Previously to watching this film, I had never heard of the Barkley Marathon. To be fair, I didn’t fully understand the actual race while I was watching it, which caused me to look it up after the film was over. However, I did take away the difficulty of the race, and the toll it took on the bodies of the participants.

If not the images of the participants themselves, the low number of people that have actually completed the Barkley Marathon proves that it is not an activity to be taken lightly. The physical toll on the body was clearly shown by the roughed up feet of the different participants when they would take a break at the camp. As the movie said, some view finishing the entire race as the goal, others just certain parts of it, and some even just participating in it at all.

An aspect of the race that I found very interesting was the way that those coordinating the race kept track of whether the racers had completed the entire loop. Each racer had to take certain pages out of a book and bring the pages back with them once they completed the loop. While the race in and of itself isn’t particularly formal, these checkpoints still ensure that they truly completed the course.