don't know what that is either, but I don't like it.

I just, I know I don't like it.

Yeah, I'm more of an omnom athlete because I love my snackos.

Am I right?

I'm 37.

And before we get going, I want to take a minute to thank our patrons.

Patrons, we need to donate to this show.

Not only do you help keep us fed, but you also keep Tom too busy to go off and do all the crazy shit he wants to do.

So if you'd like to learn how to continue to save Tom from himself, be sure to stick around to the end of the show.

And with that out of the way, tell us, Cecil, what person plays, think concept phenomenon or event?

What we'll be talking about today.

We're going to be talking about the Immortal Horizon by Leslie Jameson.

All right.

Yeah, because Tom said, hey, guys, do you mind if I just do this article instead of writing an essay?

And we're like, like, Tom, you just broke your own fucking neck by sneering too hard.

You can do whatever the hell you want forever.

It's true.

All right.

This is this has been on my radar, guys, for a long time.

And I've always intended to write an essay on it.

And then I just realized I should just read this article.

That's what I've been done.

It's already an essay.

It's still good.

So this is The Immortal Horizon by Leslie Jameson.

On the western edge of Frozen Head State Park, just before dawn, a man in a rust-brown trench coat blows a giant conk shell.

Runners stir in their tents.

It's such a good stuff.

They fill their water pouches.

See, how do I write that?

How would I possibly?

We can't improve it.

You can't improve that.

We can't improve it.

Yeah, I'm straight.

They tape their blisters.

They eat.

thousand calorie breakfasts.

Oh, so they had two McMuffins?

Is that what they had?

Two McMuffins?

Yeah, I feel like that was meant to be like a large number.

people.

Yeah, it does not even delicious.

It's not even delicious.

One pint of Ben and Jerry's.

It's not even adding the hash brown.

Like you just had two McMuffins.

I just ate more than that in almonds, loose almonds just now.

I watched him.

I watched him.

Pop-tarts and candy bars and geriatric energy drinks.

Okay, does that mean like insurers with extra protein or Red Bulls that are way past their use bar?

What the fuck?

Some of them pray.

Others ready their fanny packs.

The man in the trench coat sits in an ergonomic lawn chair beside a famous yellow gate holding a cigarette.

He calls the two-minute warning.

It's like five different bad poets trying to start their beat poem at the same time, fighting over it.

Or like an improv beat poem.

Yellow Gate.

Oh, fuck.

Okay.

Yellow.

Yes.

Cigarette.

I have cigarette.

Oh, hello.

So much depends upon a yellow gate.

No, that's been done.

That's derivative.

Derivative.

Derivative.

The runners gather in front of him, stretching.

They're about to travel more than a hundred miles through the wilderness.

If they are strong and lucky enough to make it that far, which they probably aren't.

They wait anxiously.

We, the watchers, wait anxiously.

A pale wash of light is barely visible in the sky.

It was also anxious.

Next to me, a skinny girl holds a skinny dog.

She's come all the way from skinny, Iowa, to watch her father disappear into this gray dawn.

And the dog is there to eat him if he falls.

Okay, I'm stealing that dog.

Please, yeah.

If you have a dog that's not like medium thick, I'm stealing it.

No dog should ever be skinny if it's got a person.

All eyes are on the man in the trench coat.

At precisely 7:12, he raises from his lawn chair and lights his cigarette.

Once the tip glows red, the race known as the Barclay Marathons has begun.

No, guys, it was just orange.

Come back!

Come back!

A bunch of people burning out because they pressed the gas before the tier.

Right, yeah.

Yep, yep, we gotta wait.

The first race was a prison break.

On June the 10th, 1977, James Earl Ray, the man who shot Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary and fled across the briar-bearded hills of northern Tennessee.

54 hours later, he was found.

He'd gone about eight miles.

Some might hear this and wonder how he managed to squander his escape.

One man heard this and thought, I need to see that terrain.

And if you're that guy, I bet your opinions on race are

okay.

This event was definitely called Race Wars for a while until somebody talked him down.

Over 20 years later, that man, the man in the trench coat, Gary Cantrell by birth, self-dubbed Lazarus Lake, has turned this terrain,

has turned this terrain into the stage for a legendary trial.

The Barclay Marathons, held yearly, traditionally on Lazarus Friday or April Fool's Day, outside Wartburg, Tennessee.

Lake, known as Laz, calls it the race that eats its young.

The Runner's Bibs say something different.

Anyone would fuck this race.

Get out of here.

The Runner's Bibs say something different each year.

Suffering without a point.

Not all pain is gain.

Only eight men have ever finished.

You don't have a third example.

Fuck you.

The event is considered extreme even by those who specialize in extremity.

How does it feel to be a single click of sanity above these people, Tom?

One single click of sanity.

Half a click.

Half a click.

Come on, half a click.

Fucking topsies.

What makes it so bad?

No trail for one.

A cumulative elevation gain that's nearly

twice the height of Everest.

Native flora called sawbriars that can turn a man's legs to raw meat in meters.

I think you're lying.

I'm not sure if that exists.

Well, to be fair, raw meat is the standard state of legs, right?

That's true.

They are.

Points your legs are taken.

That's way more points taken.

And there's a number of meters.

In this case, it's zero because, yeah, it starts as raw meat.

There's a number of 100%.

The tough hills have names like Rat Jaw, Little Hell, Big Hill, Testicle Spectacle.

What?

This last, this last so-called because it inspires most runners to make the sign of the cross, crotch to eyeglasses, shoulder to shoulder.

Not to mention stallion mountains, bird mountain, coffin springs, zipline.

