MORGAN COUNTY, Tenn. — "If you hold the conch up to your ear, you can hear the runners scream," said one of the organizers of a brutal race through the hills of Morgan County.
The 2024 Barkley Marathons began at around 5:17 a.m. on Wednesday, known as one of the world's most punishing annual endurance competitions. A conch sounded to signify runners had an hour to line up for the race before organizers lit a cigarette to show that the race was on.
Fewer than two dozen people have ever successfully completed the marathon. It tasks runners with finding several books scattered along a course that act as loop checkpoints for each of the five 20-mile laps. In order to complete a lap, they have to rip out pages in each book that match their bib number.
A crude map serves as a runner's only reference for where those checkpoints are, and they often involve off-trail trekking. To add some extra fun to the race, organizers reverse the direction of some laps to keep runners on their toes. If runners miss a page on a lap, then it doesn't count.
The Barkley Marathon started in the 1980s after James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary and tried to evade authorities in the hills of Frozen Head.
"We were laughing at him [Ray] only making 8.5 miles in 54 hours. I said in that length of time I could have gone 100 miles because I was young and cocky. That stuck in my brain and we eventually set that out as a challenge to see if it could be done," Gary Cantrell said in a 2014 interview, the founder of the race.
The book hunt alone dooms many runners on the first lap. The rest typically fall out when they can no longer endure the brutal terrain or exhaustion. Even elite endurance runners who've completed races in some of the most austere locations will fall short.
There is little consolation for those who complete the Barkley "fun run," which is achieved by those who make it to the 60-mile mark. Runners have described the "fun run" as a kind of mind game that tempts them to stop.
In 2023, only three people out of around 40 completed the race.
Runners who successfully endure days of physical pain, mental exhaustion and sleep deprivation to finish five laps in 60 hours will receive only one prize: the satisfaction of completing the Barkley Marathons. Last year one of those runners included John Kelly, a Morgan County native who had previously finished the race in 2017.