Here’s what I wrote on social media immediately following the race:

Hardest Barkley Fall Classic yet, both in terms of course difficulty but also in how I felt. 24% finishing rate for the 50k. Heat was brutal. Chimney Top at the start and having to do it a 2nd time at the decision point (marathon vs. 50k) was really tough. I had a bunch of issues all day like feeling way over heated even early in the morning when it wasn’t that hot, cramping, and wanting to quit all day. My quads locked about an hour into the 50k loop, so I sat down and was thinking I should turn back. Then I projectile vomited — 1st time ever — and that was it — I was going back. But I needed time before I could move. About 5 minutes later I was feeling better. Going back for a sure DNF vs going forward for a likely DNF (cut off was getting closer and closer) — what to do? I finally decided if I was going to DNF either way, I was going to go out trying. I had an hour climb in front of me, maybe 90 minutes, and then less than an hour to get down the mountain to the finish. I somehow eeked it out and am now 6 for 6 on 60k finishes. Very proud of that.

But I’d like to include a little more detail, here.

First, this year, Kelly was able to drive over with me Thursday, and coincidentally enough, Ben and Karrie from CO where in Asheville for the day, so we were able to meet them at Salsa’s for a late lunch.

Next, we kept driving towards Knoxville and Frozen Head, and there were still some BFC folks at the Beer Barn in Oliver Springs just outside the park, so we headed over there for a little while, before going to Frozen Head.

Friday was the normal routine — I rode my bike down to the start/finish, to help Laz and crew set up the barricades and flags, then over to packet pick up at noon, on to The Wardens Table for lunch and map study, then Starbucks to work a little. And this year, Carey had invited 20 or so runners over for dinner, so we did that. Then it was back the park for final gear prep and an early bed time.

Next morning we were up early, and I again opted to ride the bike down to the start instead of driving and parking the van. Jenny, the race photographer, captured these photos as she said “oh the bike people are back!”

The course looked to be difficult, starting on Chimney, and then having a 2nd Chimney after the decision point to get the full 50k. Chimney at the start was especially interesting and challenging as the single track starts just .6 miles in, long before the 400+ runners would really spread out. Do you go just a touch faster to not get stuck in long conga lines, or do you take it chill know it’s a long day? My best racing has always been when I start slow and build…. So i tried to find a balance of moderate to moderate+, but not too hard. Not sure it worked as the rest of the day was not great!

Here’s a bulleted list of what went wrong early:

• Within the 1st 30 minutes, my feet started tingling and getting numb. In the past, this has only happened during cold runs, never warm. This would last about an hour, until we had summited Chimney and started to run vs. all the power hiking on the way up.
• I felt extremely hot, even a bit clammy, while summiting Chimney. And there was a slight cool breeze up there, so I should not have felt so hot. This feeling would come back multiple times during the day, always while climbing. Though not while climbing the out of park sections Rat Jaw, Meth, and TS. Those sections were just so brutally hot and exposed, I felt the normal effects of heat there, not the clamminess.
• I also started cramping early, maybe 2-3 hours in? First in the feet, and later quads and adductors. Not as bad as my first year at BFC when I cramped all the way up to the fingers!

So all in all, a real suffer fest early and throughout the day and worst at the end, which I’m getting to.

A few photos – all of which capture me smiling, which is not at all how I felt! But it helps to know roughly where the photographers are and put on a good face, no matter how bad you are suffering.

I did see Kelly at the top of Rat, just before the Fire Tower climb. She was out backpack training and had climbed Chimney, after the racers had gone through. I told her how bad I was feeling and that I was worried about being able to finish.

From Chimney, it was back down to the park, then up Bird to Ross Gap, and down to the decision point. I had wanted at least a 4 hour buffer (1 hour to the decision point before the cut off), and that had shrunk a lot due to how I felt. However, that last section was my strongest part of the race and according to the intermediary timing results, I had worked my way up from 150th at aid one to 64th at the decision point.

I reached Laz and he asked me which way I was going. I told him of course 50k, even though I thought it would be tight, and he said I had plenty of time, and that I looked great. Now that I see the photos I would agree I looked pretty good, but it was all a facade ready to crumble — I felt terrible!

I knew a 2nd chimney climb was going to be tough and take a long time, and I only felt worse and worse. Chimney has an initial climb before you drop down some to tackle the big climb (see profile below). I sat at the top of that initial climb for a few minutes thinking I should probably go back, but opted to keep going forward.

