![]() Only 40 runners can compete every year and each runner has to pay a $1.60 application fee, fill out a form entitled "Why I Should be Allowed to Run in the Barkley" (returning runners must also supply Cantrell with a packet of Camel cigarettes) and all applicants are given a ‘letter of condolence’ if they are successful. This is a race like absolutely no other - even getting into the marathon is a challenge. It has seen more than 1,000 runners compete in it, yet only 15 individuals have ever finished and in this year’s instalment, which finished on Thursday, not a single runner was able to complete the entire route. Participants have just 60 hours to complete the full five-loop course (12 hours per-loop) of this 100-mile ultra (though most finishers end up running about 130+), across some of the nastiest terrain on Earth. ![]() Thus, in 1986, the inaugural Barkley Marathon was born and 35 years later, it is still considered one of, if not the toughest ultra-marathon in the world. A paltry effort, believed Gary Cantrell, a Tennessee native who boldly claimed, “I could do at least 100 miles.” Ray was no Andy Dufresne though and, after just 55 hours and a massive police manhunt, he was found a mere eight miles across the prison’s treacherous backwoods. ![]() In 1977, James Earl Ray, the gunman behind the assasination of Martin Luther King Jr., embarked on an ill-fated escape from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in the town of Petros in Morgan County, Tennessee.
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