After 60 hours of agony, she passes the grueling race
At the Barkley Marathon, starters must bring a cigarette to the race director – if he lights one, it's time to go. One thing has always remained true: “No woman can do that.”
Total exhaustion after running for 60 hours in the woods of Tennessee and losing all sense of reality: Jasmine Parris, a 40-year-old vet from Scotland, became the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathon.
Photo: Jacob Zocherman
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Jasmine Parris can no longer run properly. Jogging is still possible, sometimes it looks like stomping, with the upper body slightly bent forward. So she manages this final stretch of tar until she reaches the yellow barrier. A strand of saliva dangles from her lower lip as she leans over this barrier. Then she collapses. She finds support against a stone wall, her eyes closed, her mouth open so she gasps for air. Her facial expressions paint a picture of total exhaustion.
59 hours, 58 minutes and 21 seconds before this moment, Paris started running. Along with 40 other runners. Ahead: 160 kilometers and about 16,000 meters through the forests of Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, USA. They have 60 hours to complete the world's toughest race. Paris finished 99 seconds ahead of the time limit.
About 1,000 people have attempted it in the race's 38-year history. 20 was made. 40-year-old Jasmine Paris is the first lady.
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“Women aren't tough enough for this race”
Ten years before Paris ended, Gary Cantrell, known as Lazarus Lake and the founder of the race, said in an interview with Outside magazine: “We say publicly that this race is too difficult for women. No woman can do it.” And in a video you can hear him say: “Women aren't tough enough.I'll keep saying that until a woman proves me wrong.
Gary Cantrell stands at the yellow barrier as Paris reaches the finish line. Thus proving the opposite of his thesis.
Of course, Paris didn't always believe she would make it. In conversation with ultrarunner Dylan Bowman, he talks about the final moments of the race. how the task felt too great; How the kid on the bicycle yelled at her: “You can do it!”; How she thought of Gary Robbins, who finished the race in 2017 but was six seconds too slow. Six seconds after 60 hours of torture.
It starts with a cigarette
Cantrell first ran the Barkley Marathon in 1986. He got the idea because of the story of James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King. Ray Bruschi was booked into the Mountain State Penitentiary, broke out, and found his way to freedom through the woods. After 58 hours he was caught 14 kilometers from the prison. Cantrell thought: I would have gone further.
So the Barkley Marathon starts today in the area surrounding this prison. Cantrell keeps to himself how he selects runners. Note that there is a $1.60 registration fee. Applicants ask “Why should I be allowed to participate in this race?” Write an essay on the question. Anyone who is accepted will have to bring a car number from their home area for an additional fee. If you've ever been there, you should bring a pack of Cantrell cigarettes: the camel filter.
As Cantrell lights his cigarette, the race begins. An hour ago the trumpet blows. Only he knows when the match will start. His horn often wakes participants from their sleep.
During the race, runners must find books along the route and tear out the page corresponding to their race number. This is how they prove that they have passed all the posts.
Thorns in the undergrowth scratch participants' feet; Many slopes are too steep to climb without the help of trees; Ice and heat, night and day and sleeplessness drain energy; Sections of the route have been translated as “Checkmate Hill”, “Little Hell” or “Testicle Spectacle”.
People in raincoats herald doom
Five years before the Barkley race, Paris became the first woman to win the 431-kilometer ultramarathon at the Spine Race in England. She had to take frequent breaks to express breast milk to her newborn. Just before the destination she saw people who were not there. They were trees. She once said of that moment that she saw what she wanted to see.
Paris also had hallucinations about Barkley. She tells the English “Guardian” magazine: “I saw people in raincoats. They climbed the same hills as me, always just ahead of me. It was eerie and felt like they were foreshadowing disaster.”
Now Paris returns to reality. to Scotland for her husband and two children. And to her work. At the University of Edinburgh, veterinarian Dr. Jasmine Parris in the Small Animals category.
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