Lazarus Lake, the Man Behind the Barkley Marathons

Every year on the closest Saturday to April Fools’ Day, about 40 hand-picked runners line up behind the yellow metal gate that marks the entrance to northern Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park. (By that math, Brett Maune’s 2012 course record of 52 hours 3 minutes and 8 seconds would actually lead to a woman finishing well under the 60-hour cutoff, but Cantrell says that “only Maune has a time in that range. In a letter to a friend written shortly after his first 26.2 miles, at Tennessee’s Andrew Jackson Marathon in 1975 or ’76 (he can’t remember), Cantrell recalls waking four hours before the 8 A.M. race start to “get ready and [eat] five ham sandwiches for stability.”

Source: www.outsideonline.com