Okay, now I'm scared.

And an uphill stretch new this year, known simply as the bad thing.

Come on, man.

You're in Tennessee.

You're spoiled for choice when you start talking about bad things.

I mean, what the fuck?

Okay, a lot of weird names there, but Bird Mountain didn't feel like

it feels like they let somebody's kid pick one name and they were like, Bird Mountain.

They're like,

all right.

We're doing big hell.

All right.

Bird Mountain.

The race consists of five loops on a course that's been officially listed at 20 miles, but is probably more like 26.

You're writing the article, man.

The moral of this slanted truth is that standard metrics are irrelevant.

The moral of a lot of Barclays slanted truths is that standard metrics are irrelevant.

The laws of physics and human tolerance have been replaced by Laz's personal whims.

Even if the race was really only 100 miles, these would still be Barclay miles.

Guys who could typically finish 100 miles in 20 hours might not finish a single loop here.

If you finish three, you've completed what's known as the fun run.

If you happen not to finish, and let's face it, you probably won't.

Laz will pay taps to commemorate your quitting.

The whole camp, shifting and dirty and tired, will listen, except for those who are asleep or too weak to notice, who won't.

Also, the people who are too far away and deaf people, probably.

People listening to headphones will.

Look, I want to point out that, hey, if this is your thing, there's a version of this where sexy people step on your nuts and you get to come come at the end of it.

Like, there's other ways to do this.

You can come at the end of what's going on.

Well, that's true.

That's true.

Yeah, I mean,

that's not true about so many things.

Okay, no, I thought about it for a sec.

Thank you, Eli.

That was an important correction.

There are no published entry requirements or procedures.

It helps to know someone.

Admissions are decided by Laz's personal discretion, and his application isn't exactly standard with questions like, what is your favorite parasite?

Toxoplasma Gandhii, obviously.

That's an awesome answer.

And a required essay with the subject, why I should be allowed to run in the Barclay.

Only 35 entrants are admitted.

This year, one of them is my brother.

My favorite parasite is the guy who uses MLK Jr.'s death to advertise a foot race.

That's my favorite.

This is a very solid.

No, that's pretty good.

I want to change my answer now.

Julian is a virgin, one of 15 newbies who will do their damnedest to finish a loop.

He has managed to escape the designation of sacrificial virgin, officially applied to the virgin each year, usually the least experienced ultra-runner, whom Laz has deemed most likely to fail in a spectacular fashion, to get lost for so long, perhaps, that he manages to beat Dan Baglione's course record for slowest pace.

At the age of 75 in 2006, Baglione managed two miles in 32 hours

what something to do with an unscrewed flashlight cap and an unexpected creak okay can we pivot to that

i want to hear that story

he like built up i'm gonna need a like what i'm gonna need a long weekend to figure out this flashlight cap balance jesus you go ahead

Keep screwing in at an angle.

Now it's cross-threaded.

I'm not gonna let you go.

Twist away a little bit and let it see.

Twist a little away and let it see.

No, I'm okay.

I don't understand where you're going.

I've been saying this for 30 hours.

30 hours I've been saying this.

You're going to have to explain for like two more hours and it still won't help.

It's probably a misnomer to talk about getting lost at Barclay.

It might be closer to the truth to say you begin lost, remain lost through several nights in the woods and must constantly use your compass, map, instructions, fellow runners, and remaining shards of sanity to perpetually unlose yourself again.

Now, this does not strike me as a remaining shards of sanity kind of operation.

Reting is doing way too much work.

First-timers usually try to stay with veterans who know the course, but are often scraped.

Virgin scraping means ditching the new guy.

A virgin bends down to tie his shoelaces, perhaps, and glances up.

to find his veteran Virgil gone.

The day before the race, runners start arriving at camp like rainbow seals.

Sleekly gliding through the air in multicolored bodysuits.

They come in pickup trucks and rental cars and rusty vans and camper trailers.

Their license plates say 100 runner, alt man, crazy run.

They bring camouflage tents and orange hunting vests and skeptical girlfriends and acclimated wives and tiny travel towels and tiny dogs.

Who are they hiding from with the camouflage?

Their wives.

Laz himself brings a little dog named Little Dog.

Little dog named Dog with a black spot like a pirate's patch over one eye.

Little dog almost loses her name this year after encountering and trying to eat an even smaller dog.

a skinny one from Iowa, who turns out to be two dogs rather than just one.

What the fuck is happening in these woods?

Is there a dog super collider?

Like, what?

It's a super collider.

Forget it.

I printed work.

Forget it.

Okay.

Skinny pregnant meth dog gets eaten by little dog with an eye patch named Little Dog.

That is on brand.

What are the fucks happening in Tennessee right now?

God.

It's a male scene.

Really?

There are a few female regulars, I learn, but they rarely manage more than a loop.

Most of the women in sight, like me, are a part of someone's support crew.

I help sort Julian's supplies in the back of the car.

I start to wonder if maybe I'm a woman.

She is.

I know.

It's crazy.

It was the twist of this essay for me is that a woman wrote like this about this.

He needs a compass.

He needs pain pills and no-doze pills and electrolyte pills and ginger chews for when he gets to sleep.

Therapy.

And a kit for popping blisters that basically includes a needle and band-aids.

He needs tape for when his toenails start to fall off.

He needs batteries.

We pay special attention to the batteries.

Running out of batteries is the must-avoid at all costs, worst possible thing that could happen.

No, it isn't.

I ain't fucking kidding.

I brought my Game Boy.

But it has happened.

