So I talked to Maune and 15 other running, biking, climbing, masochistic scientists who participated in an open-answer survey about endurance sports. Or so it seemed to me as a sometime-participant in such races, whose Facebook timeline is filled with triumphant science-types crossing finish lines and climbing mountains. Marathons, ultramarathons, triathlons, cycling centuries, Ironpeoples: You name it, they suffer through it. Many physicists and astronomers-and STEM professionals in general-compete in long, hard, miserable athletic endeavors like this one. He’s a physicist by training (he did his PhD at Caltech, finishing a thesis titled “Fluidic and polymeric integration and functionalization of optical microresonators.”) Then he worked on Wall Street for a couple years, played pro poker briefly, and rejoined the physics world at HRL. Cantrell stood at the yellow gate to congratulate the new record-holder, who was one of just three people to finish that year.īut afterward, Maune-who doesn’t really compete in other organized events-simply went back to his job at HRL Laboratories, where he worked on quantum electronics. The race director and course-maker, Gary Cantrell, had been smoking Camels and smiling under a shade tent while awaiting Maune’s arrival. To finish, participants must complete five loops (some clockwise, some counter-) on an approximately 20-mile unmarked, off-trail course through the dense Tennessee mountains. Some people call the Barkley the hardest race in the world. He was the first person to finish the race twice, a win immortalized in the documentary The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young. But he had done it: broken the 55-hour, 42-minute Barkley course record by more than three hours. He’d slept for just one hour during the entire race. He was dirty and disheveled, his hydration pack hanging off one shoulder, an empty sport-spout Gatorade bottle clutched in his right hand, glasses still somehow resting on his nose. Fifty-two hours and three minutes after Brett Maune left the starting line of the 2012 Barkley Marathons, he returned to that same spot and placed his hand on the finish line: a yellow State Park gate.
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