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.
Do you feel the obligation to be outraged by the most pointless things or does it come naturally?
Reading only the excerpt and knowing nothing else about the race, yeah I think it’s pretty fucking normal to be outraged. If it didn’t raise an eyebrow for you I find that very fucking suspicious.
The race and it’s organizers have nothing to do with, and make no comment on the motivation or the reason for imprisonment of the person.
It’s just about the escape, and the terrain covered, specifically. The point is he didn’t make it far on that terrain and the competitors do so much more.
They have willingly associated themselves with it after the fact, and to make no comment on what is an extremely dark chapter of American history seems pretty irresponsible. It would take absolutely no effort at all to say, “we are not valorising this man”, so not doing it is quite telling.
If that is true and you have it from the organisers, then they have made some comment on the man himself. Could you share how you know about this?
Go read about the race, it’s literally to mock the dude, the organizer said that could run more, as a burn
Okay, reading the article itself and not just the summary:
So it’s just that the summary leaves out this information, which if they’re going to mention the origins of the race is a pretty crucial detail to omit.
I have to say though, when you say they “make no comment on the motivation or the reason for imprisonment of the person” it really does create the impression they’re being neutral in the matter, which they obviously aren’t. I’m glad you explained more.
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.
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.
Most folks would just say “my bad, I didn’t read the article”
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.
Step 2 of being outraged by an auto generated summary would ideally be to read the actual article to get more context before expressing that outrage.
I don’t think the issue being raised here is that you were outraged by the excerpt, it’s that the excerpt was trusted at face value enough to mislead folks, and it seems people just double down after being misled by the auto generated excerpt.