It happened to Rich Lamaker, whose night spent under a huge buckeye tree earned it the name Limmaker Hilton.

Julian's coup de grand is a pair of duct tape pants that we've fashioned in the manner of cowboy chaps.

They'll fend off sawbriars as the idea and earn Julian the envy of the other runners.

No, they don't.

You know, it's actually duct tape, but lots of people get it wrong, he says to me.

And he goes into a long, confident explanation of many details about that.

I let it go and assure him that, well, regardless of the name, tape is famously stronger than briars named after saws

and his assless chaps made of tape will indeed be the envy of the entire race.

All chaps are assless, he says, pathetically.

I wish him good luck and walk away.

Traditionally, the epicenter of camp is a chicken fire kindled on the afternoon before the race begins.

This year's fire is blazing by 4 p.m.

It's manned by someone named Doc Joe.

Julian tells me Doc Joe has been waitlisted for several years and, Julian speculates, has offered himself as a helper in order to secure a spot for 2011.

We arrive just as he's spearing the first thighs from the grill.

He's got a two-foot can of beans in the fire pit already bubbling.

Fuck

you, The clear stars of this show.

It's a two-foot can be two-foot can of beans.

Just far away through the race, guys.

This is what Noah wants to eat instead of the nice places I want to take him to.

I just need a two-foot can of beans.

But the clear stars of this show are the birds, skin blackened and smothered in red sauce.

The chicken here, as legend has it is served partway thawed with only skins and a bit more cook oh is that blackened salmon no it's blackened salmonella

at least now we know why so few people make it

jesus

I ask Doc Joe how he plans to find the sweet spot between cooked and frozen.

He looks at me like I'm stupid.

Nope.

You want to go

That frozen chicken thing is just a myth, he says.

This will not be the last time I suspect that I catch Barkley at the game of crafting its own legend.

Oh, I'm sorry, murder run through the night for us.

Would undercooked chicken be too dangerous for you?

Also, I don't think they know what legend means.

Like, we're on the edge of legendary, like, right on the edge.

Make up a story about having to send back the chicken from the fire root that's a little bean can

from the guy named Doc Joe.

Then we'll be legends.

What?

At this particular potluck, small talk rarely stays banal for long.

I fall into conversation with John Price, a bearded veteran who tells me he's sitting out the race this year.

Waitlisted, but has driven hundreds of miles just to be a part of the action.

Our conversation starts predictably.

He asks where I'm from.

I say Los Angeles.

He says he loves Venice Beach.

I say, I love Venice Beach, too.

And he says, next fall, I'm running from Venice Beach to Virginia Beach to celebrate my retirement.

Cool.

Oh, some people try fishing.

Pickleball.

I've learned not to pause at this kind of declaration.

Maybe you want to unlearn that.

I've learned to proceed to practical questions i ask well where will you sleep mostly camping he says a few motels oh you'll carry the tent in a backpack god no he laughs i'll be pulling a small cart harnessed to my waist

please tell me he's gonna wear one of those donkey sombreros with the ears cut out that'll be amazing

I find myself at the picnic table, which has become a veritable bulimix buffet, spread with store-bought cakes and sprinkle cookies and brownies.

It's designed to feed men who will do little for the next few days besides burn an incredible number of calories.

The tall man next to me is tearing into massive chicken thigh.

His third, I've noticed.

Its steam rises softly into the twilight.

How do you say there was a lot of sweet treats?

AIDS patients dream.

No

rape victims buffet.

No, fucking

Keep going.

I want it.

Hey, Leslie, that's also a buffet if you're not bulimic.

That's just what the word buffet means.

Hey, Leslie, do you need some help?

It's a really weird pick.

So that whole frozen thing, I ask him, it's really just a myth.

It was one year, he says.

It was honest to God frozen.

He pauses.

Man.

That year was a great race.

Yeah, totally.

Being propelled by the diarrhea made the run so much easier, especially in the big uphills.

It was just like flying.

They only for the first guy up, mind you.

You want to stay in the lead?

This guy introduces himself as Carl.

Brock.

It's like a human centipede.

Broad and good looking, he's a bit less sinewy than many of his fellow runners.

He tells me he runs a machine shop down in Atlanta.

As best as I can gather, this means he uses his machines to build other machines, or else he uses uses his machines to build things that aren't machines, like bicycle parts or fly swatters.

He works on commission.

The people who ask for crazy inventions, he says, sighing, are never the ones who can afford them.

A lot of this article so far is just this reporter not googling some pretty basic stuff.

What I'm saying is, he's the man for the job.

You know what I'm saying?

He's the man.

Woman.

Woman for the job.

The surgeon reporter is Julian's sister.

I know it sounds mischievous.

I'm reading it.

A lady rider, huh?

Thank you.

I'm reading it, and it's written by a man.

Carl tells me that he's got an axe to grind this time around.

He's got a strong history at Barclay.

One of the few runners who's finished a fun run under official time, but his performance last year was dismal.

I've barely left camp, he says.

Translated, this means he ran only 35 miles, but it was genuinely disappointing.

He didn't even finish a second loop.

He tells me he was dead, tired, and heartbroken.

He'd just gone through a nasty breakup.

Yeah, with his toenails.

Terrifying.

But now he's back.

He looks pumped.

I ask him who he thinks the major contenders are to complete 100.

Well, he says, after the involuntary orgasm he had at the thought that literally anyone gives a shit to

be famous.

Amazing.

There's always Blake and A.T.

He means two of the alumni, former finishers, who are running this year.

Blake Wood, class of 2001, and A.T.

Andrew Thompson, class of 2009.

Thought it was going to be Tate.

