She was so exhausted she slumped to the ground after finishing the race which is inspired by a famous prison escape.

The course, at Frozen Head State Park, changes every year but covers 100 miles involving 60,000ft of climb and descent - about twice the height of the Mount Everest.

Only 20 people have ever made it to the end of the race within the allotted 60 hours since it was extended to 100 miles in 1989.

The idea for the race came when they heard about the 1977 escape of James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr, from nearby Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.

Prospective runners must write a “Why I should be allowed to run in the Barkley” essay along with a $1.60 (£1.27) entrance fee and if successful get a letter of condolence.

Competitors must find between nine and 14 books along the course (the exact number varies each year) before removing the page corresponding to their race number from each book as proof of completion.

  • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Well they don’t describe the crime, or emit a stance on it, which makes sense, it’s a trail race not a political or social justice platform.

    • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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      5 months ago

      Look, the issue here is clearly that the race appeared crypto-racist on that summary, and instead of clearly explaining the issue, you stated exactly the things that the race organisers are neutral on, which seems to almost surgically sidestep the clearly anti-racist motivations. You weren’t technically wrong, but you can walk up to literally anyone on the street and say “you’re going to die” and you’re not wrong, but they’d want know why you were saying it.

      This is about framing. There are infinite details in the universe, the trick with communication is to filter down to the important, salient details.

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Read the article, self serve a little bit before branding a whole situation racist

        Edit In this case they filtered down the important details…right in the article…the core vehicle of communication.

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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          5 months ago

          And the fact you couldn’t just say that in your comment is either because you don’t know how to just say what you mean, or you hadn’t read the article yourself at that point. Which is it?

          And I didn’t brand the whole situation racist, that was conditional on the information you were giving me. If you wanted to say it wasn’t racist, you could have done that if you had the information.