An audio slideshow about competing in the Barkley Marathon. Over the 22 years of the 100-mile race, only 7 have finished. It’s fondly called “the race that eats its young.” [via trails and tribulations]
Tag: running
Science confirms the runner’s high, which used to be just folk wisdom. It’s connected not only with better mood, but also with tolerance for pain.
My awesome run the other night
I have a small area map that I keep handy for plotting new running routes. My ongoing arbitrary goal is to run every road on the map, interstate excepted. So I was out in some new neighborhoods the other night (I run almost exclusively after dark), and some areas were a little sketchy. Graffiti, trash, railroad tracks, a few abandoned buildings, etc. All of this spookiness abetted by the late hour and the old guy I passed early on, who says to me, “Watch out, man. Watch out. Ha!”
A long and awesome article about the Self-Transcendence 3100, a 3100-mile race run on a half-mile loop. In Queens, of all places.
Here was a kind of living koan, a race of invisible miles across a phantom plain wider than the continental United States. For fifty days, breathing miasmal exhaust from the Grand Central Parkway, the runner traversed a wilderness of knapsack-toting teenagers, beat cops, and ladies piloting strollers. Temperatures spiked. Power grids crashed. Cars also crashed—into the chain-link fence around Joe Austin park or into other cars. There was occasional street crime. One summer a student was knifed in the head. The runner endured. He crossed the finish line changed.
Mark Larson 