Really thought it was going to be Tate.

Finishing the 100 twice would make history.

Two years in a row is the stuff of fantasy.

Not my fantasy, baby.

Okay.

I want to go to this event and just glamp it in my shit on Ryan Hardy.

now.

Every morning.

Man servants giving us stuff.

Yeah.

Having them dress like Chippendale's dancers and serve you.

Amazing.

And cocaine.

That they have.

Yeah, no, there you go.

There you go.

Bring in Sand of the Beach Heath.

Blake is a nuclear engineer at Los Alamos with a doctor from Berkeley.

Bad.

No no bombs for him.

No touchy the nuclear stuff because that's what you do in your free time, Blake.

With a doctorate from Berkeley and an incredible Berkeley record.

Six for six fun run completions, one finish, another near finish that was blocked only by a flooded creek.

In person, he's just a friendly, middle-aged dad with a salt and pepper mustache, eager to talk about his daughter's bid to qualify for the Olympic marathon trials and about the new pair of checkered clown pants he'll wear this year to boost his spirits on the trail.

Andrew Thompson is a youngish guy from New Hampshire, famous for a near finish in 2005.

Would we say famous?

Is that what we're going to say?

Sure.

When he was strong, heading into his fifth loop, but literally lost his mind while he was out there, battered from 50 hours of sleep deprivation and physical strain, He completely forgot about the race.

He spent an hour squishing mud in his shoes.

He came back four more times until he finally finished the thing in 2009.

There's JB, Jonathan Basham, AT's best support crew for years at Barclay for his own race this time around.

He's a strong runner, though I mainly hear him mention in the context of his relationship to AT, who calls him John Boy.

Okay, so I guess I don't support all gay relationships.

Honestly, I'm learning a lot about myself this episode.

Though Carl doesn't say it, I learned from others that he's a strong contender, too.

He's one of the toughest runners in the pack.

A DNF did not finish veteran, hungry for a win.

I picture him out there on the trails, a mud-splattered machinist.

You misspelled masochist.

With mechanical claws, picking granola bars from his pockets and bringing them up to his mouth.

It's not

a picture that, Leslie.

He's not Dr.

Octopus.

He's just a guy in the machine shop, man.

I like the idea of Doc Ock doing it just for like the granola bar utility.

Jewish people don't do this stuff.

There are some strong virgins in the pack.

There are some strong virgins in the pack, including Charlie Engel, already an accomplished ultra runner.

He's done the Sahara, an inspirational speaker.

Like many ultra runners, he's a former addict.

He's been sober for nearly 20 years, and many describe his recovery as the switch from one addiction to another.

Drugs for adrenaline.

Trading that extreme for this one.

All right.

Well, as much as I hate to take a break right on the best argument I've ever heard for just staying on drugs,

this is where the sketch is.

So I guess we're going to take a break for a little apropos of nothing.

I found myself surrounded by the toughest men ever spit out by Mother Gaia.

I asked Dan Schemberg why he does it, and he says,

When it's just you in the road after midnight, I never feel more alive.

Skeet Blatherton made it to Topeka Row last year, but took a nasty fall over a cougar and is back this year for revenge.

When I ask him what's different this year, he says,

Now I've got something to prove to me and to the cougar.

And that's just fine by me.

Tom Homuck is new to the game.

And when I ask what gets his motor running, he says,

I am terribly mentally ill.

I'm sorry, what?

Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm in a manic episode or psychosis, but whatever I'm doing to my body is just as destructive as any other form of self-harm.

Okay, well...

I really just found this one sliver of toxic masculinity that allows me to do this.

If there was a shooting yourself in the head Olympics, I would join that as well.

And just honestly, anybody who claims to care about me should stop me from doing this and get me the help I desperately need, you know?

Okay, well, Steve Wilson.

I think I probably feel that way too much.

Yeah, me too.

Now that I think about it, Tom said smart.

Why don't our loved ones stop off?

You guys are kind of messing up my thing here.

I just.

Your thing is predatory voyeurism.

It is.

Let's continue with the story.

All right, Tom, do you want to make a quick meal before we start recording again?

Ooh, I can eat.

Yeah, me too.

I'd love to, guys, but unfortunately, tragedy seption really means I don't have time to cook anymore.

What's tragedy seption?

Eli,

the graph?

Right.

Okay, so this is a graph of the terrible things that have happened to Tom.

And as you can see, they're sort of getting closer and closer together.

And as the line goes up.

That's right, Eli.

And at the rate we're going, I'll soon reach a point where I won't even have time to boil pasta before my bones unmoor from my flesh.

Right.

Or your job steals your blood.

Yeah, something like that.

It's coming.

Well, Tom, why don't you try factor?

What's factor?

Sorry.

No, no, no problem.

Just another tragedy.

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Two minutes?

Well, that's plenty of time between tragedies.

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All right, guys, thanks.

All right, if you guys will excuse me, all the bones in my foot just disappeared, so I gotta take care of that.

Oh, yeah.

But hey, that was a long conversation without a tragedy, right?

No, no, no, no, no.

Happened at the beginning of the conversation.

I just, I didn't want to be rude.

Bring it up right away.

Got it.

Did you like dig up a priest's grave when you were younger?

Oh, yeah.

Okay, so it could be that.

I'm still going with the Bobby Haga thing.

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And we're back when we last left off.

The article's author was desperately trying to make stupidity sound exciting in hopes that we wouldn't notice that six pages into our article, nothing had fucking happened.

So, Tom, does anything happen on page seven, maybe?

If there's such a thing as the opposite of a virgin, it's probably John DeWalt.

