Barkley Fall Classic, 2019: Prologue

It’s July 4, 2018. A nice warm morning in Iowa. The corn is growing. The sun is shining. The cows are mooing. I’m in the backseat of Mel’s car and we are headed northeast to Ackley. Mel, Susanne and I are going to meet up with a guy we’ve only read of and seen from magazines and the internet. His name is Gary Cantrell although most people call him Laz. He’s walking across the United States and is sharing his miles with anyone who wants to join him. We want to join him. We find him a few miles out on the east side of town. He’s sitting in a lawn chair his crew person has placed for him safely off the highway where a gravel road intersects yet not too far off the road for steps are counted and precious. He’s been walking all night, for as you may or may not know, Iowa can be unpleasant during the day in July and he switched his walking schedule to nights to save himself from the relentless roasting of both the sun and humidity which is aplenty thanks to our burgeoning corn crops. 

No Iowans were confused in seeing this sight. None whatsoever. Or upset. Everyone was cool.

"Larry, please bring me an ice cream cone this big"

The three of us take turns walking with him, swapping out one of us for the two and we each share about our lives. I tell him this is my backyard, so to speak as my grandparents’ farm is just a short distance away. I explain my high school summer job of roguing corn and watch him stop to take a picture of a fiberglass ice cream stand for his daughter. I think he likes Iowa but is not too keen on Highway 20 suddenly becoming a four lane road, unsafe for foot travel nor the lost time he has had to fight to make up because the roads in Iowa are messed up because of all our corn! He finishes his walk for the day, er, night a couple of miles west of Ackley and we all meet up to congratulate him. He’s younger than my parents by less than handful of years but has made it from the East coast to the middle of the United States on cigarettes, Dr. Pepper, chocolate milkshakes and now Casey’s breakfast pizza. As we stand around finishing our conversation, he asks me if I’ve ever climbed a prison wall and I confessed I hadn’t gotten to it yet.

One of these is not like the others

The moment I registered on Ultrasignup for the Barkley Fall Classic 50k, I felt excited and immediately sick.

If anyone knows about this race they usually only know about the Barkley Marathons from the Netflix video The Race That Eats Its Young. Whether they do or do not know about that race, I end up trying to explain that I’m signed up for a race in the same park and with the same race director as the guy from the movie but it’s not that race. On top of that, I’m not in the race yet because my name didn’t get drawn in the initial lottery but am on the waitlist and might get my name drawn as runners “pre-quit”. (Laz’s term, not mine.) It’s a cumbersome tale and eventually as the months wear on, I shorten it to say I’m training for a race in Tennessee in September. Which is close enough because once I share that its in the mountains with a lot of climbing and the actual distance is unknown but might be around thirty-six to thirty-seven miles, their eyes have long since bugged out and I’m left justifying why I think this is a fun idea and then even I begin to think I’m crazy. 

In the meantime, I’m calling upon all my friends and acquaintances to share with me their Barkley Fall Classic experiences and advice as I begin my training. I’m on the waitlist but am training like I will get in. My friend, Melinda, threw her hat in the ring as well as was drawn in the initial lottery. Together we scour the internet for information and compare our training, her with her coach and mine with Coach Matt. It’s difficult to tackle something unknown. The race, while not the race, still has a bit of mystery to it. No GPS devices or tracking is allowed on the course. The race route is revealed to the runners the night before the race at packet pick-up and it is sort of understood that this race belongs to only those who toe the line that year so no exact routes are shared afterwards. On top of that, there are some off trail sections that only if you’ve been in the race before know what they are as going off trail in the park is prohibited. 

Jack does not care if you're hot or cold, tired or sore

Ledges crew
(missing David)
(because he came later)
(not because he was lost)

The most consistent advice I received from my Midwest friends was to do a lot of hill repeats.  And a lot of hill repeats do I do. On the gravel roads near me, I took to repeating all the hills and steep driveways as many times as the month’s number- six repeats for June, seven for July, etc., using rocks or sticks to keep tally at the bottom of the hill. At Ledges, I spend hours upon hours running and hiking up and down. If I saw a family or group of people hiking in the park, I was going to see them three more times that day. Melinda, Shannon, William and I made up sick games to pass the miles and climbing. Then we went to Hitchcock and did the same thing. We would repeat Angel’s Dead Wing and Legacy trail along with Care Bear loop until we were silly worn down. (These trail names have been altered to protect their innocence. They’ve done nothing wrong. I, on the other hand, had stopped caring what the actual names were and made up whatever sounded close enough.) Earlier in the year, a friend let me into Jack Trice Stadium to run the stairs several times. And in June, Melinda and I ran a 50k in Decorah to test ourselves a bit. I spent at least one day a week on core and strength work. Then to change it up a bit, Coach Matt had me do a couple of 20 mile bike rides. I’ve never ridden my bike that far before. It was all new and I was plenty nervous to go that far but my reward was that I got to ride all the way to the High Trestle Bridge for the first time! 

Pre-Driftless Dirt 50k smiles

Run when you can and when there's a photographer

On repeat number- who's counting anymore

They ran ahead because my singing was getting out of control

One Saturday, I was in the middle of a monster hill repeat day at Ledges when I look up to see Susanne and Aaron coming down Crow’s Nest. They join me for a repeat and ask me if I’ve made it off the waitlist and I say no but I will show up ready anyway. Later that day, I pull into my driveway to a text from Susanne saying I got in! I don’t believe her! We were just talking about it! I confirm it by looking for the official email asking me to accept or decline the invitation and then gush about it on Facebook. I am thrilled! It’s the beginning of August. I’ve waited almost a year to get into this race.

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Besides training, I armed myself with maps, books, and maps within books. I learned trail names and tried to memorize locations within Frozen Head State Park. I stared at contour lines until I could almost imagine the mountains rising from the map in 3-D form. I always like to have a paper map when learning a new trail and I wasn’t going to get a preview run so this was my best shot at knowing my where I would be when I got to the race. 

Ledges: one soul and quad crushing Saturday after another

Scanning the through continual onslaught of b.s. and speculations on the Facebook page, I started a long list of gear needed and slowly collected the items. I wondered if my pack would be big enough to hold everything so on our last long run, I tell Melinda we should do a test run with everything we think we’ll need. It was a smart decision because I learned the gloves I had were too big for my pack and later that week I spend 20 minutes in Theisen’s looking for a pair that would fit. I debated about buying a new pair of shorts that might be more briar resistant and a bigger hydration pack but I would be risking a lot on untested gear so I skipped both purchases. 

Showing my future pacer Carlton Peak

Mouth of Tettegouche River

Working with my sometimes uneven schedule and a family vacation to the North Shore, Coach Matt was able to keep my training at an effective level. But even with rest days built in, it still became a blur of long weekend days, climbing and descending, and shorter focused week days. I texted him frequently with concerns and mental breakdowns and he carefully patched me up and sent me back out. I trained like I’ve never trained before and it’s working even as it taxes me. I get to the point where I can’t imagine actually racing but I’m so tired of recovering. 

Photo credits: Susanne Kennedy, Larry Kelley, Nick Chill, Shannon Haus, me