The Endurance Artist: Lazarus Lake, the Barkley & a Race with No End

The most grueling and ingenious races in the world are the creation of Gary Cantrell, better known by the nom de guerre Lazarus Lake. He has been described as a “hillbilly genius” and the “Leonardo di Vinci of pain.” His Barkley Marathons is known as the most difficult ultramarathon ever devised, a fight club in the wilderness run in secret. With books hidden in the woods, condolence letters, a cigarette-start, and elevation gain that amounts to summiting Mount Everest twice, it defies convention. Big’s Backyard Ultra pushes human beings to their absolute limit on a four-mile loop that is run every hour, starting on the hour until there is just one runner standing—most recently, a high school teacher who ran 450 miles without sleep.

Author Jared Beasley ferrets his way into the world of a recluse hell-bent on rewriting the rules to reveal a life reimagined and failure reinvented. Laz calls into question our obsession with winning and fairness, success and failure, and whether these ideas handicap potential.