He's an old man.

I mean, there is definitely something that's the opposite of a virgin.

You know who fucks?

John goddamn DeWalt.

That's who fucks.

He's an old man in a black ski cap, 73 and wrinkled with a gruff voice that sounds like it should belong to a smoker or a cartoon grizzly bear.

Or the head of health and human services.

Okay, the cartoon bear was getting hit by the smoker's car.

You heard two voices.

That's what was happening.

He tells me that his nine-year-old grandson recently beat him in a 5K.

Later, I will hear him described as an animal.

He's been running the race for 20 years, never managing a finish or even a fun run.

Okay, so he's not a virgin.

He's the most sexually experienced person on earth to never come.

No,

that's sting.

I watch Laz from across the campfire.

He's darkly regal in his trench coat, warming his hands over the flames.

I want to meet him, but haven't yet summoned the courage to introduce myself.

When I look at him, I can't help but think of Heart of Darkness.

Like Kurtz, Laz is bald and charismatic, leader of a minor empire, trafficking in human pain.

He's like a cross between the colonel and your grandpa.

There's certainly an inner stallion splendor to his orchestration of this whole hormone extravaganza.

Testosterone spread like fertilizer across miles of barren and brambled wilderness.

The starting gun used to be cutting the head off a water buffalo

with a sword.

I fucking love it.

He speaks to his runners with comfort and fondness, as if they are a bunch of wayward sons turned feral each year at the flick of his lighter.

Most have been running for him, their phrase, for years.

All of them bring offerings.

Everyone pays a $1.60 entry fee.

Alumni bring Laz a patch of his favorite cigarettes, camel filters.

Veterans bring a new pair of socks, and virgins are responsible for a license plate.

These license plates hang like laundry at the edge of camp, a wall of clattering metal flaps.

Julian has brought one from Liberia, where in his non-superhero incarnation as a developmental economist, he is working on a microfinance project.

I asked him how one manages to procure a spare license plate in Liberia.

He tells me he asked a guy on the street and the guy said $10.

And Julian gave him five and then it appeared.

Laz immediately strings it into a place of honor near the center.

And I can tell Julian is pleased.

Nice.

I like this one.

It's far.

All through the potluck, runners pour over their instructions, five single-spaced pages that tell them exactly where to go.

Though every single runner, even those who've run the course for years, will probably get lost at least once, many of them for hours at a time.

It's hard for me to understand this.

Can't you just do what they say?

Until I look at the instructions themselves.

They range from surprising.

The coal pond beavers have been very active this year.

Be careful not to fall on with their sharpened stumps they've left.

Too self-evident.

All you have to do is keep choosing the steepest path up the mountain.

Okay, on years with only medium beaver stabbing, he leaves that out.

But the instructions tend to cite landmarks like the ridge or the rock that seem less than useful considering.

And then there's the issue of the night.

Okay, so I want to dwell for a second on the fact that don't fall onto the sharpened stakes in the ground was

the example before self-evident,

right?

The official Barclay requirements read like a treasure hunt.

There are 10 books placed at various points along the course, and runners are responsible for ripping out the pages that match their race number.

Laz is playful in his book choices.

The most dangerous game, death by misadventure, a time to die, even heart of darkness, a choice that seems to vindicate my associative impulses.

The big talk this year is about Laz's latest addition to the course,

a quarter-mile cement tunnel that runs directly under the grounds of the old penitentiary.

There's a drop through a narrow concrete shaft to get in, a 15-foot climb to get out, and plenty of standing water once you're inside.

There are also, rumor has it, rats the size of possums, and when it gets warmer, snakes the size of arms.

Whose arms, I wonder?

Most of the guys here are pretty wiry.

What?

Also, what kind of possum are we talking about?

Like thick ones?

Like Instagram thick?

Like eggnog

on a skateboard thick?

Until we get to Princess Bride levels, I feel like I can take any rat, right?

Possum size or not.

This is almost exactly the same place James Earl Ray went over, the instructions say.

Thanks a lot, James.

Oh, perfectly chill thing to include A thanks to the guy who killed that milk.

Thanks a lot, James, for getting all this business started.

I feel like this isn't the only thing you're grateful to James about, and it makes me okay

with you running around in poopy water without surmounting.

That's reasonable.

Yeah, so I'm assuming the King family is running this whole thing as a prank, and that's making it fun for me again.

Laz has given himself.

You're literally tricking them into the briar patch, which is amazing.

It's pretty funny.

Amazing.

Laz has given himself the freedom to start the race whenever he wants.

He announces the date, but only offers two guarantees.

That it will begin sometime between midnight and noon.

Thanks a lot, Laz.

And that he will blow the conch shell an hour beforehand in warning.

In general, Laz likes to start before dawn.

At the start gate, Julian is wearing a light silver jacket, a pale gray skull cap, and his homemade duct tape chaps.

He looks

like a robot.

Let me go back.

Let me go.

And his homemade duct tape chaps.

He looks like a robot.

He disappears uphill in a flurry of camera flashes.

Immediately after the runners take off, Doc Joe and I start grilling waffles.

Laz strolls over with his glowing cigarette, its gray cap of untapped ash quaking between his thick fingers.

I introduce myself.

He introduces himself.

He asks us if we think anyone has noticed that he's not actually smoking.

I can't this year, he explains, because of my leg.

He has just had surgery at an artery and his circulation isn't good.

Despite this, he will set up a lawn chair by the finish line, just like every year, and stay awake until every competitor has either dropped or finished.

Dropping, unless you drop at the single point accessible by trail, involves a three to four hour commute back into camp, longer at night, especially if you get lost.

