Advice for `running' the Barkley Races
Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee

By Blake P. Wood, bwood@lanl.gov

More info on Barkley from Dave Horton.

Here are some hard lessons I learned during my first attempt (1997) at the Barkley Races. Take them to heart, and they might help.


Barkley is unlike any other run, so there are lots of things you might not think of ahead of time. I benefited greatly from advice from Ed Furtaw and Mark Williams. Here are a few things that come to mind. I'll assume that you know what to do for a regular old 50 or 100 miler. I think you should train like you would for any mountainous ultra. I'm posting this to the list since I think it might be of general interest.

1) You'll be out for a really long time without support, like 12-15 hours straight. Take enough to eat. I took two tuna sandwiches, some beef jerky, and some snicker's bars on each of my three loops. That was in addition to the food I wolfed down at camp between loops. In general, plan on carrying anything you would ordinarily rely on getting in an aid station, for instance, tape or vaseline for your feet.

2) The weather can change drastically while you're out for that long, so be prepared. A mistake here is what sunk Dave Horton and some others. Take sunscreen even if it's cloudy. I didn't do this, and got burned when the sun came out.

3) The sawbriers and blackberry vines will cut your legs to shreads if you don't protect them. I made chaps out of an old pair of levis: cut the legs off, slit them all the way up the back, and sew velcro across the back to hold them on. Sew cord to the top to tie to your running belt to hold them up. This worked really well, with two qualifications: first, they got really heavy in the rain. Second, there was a gap at the back, and the back of my legs got cut up from one foot dragging sawbriers across the back of the other. On my third loop, I wore a pair of ripstop nylon windpants I made, with a knee high pair of gaitors over them. This also worked well. My arms got pretty cut up also. Next time I might wear a light long sleeve shirt if it's not too hot.

4) If you carry a flashlight in your hand, like I do, tie it to your wrist so you won't lose it when you fall.

5) Carry a compass and know how to use it for dead reckoning. You WILL use it! Don't make the mistake I did, and put it away during the day. Taking an occasional compass bearing will help avoid navigational mistakes.

6) Be aware that there is poison ivy everywhere, and you'll do lots of walking through it. I ended up getting it all over my legs, even though they were covered. Luckily, I don't get it bad. It was just starting to leaf out this year (April 5), and I think Ed Furtaw said that it seemed that things were leafed out more than usual. It might not normally be a problem.

7) Take a pair of leather gloves to use going up Rat's Jaw, where you'll be grabbing onto the thorny things to pull yourself up. I didn't need them anywhere else.

8) Be aware that if it rains, parts of the trail will be very slippery. Try to wear shoes that have some appropriate tread. I ended up changing shoes each loop. Luckily, I wore the ones with the smoothest tread first, before it got wet.

9) Carry a filter or iodine tabs to purify water along the way. I'm not as daring as Matt Mahoney, so I treated it all. Fill up with water whenever you can - it can take a surprisingly long time to get from one stream to the next

10) Have an extra map and course description available in camp, and carry yours in a zip lock bag. Mine turned to mush during the loop it rained. Luckily, I had a backup. I also wish I'd carried a pencil or indelible pen to write the times I got to the books on my map.

11) Have some special place to put the pages you rip out of the books, some place that you otherwise don't access. This will avoid accidently losing a page when you get out whatever else is in that pocket. This may be why Craig Wilson came up one page short on the first loop.

12) If you don't wear glasses, have some eye protection. I was constantly getting vines and thorny things pulled across my glasses, and it would have been a real hazard to my eyes if I didn't wear them.

13) Don't wear or carry anything you'd be upset to have ripped up.

14) Run (?) with someone who knows where the books are, at least for the first loop, even if it slows you down. You'll save time in the long run, since you can really burn up the hours if you get lost. On my first loop, I eventually gave up trying to go fast, and settled in with a crowd that that I'd normally be way ahead of. They were catching up to me while I looked for the books anyway, and it was more fun to have the company.

Blake P. Wood
Physics Div., Plasma Physics Group P-24, MS-E526
Los Alamos Nat'l Lab, Los Alamos NM 87545
(505) 665-6524 Fax: (505) 665-3552 bwood@lanl.gov


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