It’s been very quiet for most of the day. The runners have been “out there” battling the course. And we have no tracking or communications with them. To be successful at the Barkley it definitely helps to be the kind of mountain runner who relishes being out in the wilderness, completely out of contact, and totally reliant on your own skills and ability. The race is currently narrowing down to some of the best exponents of these characteristics.
But after a quiet day, the last hour or two has seen a rush of tweets from Keith, as the lead runners come in from loop 3. The campgrounds will have been a hive of excitement and activity, but in another few hours it will all become more chilled and relaxed again, with all the activity taking place out there on the course, beyond our view.
I was quite surprised to see Ihor Verys arrive in first, on his own. The surprise is because he is a Barkley virgin. Clearly his nav is excellent, and his confidence is rock solid to deliberately lead the field on his own. It’s great to see a Ukrainian runner doing so well.
To be allowed onto loop 4 runners must depart before 36 hours (race time). There is another 3 hours allowed for runners to arrive in with 3 laps to complete a fun run, but after 36 hours they will not be allowed back out on the course.
Ihor finished at 31:31, so he had a big enough margin to have a relatively relaxed “interloopal” stop, do his admin, catch whatever sleep he might decide to take, and head back out. But if a runner is feeling really good then they can get by on the minimum of admin, and head back out soon enough. Anything under 20 minutes is pretty fast. You can get a good indication of the physical and mental state of the runners from their turnaround time when they are not under cut-off pressure. Notably, Ihor’s 3-lap time was the fastest in 8 years. And that’s on a harder course than last year (which had 3 finishers). That’s very impressive indeed.
5 minutes later John Kelly and Damian Hall arrived and completed loop 3. It looks like they have been running together. They’re close enough to ihor in race time as makes no difference from the point of view of finishing. It sounds from the descriptions that all 3 are in remarkably good shape.
The next action was Ihor leaving at 31:46. So that was a fast turnaround. Again, he must be full of confidence to leave the other 2 behind in camp and launch out into the course completely solo at the head of the race. He was fast, but so were his pursuers! JK left at 36:48, and Damian left at 36:50. That’s all very fast and very close. I’d guess that Damian will try to join with John again (Personally I definitely think it’s more fun that way). Last year John was more inclined to run off solo, given the chance. We’ll see what happens. But they’re all close enough that there is plenty of scope for overtaking or teaming up, depending on how they’re feeling on loop 4.
Another potential driver of fast turnarounds is daylight. They’ll prefer to run as much of the course as possible in daylight as possible. It’s much easier to navigate under sunlight than mere torchlight. The next turnaround for the leaders will be in the middle of the night, if they can make it!
The “missing” runner from the lead pack at the start of loop 3 at this point was Jasmin. Still a long way off from being in any way worrying, but lots of fingers were definitely being crossed now.
However the next runner in at 32:12 was Greig Hamilton, from New Zealand. This is his 3rd attempt at the Barkley. Despite the course getting harder every year, his fun-runs are getting faster. And then, only 3 minutes later, Jasmin arrived in to camp to complete her 3rd fun-run. Her 32:15 time is the fastest-ever female fun-run. Yet again she is setting records. According to Keith she was smiling and looking good. She seems to be running much stronger than last year.
5 minutes later Jared Campbell (nondescript guy!) arrived. There were now 3 runners in camp again. Jared is definitely up for it this year. He is already the man with the most Barkley finishes in history. It’ll be quite a gap between #3 and #4 if he can pull this off! Last year I was very intimidated to go up and say hello to him in camp after we were finished (because he is such a legendary runner), but he turned out to be a thoroughly nice guy (as did everyone there).
Jasmin departed at 32:27. Another very fast turnaround. It’s definitely getting exciting now. The prospects of Jasmin becoming the first female to finish the Barkley are looking stronger than ever. If that happens, it’s going to be massive! The media frenzy could reach out into the mainstream media, not just the ultra world.
Grieg and Jared departed within a minute of each other at 32:43. It looks likely they’ll be running together for a while. Grieg had the slowest turnaround of the leaders, but it was still fast enough! Back to being an empty campsite, in terms of interloopal runners.
But that didn’t last too long in the rush hour. Next up to arrive in was Sebastien Raichon at 32:57. Still an excellent time for loop 3. He was the first runner to have the campground to himself (in terms of runners, there’ll be plenty of dropped runners and crew hanging around enjoying being part of the event). And the next communication from Keith was that he departed at 33:16. Yet another fast turnaround.
5 minutes later at 33:22 we had a near repeat cycle with Albert Herrero. That was an hour slower than last year. Given the course is longer and harder, that probably means he was running a similar pace and effort overall. Hopefully he can keep it going through a 4th loop (and beyond) this year.
So right now at the time of writing 8 runners are out on loop 4. According to Keith, that is a new record. In my opinion all these runners have the ability to get 5 loops. They certainly all have a big enough time margin to complete loop 4 and make it out onto loop 5. But this is the Barkley. There’s going to be more drama! And heading into the second night is going to put everyone into sleep deprivation stress.
There are 4 more runners still on loop 3. They all still have enough time to get out onto loop 4, which would be a massive accomplishment. It’ll be particularly impressive if Guiluame can pull that off, given his earlier missing page incident. But that’s very unlikely, given he was up against the fun-run time limit leaving for loop 3. They’re all looking less likely to make a finish, but again, this is Barkley. You just never know! Maxime has lost time to the other runners in loop 3 (he finished loop 2 ahead of Albert), so it looks like he is slowing.
So we’ll probably get one more burst of loop 3 finishing excitement, before once again heading into a couple of hours of communications emptiness. The long dark tea time of the soul, as Douglas Adams might have described it, for us onlookers, and even darker for the runners battling night 2.
Eoin Keith 