Which effectively means that the act of ceasing to compete in the Barclay race is comparable to running an entire marathon.

Not unless you use a lesser-known strat I like to call fucking dying, Leslie, to get going.

I tell him his cigarette looks great as an accessory.

Doc Joe tells him he's safe up to a couple packs.

Doc Joe, by the way, really is a doctor.

But clearly not a good one, but a doctor.

Yeah.

Well then, Laz says, smiling, guess I'll smoke the last quarter of this one.

He finishes the cigarette and then tosses it into our cooking fire where it smokes right into our breakfast.

Oh, cross.

It's fucking disgusting.

I am aware that Laz has already been turned into a myth and that I will probably become another one of his myth-makers.

Various tropes of masculinity are at play in Laz's persona.

Badass, teenager, father, demon, warden, and this Rubik's cube of testosterone seems to be what Barclay is all about.

I mean, so far, he takes terrible care of his body and threw a lit cigarette into your breakfast.

It doesn't sound like my can,

Leslie.

Yeah, same.

No toothpicks in the waffles at all.

That we know of.

I realize Laz and I will have many hours to spend in each other's company.

The runners are out on their loops anywhere from 8 to 32 hours.

Between loops, if they're continuing, they stop at camp for a few moments of food and rest.

I like that they get rest.

And apparently, everybody's got their own like Burgess Meredith giving speeches between randoms and like fixing raw meat legs with a giant cold shovel.

I don't know.

This is both sucker and sadism.

The oasis offers respite and temptation at once.

It's the lotus eater's dilemma.

Hard to leave a good thing behind.

Yeah, I mean, who can escape the temptation of cigarette ash waffles?

Exactly.

Pull me back in.

Amazing glamping setup with like robes and slippers and puppies to play with.

Oh, there you go.

Honestly, tough.

It's such a brilliant idea because it would absolutely ruin it for the teeth.

It would ruin it for every single one of them.

Okay, but to be clear, other races have that everywhere.

Like if you're running the Boston Marathon, you're surrounded by Boston the whole time.

Only being tempted by a place with food and chairs once every 20 miles, that's way easier.

That's true.

Fucking wussies.

Bunch of wusses doing this race.

I use these hours without the runners to ask Laz everything I can about the race.

I start with the start.

How does he choose the time?

He laughs uneasily.

I backtrack, apologizing.

Would it ruin the mystery to tell me?

One time I started at three, he says, as if in answer.

That was fun.

Last year you started at noon, right?

I heard the runners got a little restless.

Sure did.

He shakes his head, smiling at the memory.

Folks are just standing around, get nancy.

Was it fun to watch the Maganais?

I ask.

A little frightening, actually, he said.

Like watching a mob turn ugly.

Okay, so nobody in this situation is having a good time.

I am mystified at this idea.

Okay, on top of the glamping, I want to start an event in the exact same place where everyone's competing to rescue these people from their abuse.

Awesome.

We finish vulgarity for charity out there.

Well, and also, these are people willing to sacrifice their leg meat to celebrate that time that Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin almost got away with.

Like, I feel like this is a mob that starts ugly, right?

It'd be awesome if they're running, you're just paying therapists to run alongside them to talk to them the whole way.

Absolutely.

Seems like you have a lot of outcome-related thoughts.

And I wonder if we could break down some of your values and see if there are way moves or toward moves you're volunteering.

What the fuck else is there besides outcomes?

I don't even understand what you're saying.

We'll take a break while you fix your leg meat, and then we'll come back.

It's like

you should cook this.

Watch for beaver stumps.

Other medium.

As we speak, he mentions sections of the course.

Danger Dave's climbing wall.

Raw Dog Falls.

Pussy Ridge.

Galiante.

To a woman.

Galiante.

To a woman.

Okay, that last one is a myth, right?

Oh, God.

As if I'd know them by heart.

I asked whether rat jaw is called that because the briars are like a bunch of little rodent teeth.

He says, no, it has to do with the topographic profile on a map.

It reminded him of, well, of a rat's jaw.

I think to myself, a lot of things might remind you of a rat jaw.

The briar scratches are known.

This writing is so crazy.

This is not writing.

A lot of things remind you of a rat jaw.

I've come across zero in my life to this point.

49 years in.

And, you know, like, I would say, why would it be a rat jaw instead of just a jaw right or an animal jaw how many jaws have you seen to begin with that you would be able to compare anything to any jaw is that a rat jaw or a honda civic i can't

could be either

rat jaw yeah

the briar scratches are known as rat bites Laz once claimed that the briars wouldn't give you scratches any worse than the ones you'd get from baptizing a cat.

I ask about Meth Lab Hill, wondering what its topographic profile could possibly resemble.

Oh, that's easy, he says.

First time we ran it, we saw Meth Lab.

It's still operating.

It's wrenched rat jaws.

All the teeth have fallen out.

Still operating?

They're in Tennessee.

Does Walter White shit in the woods?

Of course it's operating.

What are you talking about?

Yeah, he laughs.

Those suckers thought they'd never get found, that they were thinking, who the fuck would possibly come over this hill?

I was just picturing a bunch of strung-out meth dealers burning their fingertips in chlorine, watching these guys being like, That's not healthy right there.

Hey, you guys seem stressed.

You want to do a little Zazan over here, take a fucking relax.

Have you seen our pregnant dog?

I begin to see see why Laz has been so vocal about his new sections.

The difficulty of the bad thing, the novelty of the prison tunnel.

They mark his power over the terrain.

Do they, Leslie?