At the very beginning of the 2nd climb, both upper quads locked, and I had to sit. Within a minute of sitting, I projectile vomited – something I’ve never done! This lasted 2-3 minutes, and I lost all hydration and nutrition for the last hour or so. And I should rewind just a minute — when we started up Chimney there was an aid station, and I tried to eat one bite of a bar, but it didn’t go down well. And either just before or after that, I think before, I had tried to slurp a bit of gel, and that almost came back up.

So here I am with limited hydration and nutrition, not able to eat, barely able to sip water, with a huge climb in front of me. Probably an hour or more back for a definite DNF, or a 2.5 hours forward for a likely DNF. I had decided to go back, but several other runners urged me on. And after sitting for 5 minutes with an empty stomach, I felt better. So I opted to go forward.

It was a long climb up chimney, with lots of stopping. But I kept thinking, if I can make it to the top, it’s only ~3 miles down to the finish, and I’ll have shot. Moving downhill wasn’t nearly as bad as trying to climb.

And that is what happened… I made it to the top, and shuffling down was ok. I reached the finish line with 21 minutes to spare – my closest BFC finish yet.

But I’m 6 for 6 on 50k finishes, and I’m really proud of that.

Here are the splits and ranks:

On the one hand, it feels like a real set back to have had such a rough go this year, and really, to be honest, last year wasn’t much better (though there I had a better 2nd half after climbing out of the emotional whirlwind I was suffering due to my Dad’s sudden passing just a couple of weeks prior).

But on the other hand, the grit I had to have to overcome wanting to quit most of the day, and being so close to turning back after the projectile vomiting bit, shows I can still dig deep and get hard things done.

It’s hard to not feel a bit of imposter syndrome in wanting to do bigger/harder things, but I also have to consider that training was not geared specifically for this kind of event, since I also wanted to complete IronDad in memory of my Dad just three weeks later. I.e. I had a very hybrid training approach to do both of these events so close together, and perhaps if I had only focused on BFC, the day would have gone much better. Of course, it could have just been a bad day — I never figured out why I felt so hot and clammy even early in the day when it was cool.

This race has come to mean so much to me.

It’s my favorite race — by far.

It is the most difficult race I do — by far.

Why do I do hard things? My thinking on this has evolved over time, but being a student of the Big Barkley (and BFC is what I call little Barkley), I have better insight now. Big Barkley is arguably one of the most difficult athletic events in the world – out of more than 1000 starters over the race’s 30+ years in existence, there have been just 21 finishes by 17 different runners. I highly recommend the book “The Finishers: The Barkley Marathons,” for any one who wants to dig into the psyche of those who have tackled this course (which gets harder every time there is a finisher) and beaten it….

So back to why do I do hard things? Everyone reading this leads a life of relative comfort. How often do you either voluntarily or forcefully get taken outside of your comfort zone — to somewhere really dark and difficult? Probably quite rarely. On the one hand it’s a little silly to leave comfort, but then, rather than a life of quiet desperation, aren’t we all leading lives of banal/mundane complacency? And is that better — or worse? For me, getting out the door and doing really hard things is a big part of the joy I find in life. (And yes, I find joy in the little mundane things of life just as much!)

Beyond that, I have yet to sign up for a race that truly scares me, or one that I truly have a slim chance of finiishing. Ok, the elevation at Leadville scared me, as I had never run that high for that long before — but I finished. The weather at Pinhote was brutal — over half the field dropped due to hypothermia — but I finished.

Now, (spoiler) I’m 5 for 5 for the 50k finish at BFC, but this race still challenges me like no other. Every year it’s something different that makes it hard — though last year I really crushed it (and after this year I am more certain that was fluke!). Year 1, I cramped in my toes two hours in and the cramps slowly worked their way up my body hitting muscles I didn’t even know I had. Year 2, I was vastly undertrained as I had not run a single step for nearly 6 months at the start of the year. Year 3 was the Covid year, so there were all kinds of restrictions placed on the race — incredible Laz was able to make it happen. Year 4 – I crushed it. What would year 5 hold?

What challenged me this year? Man, this one is hard. My dad passed away 12 days before the race. I wasn’t even sure I’d make it to the start line. I did, but being so close to his passing, and my 1st big event after his passing, it was tough. For those that don’t know, my dad was an accomplished endurance athlete himself, as outlined in this article written in 2012 after he competed in Kona, in the Ironman World Championship:

Local executive Paul Butler completes Kona Ironman at age 70

And Dad was one of my biggest fans. Always cheering me on, commenting on the blog, etc.

The grieving process is weird. You go through an emotional roller coaster, and sometimes the dark valleys hit at the strangest times. For me, the 1st five hours of BFC was like that. I’m out there running my race, and grief hit. I’m thinking about my dad, and his life, and his athletic career, and my relationship with him, and my relationship with my family, and on and on. My mind was not on the race, and that is a really difficult place to be in such a difficult event — an event that truly takes mental engagement the whole time.

