From: MatMahoney@aol.com
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 20:32:46 -0400 (EDT)
To: ius-l@american.edu, ultra@caligari.Dartmouth.EDU
Subject: Barkley results
Barkley 100 Mile Run and 60 Mile Fun Run
Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee
Apr. 5-7, 1997
If anyone could have finished the Barkley 100 miler this year, it would have been David Horton of Virginia or Milan Milanovich of Switzerland. David holds the course record for the Appalachian Trail, 2144 miles in 52 days. Milan holds the Badwater to Mt. Whitney round trip record, 300 miles in 130 F heat in four and a half days. Both men had run Trans-Am, 45 miles per day for 64 days without a break. If anyone could do it, these men could. But neither did. In fact, neither finished the 60 mile fun run. Neither even finished the second 20 mile loop. Milan, who said "to finish, you must only not quit", quit after the second climb up Rat Jaw, 33 miles in 25 hours. David, leading the field with an 8:41 first loop, dropped 8 miles later.
Craig Wilson from Maine and Mike Dobies from Michigan ran together most of the way and finished the fun run in 38:38. This would have been Craig's 6'th fun run finish had he not lost one of his 9 pages on his first loop. For Mike, it was his first Barkley, but he had done his homework, training extensively on the course.
Blake Wood from New Mexico was the only other finisher, 39:57:35, just under the 40 hour cutoff. I had earlier calculated that 40 hours at Barkley was equivalent to between 38:10 and 38:20 at Hardrock. Blake ran the Hardrock 100 in 38:20 in 1994.
Fred Pilon (MA), Eliza Maclean (NC), and Wilson Brasington (SC) finished two loops in 23:02, 25:02, and 25:02, none expressing any desire to go back "out there". Ken Solakian (NJ) missed the 26:40 2-loop cutoff, not that it mattered. Frozen Ed Furtaw (NV) made it to the top of Hell, 50K in 21 hours. Bill Johnson (IL), Chris Ralph (WA), Debra Moore (OH), DeWayne Satterfield (AL), John DeWalt (PA), Kerry Trammell (TN), Andrew Thompson (VA), and Wayne Brasington (SC), all aborted their second loop, most at Coffin Springs at 28 miles, as the warm sunny day turned into a cold, rainy, foggy night. RD Gary Cantrell played taps on his bugle as each runner dragged his sorry butt back to camp.
Reid "Muffy" Lanham (VA) made it 1 mile into the second loop and turned around. I made it half a mile and sat down for 20 minutes until I thought up a good reason to quit. It must have been a really good reason, because I could hear the bugle annouce that I advanced two places even as I walked back to camp. I just wish I could remember what the reason was. Maybe it was the "disordered thinking virus" that I picked up from drinking untreated stream water.
Jim Dill (IN), Nick Williams (AR), Rich Schuler (NJ), and Teeter Benedetti (NJ) all saved themselves some suffering by quitting after one loop. Lou Peyton (AR) and Laurie Schuler (NJ) missed the 13:20 cutoff. Greg Shoener did not finish the loop. Doug Barrows (FL), who teaches topography, became hopelessly lost looking for Leonard's Butt Slide (hint, look down). Norm Carlson (IN), forgot his map, then deciding he didn't like trails so much after all, followed a dirt road out of the park and ended up doing about 30 miles on paved roads to get back.
Stu Gleman (FL), after diligently collecting all 9 pages in the trackless forest over wretched terrain, and with only 3 miles of nice, well-groomed, downhill trail remaining for the loop, turned right instead of left. Then realizing he was lost, and thinking the cutoff was 12 hours, raced back to camp over a shortcut that turned out to be 5 miles longer, and was DQ'ed after 12:05.
Finally, it is a tradition at Barkley to offer a sacrificial virgin at the annual feast. Typically this is someone who, for whatever reason, chooses Barkley for his first attempt at a 100 miler. Perhaps it was the 60 hour cutoff and some simple arithmetic. Anyway, Dallas Jones (CA) figured his Marine Corps training, speed (1:11 half marathon), and relentless determination would somehow get him through, regardless of any horror stories he may have heard. I am fairly certain that sometime during the next 13 hours, groping in the dark over impossibly steep hills somewhere not even on the map, with 92 miles still to go, he realized that maybe, just maybe, there was something to these stories after all.
-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@aol.com, http://www.he.net/~mmahoney/ub/
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