I had answered all of the questions I'd set out to source answers to when I lined up for this beast, and I had nothing left to prove to myself on the course. I eventually dropped off the course and found a ride back to the campground to face my fate against the bugle. I dropped down RJ, again attempting to generate enough adrenaline to stay awake, yet at the bottom of the descent I sat down and knew sleep was my only course of action. I decided to at least keep moving for a few more hours and I grabbed the fourth book at the prison and then climbed Rat Jaw for the fifth and final time.Īt the top of Rat Jaw were a collection of misfits, also known as previous finishers and world class badasses, and they all but forbid me from ceasing forward progress. I would not become the 15th ever finisher of The Barkley Marathons, and I would time out on the fifth and final loop. When I finally located book three I knew that my Barkley dreams were shattered. Over the following 2.5hrs I wandered in circles in the forest as I watched the merciless 60 hour time limit fade away before me. Small mistakes became big mistakes and turning right instead of left became my undoing. The following decisions that somehow made sense at the time will haunt my dreams until I one day return. From the second book to the third I shot a bearing, triple checked it, followed it as closely as possible and came up a just a few degrees from where I intended to be, yet in my sleep deprived state I processed that I was too far north instead of too far south of my target. I knew my final lap would have to be mistake free and I was calculated and precise in grabbing the second book of the counter-clockwise loop, one of the harder books to locate (the first book on the CCW loop is a gimme). On my 5th and final loop I was up against some of the deepest sleep deprivation of my life, having not slept the night before the race and being unable to catch more than a ten minute nap during the race, I was on about 90hrs since my last snooze. The Barkley is tougher than I ever could have imagined and I'm incredibly proud to have made it almost four and a half loops into what is a notoriously difficult race to close out.
0 kommentar(er)
