An application must be sent to a closely guarded email address at precisely the right minute on precisely the right day. As of race time this year, of the more than one thousand people who have run it, only fourteen have finished. And all this must be done in just sixty hours. Runners must ascend and descend about 120,000 feet of elevation-the equivalent of climbing up and down Mount Everest twice. Officially, it consists of five loops through Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, totaling one hundred miles, but most participants believe it to be closer to 130. The Hardrock 100 is a high-altitude hundred- miler amid lightning storms and avalanches.

The Marathon des Sables is a six-day, 156-mile race across the Sahara Desert. The Badwater 135 winds through the middle of Death Valley in July. For others, there are the ultramarathons, races that stretch to fifty or one hundred miles or more through some of the world's most inhospitable regions. 'He got all his pages.'įor most of us, the 26.2 miles of a marathon represent the epitome of athletic endurance.

'He got all his pages,' repeats a voice in the crowd. They look from the broken man on the ground to the inscrutable face of the bearded figure looming over him. 'I got all my pages!'Ī small group of onlookers cover their mouths and stare. I had to swim a river.' He gasps for air again. 'I dropped down the wrong side of the mountain in the fog.

'I got all my pages!' pleads the man on the ground. Above them stands a bearded figure in a wide-brimmed hat and a worn-out oilskin duster. His wife weeps as she huddles over him, her hands resting softly on his arm. He's crumpled on the ground, his clothes are soaking wet, and he's sucking air hard. A man is begging on the side of a Tennessee mountain.

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