Okay, I'm 100% certain that Laz peed on this entire

thing.

And probably on somebody's breakfast to establish dominance at some point or other

situation.

Laz has endured quite a bit of friction with park officials over the years.

The race was nearly shut down for good by a man named Jim Fyke, who was upset about erosion and endangered plants.

Laz simply rerouted the course around protected areas and called the detour Fike's Folly.

I can sense Laz's nostalgia for wilder days, when Frozen Head was still dense with the ghosts of fled felons and outlaws, thick with undiscovered junkies and their squirreled-away cold medicine.

This author has never passed on a problematic turn of phrase.

I'm terrified someone's going to turn out to be cheap in this story.

I live in fear, Leslie.

Frugal.

I bet you'll use frugal as your adjective.

Globalist.

Times are different now.

Tamer.

Last year, the Rangers cut the briars on Rat Jaw a week before the race.

Laz was pissed.

This year, he made them promise to wait until April.

Oh, man, I would love to be there for this conversation.

And so I said we could do Saturday at my place.

Well, what did she think of that?

She said her place was nicer.

Well, it is nicer.

Hey, hey, what are you fellow guys doing?

Oh, hey.

Hey, man.

You need some water?

We can give you some water, a lift back to.

Here it is,

The rat jaw?

I think he said rat jaw.

The rat when my boys run.

Gotta cut up your legs real good on the ratka.

But you'll be soft ratog.

Are you talking about a sex thing, man?

What's happening?

Surprisingly, no.

Oh, wait.

I know this guy.

This is Laz.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've heard of you.

You're going to run your...

Your boys through the briars?

Is that what you said?

Rat jaws.

Rat jaw.

Well,

I am absolutely cool with leaving up thorns for you and your friends.

Yeah, me too.

Do that?

Why?

Because you made a race to celebrate the guy who shot Martin Luther King Jr.

It's a coincidence.

No, it's not.

No, it's that.

Really isn't, man.

Really fucking isn't.

His greatest desire seems to be to devise an unrunnable race to sustain the immortal horizon of an unbeatable challenge with contours fresh and unknowable.

Well, then have him run a regular marathon and divide by zero then.

Boom.

So much easier.

After the first year, when no one even came close to finishing, Laz wrote an article headlined, The Trail Wins the Barclay Marathons.

It's not hard hard to imagine how Laz, reclining on his lawn chair, might look at the course itself as his avatar.

His race is a competitor strong enough to triumph even when he can barely stand.

Where the fuck do you find these articles, Tom?

What do you subscribe to?

What the fuck do you subscribe to?

In my head, Tom has like a physical paper magazine collection that has

this is like nut torsion weekly or something.

That's a monthly digest, Cecil.

Cecil, you sound crazy.

Honestly, you sound like you have nut torsion.

He used to run this race in days of better health, but never managed to finish it.

Instead, he's managed to garner respect as a man of principle, a man so committed to the notion of pain that he's willing to rally men in its pursuit.

Now, that's just the chair of the DNC.

I think he's stealing that.

There are only two public trails that intersect the course: Lookout Tower at the end of South Mac Trail and Chimney Top.

Laz generally discourages meeting runners while they're running.

Even just the sight of other runners is a kind of aid, he explains.

We want them to feel the full weight of their aloneness.

Just a crowd along the side with Dixie cups of milk.

So I want to go out the day before this while Heath's setting up his lamp thing and just have a team of people mow the trail and put up handrails and shit.

Wooden stairs, bending machines.

Yeah.

Bring in OSHA.

Ski lift.

Yeah.

Get a bunch of septogenarians wandering around with walking sticks.

Hell yeah, baby.

That said, a woman named Kathy recommends chimney top for a hike.

I broke my arm there in January, she says, but it's pretty.

Tom, I am so sorry to make you retake a line of your essay, but I do believe we are going to need Kathy to be reciting in Boston.

Okay, all right.

Done and done.

It's just the

has to happen.

Just these couple of lines.

That said, a woman named Kathy recommends chimney top for a hike.

I broke my arm there.

It's January,

but it's pretty.

Sounds fun, I say.

Okay, I love how hard Leslie is trolling everyone here.

Like when you get stuck talking to a racist Uber driver and you just lean all the way in and just keep asking questions,

like talking to a karate guy, yeah, wrist control.

You're controlling the shit out of my wrist.

Absolutely.

Demonstrate the next thing.

There you go.

So, no, wait.

So, if Cecil's doing the lady voice, shouldn't Eli be doing the ass for the

I agree.

Okay, I'll jump in here too.

I'll jump in here too.

Was it that old dog over the stream?

Laz asks wistfully, as if remembering an old friend.

She shakes her head.

He asks, was there a dog with you when you did it?

You fucking battered us.

Was he laughing?

She actually said, yep, we're missing.

We changed it a little.

Artistic license.

It does not matter though.

Artistic license.

Fighting Leslie changed it, and that's the parson.

The heart of it never changed, people.

The heart never changed.

A man who appears to be her husband, presumably raw dog, pipes in.

Her arm was in an S shape, Laz.

I wasn't laughing.

Adding, what a dick thing to imply.

Also, did you just throw a cigarette butt in that lady's cook fire?

She just made fucking waffle.

You prick.

Laz considers this for a moment.

Then he asks her, Did it hurt?

I think I blocked out.

She laughs.

But then I heard I was cussing the whole way down the mountain.

Okay,

I want to take away all these people's

heads.

And they're telling these stories like they're happy about it.

Like they're all talking wistfully, like Tom describing his, quote, favorite childhood memories and everything else.

