Meet Your Heroes: A Walk with Lazarus Lake
“The old wolf hunts with the teeth it’s got left.”
The 2025 Barkley Marathons ended with no finishers. After a historic race last year with five finishers and the first woman to ever complete all five loops of the course, it came as no surprise, that this year, race founder and director Gary Cantrell, popularly known as Lazurus “Laz” Lake, and his successor Carl Laniak, endeavored to sharpen the teeth of the course and give it even more bite. Of the 40 runners who started the race, only 10 completed the first lap.
“This is old-school Barkley,” Keith Dunn, the race’s unofficial-official stenographer, reported on social media as runners returned from the first loop and dropped from the race. Only John Kelly, Barkley legend and three-time finisher, completed the “Fun Run” —three full loops of the course within the allotted time. “To say the course won this year is an understatement,” Laz writes in his after-action report.
This year was a return to form for the race: it is often called a crucible and the very definition of Type 3 fun. I could go on without end about the mystique and gnarled majesty of the Barkleys, but for now, I want to focus on Laz, the mastermind behind it all. He’s not just the founder of Barkleys, he also invented and pioneered the increasingly popular Backyard Ultra format. And then there is a third course he has charted, a personal jewel in his own Triple Crown1 ultradistance events: LAZCON.
At 69 years old, around this time last year, Laz set out to walk across America from Delaware to San Francisco.
Laz’s biographer and ultrarunning reporter, Jared Beasley, live-tweeted the experience and I saw his updates right as they were leaving Washington D.C.. I reached out and asked if I could tag along and photograph them. They agreed, and soon enough I was driving out to find them on the W&OD Trail in northern Virginia.
When I first meet Laz, he is flanked by Jared and Michael “Gagz” Gagliardi, an ultrarunner from Philadelphia. I give each of them a friendship bracelet2, and in return, Laz gives me an encyclopedic explanation of fall lines. We start down the trail, and Jared peels off to run a few errands and handle the multitude of logistical needs that naturally arise when one sets out to walk 3000 miles.
Laz, Gagz, and I head west, a motley trio. Laz is a generous conversationalist and has a certain weathered verve as he walks us through the entire geologic history of the Piedmont and Coastal Plain. Sometime after my lesson in sediment, he jokes about my cameras and how people react to them when they’re on race courses. He mimes the absurd facial expressions some runners ape, he throws his hands back and sticks out his tongue clown-like. These types bother him. He finds them silly and undignified. His sense of humor is unmatched, but he takes running and racing seriously.
While walking with Laz, I could not stop thinking of the historical images of great artists working late in life—Monet in his garden, Henry Matisse painting the ceiling while he lay in bed, David Hockney producing endless digital illustrations on his iPad. As we go along, he stops every so often to lean his hands on his knees to lengthen out his spine. From his gait and facial expressions, it’s evident he is in a fair bit of pain. He is matter-of-fact about the pace and there is some unease about falling behind schedule, but he nevertheless summons an optimistic spirit and pushes on.
It’s not ideal to parachute in like this. It’s not the full picture, just a sliver of a moment. Still, I was grateful for the chance to meet Laz, Gagz, and Jared, even briefly. Gagz was preparing to run the 6 Days in the Dome. A 72-hour race he would go on to complete over 180 miles around the track after cutting holes in his shoes for his swollen toes. Jared was finishing his manuscript which is now available for pre-order. Laz went on to make it 1,700 miles of his trans-continental journey. Braving the summer heat, he tore across Oklahoma to the town of Foyil, headed to where his parents are buried. He ended his walk across America once he reached their graves.
“As above, so below”
The evening after I left the gang, with the mountains ahead waiting for them, I spent some time reading Ted Chiang’s short story Tower of Babylon. “We live on the road to heaven; all the work we do is to extend it further,” Chiang writes. In many ways, this sentiment captures the core of what Laz is so good at: charting courses toward enlightenment. An endeavor that is easily misunderstood but should be revered. Sometimes what feels like the bottom is the top, and vice versa.
Dog Ears, a few folded-down corners of the internet
Jared wrote up the experience of crewing LAZCON for the Guardian and included some of my photographs, which you can read here: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/apr/27/lazarus-lake-walks-across-america-lazcon
I didn’t share this experience at the time because I wanted to be sure to include the pre-order link to Jared’s book WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL ORDER!! https://bookshop.org/a/8176/9798990795839
If you’re unfamiliar with the Barkley Marathons please check out this documentary on last year’s race and Jasmin Paris, featuring interviews with many of the women who have attempted the race in the past:
if we’re being technical and wanted to look at just his race directing, the third example here would actually be Strolling Jim, a 40-mile footrace, which, similar to the MET Gala occurs the first weekend of May, in Tennessee
I LOVE friendship bracelets, they are the one thing the Swifties really get right. I love the beads and the patterns and the bon mots or phrases. They are delightful tokens.
I'm wearing the friendship bracelet you gave me right now
Whispers: Time for another on running on our island state....not the cool tropical one....the other one.