The Barkley Book Fair night run, and the preparation thereof

Where to begin? The 3rd running of the Barkley Book Fair has come and gone. This years race featured a 5 mile day run with 6 books, and a 7.64 mile night run with 10 books. Some of the titles were The Running Man, The Long Walk, Do or Die, The Atkins Diet, Don't Give Me Your Pain Elaine, Nerds Gone Wild, and Lassy.

12 1/2 miles you say? How hard can that be? Well, usually I take a half week off work to put the course together. This year, I worked on the course for a few hours Wednesday, a couple hours on Friday, and did not begin work on the course on Saturday until 11:00. I never felt like I would not have everything ready, but it was a challenge. Marking the course with pink and orange ribbons meant covering all of both courses at least once, and most of it twice to plant the books. Throw in dropping ice chests with drinks made for over twenty miles for me on Friday alone. And considering I was lugging ribbon, books, and a weed-eater for much of the day made this an "ultra" like event.

I started my Saturday at 6:00 am taking pictures for RunnersWorld downtown, and then zipped back up to Turkey Mountain for a group run with Vicky. We had 10 runners out for a few miles on the trails.

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Then it was crunch-time. My nephews John and Jeff helped me all day with the course set-up. The day race started at 6:30 pm, and at 6:15 pm I was still marking the night course. Stangely enough, I was not at all stressed, but made my way to the starting area and gave my usual speech about the course before sending the 19 6:30 PM runners off.This year, I added a little loop on the red trail for the daytime runners. A misunderstanding between John and Jeff and me resulted in no water at the 1/2 way point of the day race, but I loaded an ice chest and drove down the new paved trail to an opening in where I could get up to where their trail would take them. One crisis solved!

After that, I had to fly over to the west side of the wilderness area to finish marking the night course. Special thanks to John and Jeff for setting out the day race to help me finish up with the course markings. I had several segments already marked, but just needed to tie them all together. I gave John and Jeff books and locations to plant them. Jeff and I ran and marked 2 more miles of the course before I needed to head back to the start to see the night runners off.

Second crisis....I had lost my camera. I hoped it was in my truck two miles away, and in fact it was. But not having it meant I do not have a pic of the group of night runners before they left. Brian does have a picture on his camera and I will post it when I get it. Somewhere around 9:20, I sent 20 brave souls off on their adventure. This was twice the number of night runners I was counting on, so I had to restock both ice chests, which I did not have time to do but did anyway. After making the stash, I ran like the wind (actually I did the ultra shuffle) 1.5 miles down a rugged trail to pick up on the marking where I had left off. I knew I was about 5 miles ahead of the runners, but some of them looked fast. I marked with an orange ribbon, ran 150 yards, and marked again, along with marking all the intersections. Fortunately, no one got lost too bad. There must have been one switchback that could have used more ribbons since several people spoke of missing a turn and trying to scale a cliff. (I kind of like that!) One mile from the finish, I took the course right up a very rocky creek bed. I had my eye on this route for a several months, but marking it was slow. Shortly after getting through this section, I had the front runners right on my heels. It turned out to be Alex, John, and Jeff. They got a laugh out of catching me, and I told them where the route was for the finish. No problem. 10 minutes later, I was to the finish line, and it was Miller Time. I congratulated the winners, and awaited the remaining 17 runners.Jeff, John, and Alex finished in 1:55:30.

The remaining runners cam in in waves....well, maybe 2 or 3 waves. I recommend that the BBF night runners stay in groups, and everyone did. 

Vicky, Brian, and Johnny came in next at 2:21,

closely followed by Steve Lee and Darin Maddox at 2:21:30. 

Next was David Wood and John Rahhal at 2:23. 

Brad Stump, Nikki Watson, and Jeff Largent, were right behind, finishing in 2:25:26.











A foursome of Kristi Perryman, Deanne Cooper, Shannon Hudson, and Kyla Rudd crossed the finish line in 2:58:15.

Kathy Hoover, Desiree Powell, and Deon Bean had headlamp/flashlight problems yet managed to stay on course to finish in 3:23.

The night run is different every year, as I want the course to be a surprise to even the more experienced Turkey Mountain runners. I like to show everyone a part of the mountain they have never seen before. This year, there were no caves, although there are still a couple of caves on the mountain that I have not yet used in this event. I did include the steepest longest hills I could dream up. Thanks to Jeff Largent here is the elevation profile for the night race.

Afterwards, we hung around until the wee hours of the morning, told our accounts of the race, and many tall tails and lies.Johnny and Jeff say cheese for the camera.

Vicky also had a long day and almost falls asleep on her feet!

I actually became too sleepy to partake of our ritual IHOP, and after we packed up all our stuff, I headed home for bed.
I'll try to get some more pictures up, after I raid Brian's camera!