The Barkley Marathons 2024. Conch shell at the ready...

[Taylormiffed]

No idea when it will start. Follow @ keithdunn on twitter as he's usually the only journo who attends.

Let's hope for another safe race. Maybe a woman can finish for the first time and hopefully there'll be a handful of Brits to cheer on. Although tbh, I'll cheer on anyone crazy enough to attempt it.

Oh wow! I have so many questions! My daughters ride, I’m going to show them this.

Absolutely loved seeing her run in like that. She must have had the absolute terrors though at not making the cut off.

Just looking at the BBC - the most viewed news story is currently who won Big Brother, and the sports top stories are football, football, rugby, rugby, snooker (which is a game really, not a sport!)

Very serious here - social media and women’s voices need to carry Jasmin to the SPOTY.

Would never happen sadly, it's just too obscure. There are too few 'visuals' either.

Bet she barely slept last night, her body must be a mess.

Thanks for sharing that, very interesting interview.

Just watched the finish video and it brought a tear to my eye. What an amazing woman, and what a good bunch of people around her too.

I had a shit day yesterday aside from watching this, which topped off a shit week, but today me and my dog went out and ran a 5k canicross pb, and we did it for Jasmin. What an inspiration!

@GCircus That sounds like an amazing race, and I’m slightly ashamed not to have heard of it before. Please start a thread next time it’s on as I for one would love to be following along as we have the Barkley!

Same time (roughly) next year everyone?

Yes always the same time, the weather can be very grim some years and there can be no finishers ☠️

I'll do the MN equivalent of a conch call, by posting on this thread - possibly with a new username for the occasion - once there's a new 2025 thread to direct people to.

What I noticed about this year's results is that there was a higher than typical attrition rate of people not completing loop 1, but thereafter the attrition rate was much lower than typical. So my prediction is that Laz will make it harder by changing the start time, so that they either set off in the dark, or will lose light during loop 1. Plus the course will have changes that challenge map-reading skills even more. But the biggest difficulty factor - the weather - is beyond even his influence!

If I'd watched that video of her finishing last night I would have cried like a baby. The photos I saw from Howie Stern were amazing. You could see she'd given it everything & had gone to some very dark places mentally on that last loop.

As it is, someone's been chopping onions somewhere round here.

Same things struck me about the finish too, her husband quickly patting her on the back & then making himself scarce for a minute, Laz shouting and waving his stick at the photographers like a pack of stray dogs🤣 and John Kelly fetching his camp chair & putting his pack under Jasmin's head when she collapsed to the ground 😩

What a woman. I am totally in awe of her.

The BBC have finally published an article about this, and in the last few minutes have moved it to the front of the News page (had been half way down the sports page before)

Jasmin Paris first woman to complete gruelling Barkley Marathons race - BBC News

I think that the footage of her finish should have been shortened a bit before being posted. But glad to see Laz's word is law, and when he told the media to leave, they did!

The thing I would like to see though is her "That Was Easy"

Thanks for posting a really interesting read. I noticed a comment underneath asking if she’d ever consider the Barkley marathon as it would be great to see a female finisher 😊

The BBC article is currently the No1 "most read" article on their news page!

Many thanks for that article, which I see was written by Damian Hall.

Thanks for sharing! The article says that after the Spine Race Jasmin didn’t rest / recover as she’d hoped because of media interest etc - hope this time is better.

I hope he's OK. That's two loop 5 DNFs in a row.

He'll be absolutely gutted. I hope it wasn't his navigation that let him down again, though I suspect it might have been. Either that or an injury.

If he's doing Tor des Geants again this year reckon this will light a fire under him.

This is a lovely tribute from Gary Robbins (focus of this documentary - probably linked to earlier in this thread but worth linking again - jawdropping stuff).

Looking ahead at next year you can figure out the start date of the race by looking at how busy the Frozen Head campsites are. (Someone clever on twitter sussed this out).

Obviously we won't know until probably Jan / Feb.

@AuntieStella
Maybe we could reconvene in October for big's backyard ultra?

That's her husband, Konrad Rawlik, who's also an excellent ultra runner. He finished 3rd in this year's Spine race, an hour and a half slower than Jasmin's 2019 finish.

If I spot it, I'll do the necessary; if someone else does, I'll join in!
(It doesn't grip me in quite the same way as this, though)

I Just saw a re-tweet of an old blog post by John Kelly about women and the Barkley

https://randomforestrunner.com/2018/04/can-a-woman-finish-barkley/

He says that one day the right woman (meaning one that can finish) will come forward and “And I’ll be right there smiling”

He got that bit wrong - he wasn’t just smiling, he was whooping and cheering her through her finish!!

When he's not running, he's a data scientist btw, and I found his take on the question interesting to read. Pic isn't Jasmin btw, it's Beverley Anderson-Abbs who is one of the v few women (?3) to have completed a Fun Run

Watching Jasmin finish gave me the same out-of-the-blue, visceral shivery, tearful feeling I get when I see footage of a birth. She is absolutely amazing.

I'm in her running club, and can confirm that she also happens to be really, really lovely. Supportive and generous to other runners, and unexpectedly "gentle" for such an absolute machine! <happy sigh>

I do really enjoy John Kelly's writing. He comes at ultra running from a very different perspective to a lot of people. I'm really looking forward to his Barkley write up. And Jasmin's, but I suspect we might be waiting a little while for hers.