Like, dude, what

I watch Laz shift modes fluidly between callous maestro and denfather.

After night, fall, he assures Doc Joe,

there will be guns.

But then he bends down to pet his pirate dog.

You hungry little,

he asks, You might have got a lot of dungeon today,

but you still need to eat.

Sound like sling blade, kind of.

Little.

Some calls it a Barclay marathon.

Whenever I see him around camp, he says, You didn't do you this everybody out there.

I finally say, I fucking hope not.

And he smiles.

This girl gets it.

Wait, a woman wrote this?

The twists keep coming, everybody.

I did not.

I'm not sure.

But I can't help thinking his question dissolves precisely the kind of loneliness he seems so interested in producing and his runners so interested in courting.

The idea that when you are alone out there, someone back at camp is thinking of you alone out there is, of course, just another kind of connection.

No, it's not, which is part of the point of this, right?

Fuck you for putting a question mark that don't, I don't, I can't imagine the point of this, Leslie.

This is your fucking job.

Hey, do you guys know why I'm writing?

The line is together if you think about it, right?

I said to my keyboard alone

that the hardship facilitates a shared solitude, an utter isolation that has been experienced before by others and will be experienced again.

That these others are present in spirit, even if their wilds have tamed or aged or brutalized or otherwise removed their bodies have you considered having a relationship with someone and not simultaneously trying to kill yourself like

no

okay seriously we bring one loving father to the camp you've been stuck

done Tim Waltz gives out 35 hugs to end the brain era.

Three hugs shirt on Tim Walz.

Absolutely.

Then he runs as hard as he can at Laz.

Laz runs as hard as he can at him.

And just a normal guy appears in the center.

Just a guy.

Just a guy.

When Julian comes in from his first loop, it's almost dark.

He's been out for 12 hours.

I feel like I'm sharing this moment of triumph with Laz in some sense, though I know he's promiscuous in this sort of sharing.

There's a place in his heart for everyone who runs his gauntlet, and everyone's silly enough to spend days in the woods just to watch someone touch a yellow gate.

Julian is in good spirits.

He turns over his pages to be counted.

He's got 1061s, including one from the power of positive thinking, which came early in the course, and one from an account of teenage alcoholism called The Late Great Me, which came near the end.

I notice the duct tape has been ripped from his pants.

You took it off, I ask.

Nope, he says.

Course took it off.

And now the Briars are the envy of the race.

Oh, well.

In camp, he eats hummus sandwiches and Girl Scout cookies.

Barely manages to gulp down a butter pecan and sure.

Because

fucking yuck.

I know fucking hell.

Jesus.

He's debating another loop.

I'm sure I won't finish, he says.

I'll probably just go out for hours, then drop and have to find my way back to the dark.

Julian pauses.

I take one of his cookies.

He says, I'm just going to grab this real quick.

So you steal a cookie.

Give him that.

He says, I guess I'll do it.

He takes the last cookie before I can grab it.

He takes another.

You can have a cookie whatever the fuck you want.

What the hell are you doing?

Do you take his goddamn cookies?

Leslie, Jesus fucking Christ is here for like two fucking minutes and he's going back out for a 12-hour run.

You're trying to take his goddamn cookies.

Fuck you, Leslie.

He doesn't deserve cookies.

I'm a developmental economist.

I do microloan.

I drive a Dodd Stratus.

You don't talk to me that way.

I stole a license plate.

Some Liberian guy got hanged because he didn't have that.

It's shit.

He takes the last cookie before I could grab it.

He takes another bib number for his second round of pages.

And Les and I send him into the woods.

His green jacket glows silver in the darkness.

Brother Robot, off for another spin.

All right, believe it or not, that's only half of this goddamn article.

I learned it so much.

Getting through this article is like getting through the fucking race.

So if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, Tom, what would it be?

Nothing.

I haven't learned fucking anything else.

Jesus.

So are you ready for the class?

I learned the cookie monster fucking wrote this article.

That's what I learned.

Oh, God.

All right, Tom.

It's obvious this event is begging for its own reality show.

What should it be called?

A

toe-nailed it.

B, Master Chafe.

Or C,

the amazing racists.

Eli, that's pretty fucking solid.

That's so good.

I got toenailed it was good, but the amazing racists.

That's so good.

All right, Tom.

Which other book did the racers have to pull pages out of?

A, Climb and Punishment.

B,

Landscapes of Wrath.

C,

as I relay dying, or

D,

Game of Thorns.

Oh.

God, those are all good.

Those are all so good.

Climb and punishment.

I'm going climb and punishment.

Correct.

Knew it.

Nailed it.

All right.

Well, they did a great job of honoring James Earl Ray, but

which of the following is the best assassin-based

out there?

A, the Sir Han, Sir Hanley.

B, the ski Harvey Oswald.

C,

the Iditarod Non.

The Ididarodnon.

Innocent man.

We're completely emails now.

Speaking of which, D, the O.J.

Simpson trials.

Nicely done.

Oh, the Ididarodnon is so good, but I think it's the O.J.

Simpson trials.

That is something.

It sure is.

No, it's correct.

All right.

Yeah, whatever.

Nobody finished the essay one this week,

which I guess means that I get to stay host, and Tom has to finish this article next week.

Oh my god, I can't wait.

So, for Cecil, Eli, Tom, and Heath, I'm Noah.

Thank you for hanging out with us today.

We're going to be back next week, and by then, Tom will continue being an expert on the same thing again.

Between now and then, you can listen to at least one of us on all but 14 podcasts.

And if you'd like to help keep this going, you can pick up our episode donation at patreon.com/slash citationpod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com.

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