7 ms·

It's interesting to note that in every year that someone finishes, they add additional parts to the course making it more difficult for the competitors in the f

• gesman 12y ago
  I think this "addition" of complexities needs to be treated as totally new course each time such addition is made. Otherwise previous finishers (total respect to them of course) would claim to do something that new participants cannot using the identical name of event/race. Which in fact is totally different race by now. Marathon is not adding extra 10km every year to compensate for too many finishers.
  • eitally 12y ago
    I would agree with you if the competitors were in any way competing on time over the course of multiple years, but in reality they aren't. It's a one time race, repeated annually, and each course & victory stands alone. (Not like other extreme ultras like the Leadville 100, etc, where there absolutely is competition each year to lower the record.)
    • beatboxrevival 12y ago
      I don't think many ultra runners would consider Leadville extreme. It's mostly fire roads. Ever since the buy-out from Lifetime Fitness, the top runners seem to skip the event.
  • justinator 12y ago
    One of the joys of putting on your own race is making up your own rules. This race is decidedly unlike a marathon by design.
  • goalieca 12y ago
    The challenge gets harder! I like it :) This race seems to be all about finding your own limits. Too often challenges have little success in failure.
  • hsitz 12y ago
    It's not the case that the race gets made longer each year, or ever. It is, however, rerouted to some extent each year. This is because part of the race is testing orienteering and route-finding skills. If it used same course every year people who returned to run again would have unfair advantage over the new people. Because the race director has a sense of humor, he may well choose to add elevation gain if too many people are doing well. His quip when people stop after one of the loops, unable to go on, "My only regret is that you could not suffer more."
  • dirtyaura 12y ago
    Barkley is not a sports competition in traditional sense. It is more like an ultra-ultra running event meets performance art and the very point of the event is to make it harder. Participants understand this and they are not there to compare their performance (sic) to the previous competitors. Also, competitors are screened by totally different criteria than their previous ultra running successes: they have to write a letter to the organizer explaining why they should participate. Reasons can be something personal, not that they won Spartathlon in Greece in 2010. There is a short documentary about the event available https://vimeo.com/97270099 https://vimeo.com/97270099, and a full-length documentary making rounds at film festivals at the moment https://barkleymovie.wordpress.com/ https://barkleymovie.wordpress.com/
  • yitchelle 12y ago
    > Marathon is not adding extra 10km every year to compensate for too many finishers. However, the orgranisers can alter its route. So technically, they could change the route accordingly.
    • gesman 12y ago
      They're not adding the extra obstacles to jump over either. It's no brainer to come up with unfinishable course to "test the limits". Just add extra hill here and there, keep same time limit and call it a day with "mountains won!" statement. Granted, this approach has it's own passionate followers and so it runs!
      • wang_li 12y ago
        As someone who lives in the west, I'm just upset that they call the hills of Tennessee mountains.
        • deleted 12y ago
          [deleted]
        • npsimons 12y ago
          Same sentiment; I'm really wondering how they managed to find 60kft of gain in (at best) hilly Tennessee. Then again, if you find a steep enough hill and run up and down it enough times (which it sounds like they do), I guess that would do it. While I've no doubt this is a very difficult challenge, it seems contrived, and the comparisons to things like Everest are flippant. For one thing, you don't have to contend with the extreme weather of Everest, or the lack of oxygen, which you won't even get anywhere near because you never actually get anywhere near 8kft in altitude. Cross country hiking through brush? Yeah, I can do that; I avoid it when possible because that's not my idea of a good time and there are more interesting challenges.
  • thoth 12y ago
    >I think this "addition" of complexities needs to be treated as totally new course each time such addition is made. I'm a trail runner and this isn't done, probably because conditions are always different year to year, so a modified route is just another misc change along with weather conditions which arguably would introduce more variance. Courses vary slightly all the time, due to trail conditions, environment and permit/access issues, plus minor rerouting around trail sections that are damaged or under repair, etc. Western States, probably the most famous trail ultra, has had several minor route changes (due to fires, floods, snow, etc) in its history. They do not keep separate records for every variation of the route. Even Leadville rerouted the turnaround last year, which caused some confusion (including Krar technically going off course before regaining the route). In the case of Barkley, the event is already pathologically designed so making it slightly tougher after each finisher is one of the quirks of the event. Nobody runs Barkley for time, just finishing is a huge deal (hence 14 or whatever finishers in 30 years). Heck, just completing the "fun run" (3 laps within the time limit) yields bragging rights, among trail runners at least. ;) EDIT: grammar
• userbinator 12y ago
  Considering that 60k feet is well above the altitude at which most commercial planes fly, does anyone find the concept of "total climb" a little misleading? If they're basing it only on all the "ascents", then wouldn't going up and down one foot for 60,000 times also count as "60,000 feet of total climb"? Also, it's too bad humans don't have regenerative braking...
  • civilian 12y ago
    If you're somewhat familiar with marathons or have a flexible mind, it's not misleading. Check out this blog that analyses different height profiles of marathons: http://50-is-the-new-30.blogspot.com/2013/05/elevation-comparisons-for-various-road.html http://50-is-the-new-30.blogspot.com/2013/05/elevation-compa...
  • rbritton 12y ago
    It's a pretty standard way of counting for outdoorsy stuff in my experience. Most hiking routes will quote the total elevation gain, skiers and snowboarders track downhill vertical, and so on.
    • saryant 12y ago
      It would pretty misleading to quote net elevation for hikes. A loop up a mountain and back would have a net gain of 0' even if you hiked 2000' to the peak.
      • tincholio 12y ago
        They only count the upward portions, not misleading at all
        • namdnay 12y ago
          hence the use of "would" in the statement you are replying to
  • vvpan 12y ago
• headShrinker 12y ago
  > every year that someone finishes, they add additional parts to the course making it more difficult for the competitors in the following year. Correct me if I misunderstand,they were building a race track that no one could beat by process of iteration?
  • JshWright 12y ago
    They're aiming for a course that is consistently _just_ at the limits of what the racers can accomplish. If they wanted a track that no one could beat, they would just add 50 extra miles...
• bitL 12y ago
  Resembles one of my universities where they were lowering valuation of problems after exams depending on success rate (e.g. a problem worth 4 points was reduced to 0.8 if too many people had it correctly, and a problem worth of 0.6 points rose to 5 points if almost nobody had it).
  • Kluny 12y ago
    Reminds me of a college exam I had on unix administration - 6 questions, 8 hours time limit, open book, open internet, open everything, you could even call your dad to ask for help or collaborate with classmates - yet only 2 people out of 30 passed. The highest score was 53%. Yet the teacher was able to demonstrate correct solutions for all the problems.