Wrong turn costs ultramarathoner a place in history
Only 15 have ever completed 160-km course
The crowd at the yellow gate saw Gary Robbins running toward them. Some of them cheered instinctively, though it was not necessarily something to cheer about. Robbins, of North Vancouver, was approaching the finish line from the wrong direction.
After running nearly 160 kilometres for almost three days straight through the woods in Tennessee, Robbins was expected to become one of the few people, and the only Canadian, to ever finish the storied Barkley Marathons on Monday.
“I was momentarily confused,” says Gary Cantrell, the fabled founder of the race, who is better known in ultramarathon circles as Lazarus Lake.
At first, Cantrell thought Robbins was coming at the yellow gate from the wrong direction because he had dropped out of the race. But then, why would he be running so hard?
“It dawned on me that he had to have taken a wrong turn,” Cantrell said.
Robbins reached the yellow gate and collapsed. He was speaking in highpitched bursts between breaths, though most of it was incomprehensible.
“I took the wrong side of the mountain in the fog,” Robbins can be heard saying in video posted by Canadian Running Magazine. He lay on the road with his knees tucked to his belly, hands on his face. “I had to swim the river,” he said.
Robbins’ wife crouched down and put her hand on his shoulder. She looked up at Cantrell, who was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a canvas riding jacket. The spectators were silent.
Robbins showed Cantrell a rain-soaked map and pointed out where he veered off course.
“You turned right instead of left?” Cantrell said.
“Yeah,” Robbins said. “And then I realized my error and I knew I didn’t have enough time to come back over the mountain.”
After the discussion, it was clear that Robbins’ mistake meant he had not finished the race — running two miles short of the 160-kilometre total. Even if he hadn’t veered off course, he had still reached the gate six seconds over the 60-hour limit.
A bugler played Taps to mark Robbins’ failure — one of the many traditions of this strange, three-decade-old race.
“The bugler cried when he had to play,” Cantrell said. “A lot of people had something in their eye.
“But I guess without those moments of tragedy you can’t have the great exaltation when it all works out.”
Since it started in 1986, the Barkley has earned a reputation as one of the most gruelling trail runs in the world. It is five loops of a 20-mile (32-kilometre) course in Frozen Head State Park near Wartburg, Tenn.
There is often no discernible trail. This year, the course had more than 20,000 metres of uphill climb, Cantrell said. The checkpoints are just books tucked in the woods. Each runner has to rip a page from each of the 13 books, to prove they ran the entire course.
The Barkley allows 40 participants a year, chosen through a secretive application process. It starts at odd times, marked not by a starter gun but by Cantrell lighting a cigarette. (This year, it started on Saturday at 1:42 a.m., Canadian Running reported.) Most don’t make it past the first three loops, which are known as the “fun run.”
Only 15 people have completed the whole thing, including John Kelly, who finished roughly 30 minutes before Robbins.
It was Robbins’ second attempt — after he dropped out in the final loop last year, reporting that he was delusional and seeing faces on the leaves of trees.