“Thank you to everyone for the support, and I hope some of what we get to discover out there is a shared experience,” he wrote. On Twitter, Kelly thanked his followers for their support. The only other time three racers completed the race was in 2012, according to Cantrell. For the past five years, no one has finished the race, Cantrell told CNN.īut this year finally broke that streak: Three athletes, French Aurélien Sanchez, American John Kelly and Belgian Karel Sabbe, completed the hellish five laps within the 60-hour time limit on Friday. Athletes must rip out a page corresponding to their bib number and have all the book pages in hand at the end of each loop to prove they reached each checkpoint.īecause of the array of unique challenges the race presents, only 17 individuals have completed the race since it started in 1986. The ultramarathon is marked with unique unmanned checkpoints, each of which contains a paperback book. Getting lost – as well as falling and getting injured in the brush – is par for the course. Athletes run the course over three sleepless days and nights – and there are no aid stations, phones or GPS to help with navigation. The race consists of five loops of around 20 miles each, for a total of between 100 to 130 miles through brushy mountains with an elevation gain of around 63,000 feet.
The route was inspired by the 1977 prison escape of James Earl Ray, who assassinated the Rev. The famed ultramarathon, the brainchild of runner Gary Cantrell (better known by his nickname Lazarus Lake or “Laz”), takes place in Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park. The infamous murderer's prison escape that inspired a near-impossible ultramarathon
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