I was ready to write a different post tonight. But today, I decided to hold back the negativity and post something much more positive. I will give you a bit of background first however.
Every year a week or so before Barkley Marathons starts, we are greeted with a flurry of venomous posts of one elite ultrarunner. You can set your clock by it. Really, it never changes and I expect it to happen next year as well. I’ve posted a couple pictures of a couple of the ones he posted this year. Sage Canaday hates Barkley for some reason and he can’t help but share his dislike of the race with us. It’s been a couple months since Barkley and I’ve had the chance to think about this issue. I didn’t want to jump on it with heated emotion in the same way, so I thought I would write about it now after some time has passed.
Canaday may not like Barkley, and that’s his opinion, but it’s an extremely important race and I’ll tell you why. It is important because it’s different.
First, it’s not run by a huge corporation (cough, cough, UTMB, cough, cough).
Second, it’s so unique in what it takes to win it. Jim Walmsley will never win Barkley. It takes a special runner, or masochist, specializing in orienteering to do well in that race, and 99% of all elite runners aren’t about that special skill.
Third, it’s small and the smaller races need to be supported. Sure, it gets plenty of publicity, but it only accepts less than 200 runners. That’s a small race!
Let me also say that I support other types of races, many would not be ones I would ever want to participate in, but they still belong. Beer Miles, for example. I may not drink anymore, but they’re still important. I may not drink now, but I sure did in my past – see my podcast episode on the Bay to Breakers. It would be hypocritical of me NOT to support Beer Miles now, I think, or just plain silly. It’s fun, so why the hell not?
Broken Arrow Skyrace at Palisades or what some of us will ALWAYS call it, Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe has a new challenge, the Iron Face. Todd Glieden who has been on the show previously did that, which consisted of not only going up the steep faces of Squaw, but climbing up the rocks and gingerly walking across a thin rope. No thank you! I say, but he enjoyed it. It’s still a race and it still rocks.
So, there are lots of races for lots of different runners and that is something we need to support. The corporatization of races is a real danger and that is something we must be aware of and we shouldn’t help, if at all possible. The more smaller races we lose, the less choices in races we will have in the future.