E84. Barkley Special with Jasmin Paris, Damian Hall, John Kelly and Keith Dunn

Everything Endurance

Each year since 1986, in Frozen Head State Park Tenessee, a race has taken place that teeters on the brink of being impossible to finish. An enigma of an event that eschews marketing, GPS tracking, and largely even race fees, and has a reputation as a serious contender for the title of toughest race on Earth.

In this episode, we talk to 3 runners who recently put in outstanding performances at the event. John Kelly was already one of the tiny group of people to ever finish the race and this year joined the even smaller group of those to finish it 2 times or more. Jasmin Paris put in the best performance by any female athlete in the history of the race, and Damian Hall managed to get all the way out onto loop 4 in his first-ever Barkley.

We also have Keith Dunn, master of Barkley Twitter, the only link between the race organisation and the outside world, chatting with Will about how he came to be such a big part of the event.

If that was somehow not enough, we also have another Radness Update from Adam Kimble, our man in America, who is here to talk us through some of the bigger US races and his journey to running the Badwater 135 in 2024.

Learn more about the Barkley Marathons by listening to our interview with Barkley Marathons creator and Race Director Gary Cantrell aka Lazarus Lake: https://bit.ly/EE36_LazLake

Image of Keith courtesy of Alexis Berg