This year’s course entailed 5 loops, and at 1st glance it appeared easier (shorter and less climb) than last year. But each loop escalated in difficulty, and last year’s hardest section/loop, was moved later in the race, making it that much more difficult.

Mentally and emotionally I was ok (not good, just ok) on loop one and part of loop two:

Some shots from loop two:

But somewhere on loop two, things went sideways. First, my right ankle was on fire — I thought ants somehow got on me and were biting me but the stinging would not go away no matter how many times I swatted at it or rubbed it. I finally stopped to check on it, and there was a bee stuck in the sock that had kept sting me. Ugh. But later, on one of the last climbs, the emotion of Dad’s passing really hit. And on Quitter’s Road, a three to four mile section I should have been running, I was crying and walking — walking a lot more than is good for a shot at a finish.

I want to thank the runners that became my therapists on the trail — not just on Quitter’s Road, but at several stages on the course as well as the finish line. Just having someone to talk to at my low moments was a huge gift, and all of you provided kind words and an emotional lift when I really needed it..

Loop three was Chimney, which is typically my mental half way point, no matter where on the course it is. The false summits can be really demoralizing, and the climb just takes a lot out of you. Whatever happened to switchbacks? Parts of the trail literally go straight up the mountain. Somehow, as I climbed Chimney, I climbed out of my mental funk. My dad was an endurance athlete, he was a big fan of what I do, he would have wanted me “out there” on this day. And while I climbed out of my funk, I climbed into the fog. But at the summit and the long ridge that leads to the loop four, I finally started to feel better – like I could give this race the physical exertion it needs.

And then loop four came — and loop four is what the race is famous for. It’s a little insane, and I won’t describe it here again – you can read my previous race reports. Just know that the names Rat Jaw, Meth Lab, and Testicle Spectacle strike fear into the heart of many a runner. This out and back section is just a few miles, but it’s a few miles of insane off-trail climbs and descents, often bushwhacking through saw briers, sliding down scree, or scrambling up insane pitches.

Last year, descending Rat I got stuck behind a slow moving group, but this year I was farther back in the field and it was a lot more open (still a fair bit of bushwhacking, though enough runners had been through to make a little bit of a path) . I made good time but did get passed a couple times (which was a little disappointing – I had set a goal to not let anyone get by!).

Down Rat, through the tunnel, over the Prison wall, and run to Meth. Meth is hard to describe but at one place you look at where you are supposed to go, and it looks like wall. And the wall is when the rain hit — hard. I knew this was going to make the next few miles extremely difficult. There are literally 70% pitches that would be mud slides down, and brutal up.

Coming up Testicle I grabbed a stick to use to stab the ground and try to pull myself up, and on the downs, it became a self arresting “axe” — if you start sliding down, stab it in the ground and hope it stops you. I didn’t work out that well, but I held on to it as you can see below.

Rat was insane, up and down. I grabbed this shot from FB, not sure whose it was or I’d give credit. But I have to include it here as it captures the absurdity of it all.

The climb up Rat probably took me at least 90 minutes and really took a lot out of me physically. There were times I’d climb 5-10 feet, and slide back down. You’d have to catch the fall, reassess, and try a new route. It was best to stay out of the mud and in the briers, but that meant you were semi-bushwhacking all the way up. For comparison, I typically climb Rat in an hour or just over. (Though in the covid year, in the cool temps with low humidity, I climbed in ~45 minutes.)

From Rat it was a 4 mile run down a typical Frozen Head trail — meaning rocky and rooty. At this point I knew I had a 50k finish in the bag, and I still wasn’t feeling it. So I set a goal to only get passed five times — and that’s what happened. Down the trail, on the road for a minute, through the woods, across a stream (which due to the rain was now nearly up to my waist, which did wash a lot of the mud off), and to the finish.

I crossed in 12:14:48 for 78th place — last year was 12:02:57 for 28th place (a fluke!)… Out of ~400 starters, there were 135 50k finishers (~35% finish rate which is inline with historical rates). Ultra-signup is not showing the marathon finishers now, but I think it was about 80 more. So roughly 45-50% of the field did not get a marathon or 50k.

I am very happy to have achieved another 50k finish.

Thanks to Jenny and Misty the photographers — they do a great job, and conditions were awful this year. Misty was just above the wall on Meth in a tent, stepping out in the pouring rain to take photos whenever a runner came by.

Misty Dawns

Jennifer Thorsen

And of course thank you to all the volunteers that make this race and so many others possible. As well as Laz, Durb, Bad Mike, who put it all together.

And Dad, here’s to a life well-lived.