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Ultra Marathons

1 lurker | 462 watchers

phal 20 Mar 4:14pm, 20 Mar 2025 5,163 posts	Quote Pin phal I’m still sticking with my post from yesterday - it’s been totally done on purpose to take the shine off it and take it back to being a bit less media friendly. And maybe get people who want Big Drama to bugger off. With Barkley there is no such thing as Too Hard. Kinky was spot on. Last year was a disaster.
phal 20 Mar 4:16pm, 20 Mar 2025 5,164 posts	Quote Pin phal And it terms of success - John Kelly completed the Fun Run. Some years, that’s all you need.
Derby Tup 20 Mar 4:19pm, 20 Mar 2025 71,206 posts	Quote Pin Derby Tup The phal knows This was a mega underground event with a handful of completions not that long ago. It’s much more interesting when no-one gets round for me than when it’s a race with multiple successes
paulcook 20 Mar 4:37pm, 20 Mar 2025 7,655 posts	Quote Pin paulcook The drama is better when the course wins. Some of the old stories are wonderful.
geordiegirl 20 Mar 5:49pm, 20 Mar 2025 27,352 posts	Quote Pin geordiegirl I get they can’t continue to loop 4 if they have less than 24hrs to go but I didn’t think they were classed as not completing fun run if over 36hrs. Who knows other than Laz on the day 🤣 It’s meant to be this way last year 5 winners was crazy. The UK Berkeley Marathons has 5 marathon+ loops to be completed over 24hrs, in the 3 years it’s been going the most loops finished is 3. They don’t have loop cut offs so you could do 3 loops in 24hrs but if you got on at 22hrs after 4 loops you’d not be allowed to start the 5th. Maybe that’s where I got confused.
flanker 20 Mar 7:22pm, 20 Mar 2025 21,419 posts	Quote Pin flanker You get a fun run if you are under 40 hours. But if you are over 36 you can't go on to attempt lap 4. Always been the case (in recent years anyway). JK at 39:50 got his fun run
KinkyS 20 Mar 8:35pm, 20 Mar 2025 18,350 posts	Quote Pin KinkyS After five finishers last year, anyone who applied this year must've known that the course would be exceptionally brutal even by Barkley standards. Laz couldn't risk there being even a single finisher this year imho - last year's attention could almost have been the end of the event entirely. I don't see that there could've been any other result than the course winning and every single runner losing (the race, their mind, a lot of skin?!). I bet John Kelly was really excited to see just how hard Laz could make it
mk parkrun 20 Mar 10:36pm, 20 Mar 2025 79 posts	Quote 1 pin mk parkrun Not started watching this yet (need to finish Adolescence and Zero Day first) but heard good things about The Edge of Possible https://youtu.be/uyX4GRm7NeY?si=S7o11UYtP_eSSoA7
paulcook 20 Mar 10:52pm, 20 Mar 2025 7,658 posts	Quote Pin paulcook Saved to my now huge watch later list.
larkim 21 Mar 8:47am, 21 Mar 2025 26,957 posts	Quote Pin larkim I don't quite get the feeling that they want it to go underground and unnoticed. Yes they want to make it as tough as possible and no finishers is perfectly acceptable and positively desireable for most years; it is the part of the unique appeal of the event. But the way Keith tweets, the way the invites go etc are all knowingly designed to create something different which is interesting; if Laz wanted it to go dark, Keith would simply not tweet/Bsky about it. Maybe not to the mainstream, sure, but its definitely intended to be of interest to people who are actually interested in dot watching, ultra marathon performance etc. Last year was definitely an exception in terms of the wider interest, but not a disaster either. Just a prompt to reset things based on the athletes showing that with the right conditions that the course was beatable in a way which was likely to be repeatable. The reset has been done; we won't know for a few years if this current config is beatable. That's fine.