Barkley is not a sports competition in traditional sense. It is more like an ultra-ultra running event meets performance art and the very point of the event is to make it harder. Participants understand this and they are not there to compare their performance (sic) to the previous competitors.

Also, competitors are screened by totally different criteria than their previous ultra running successes: they have to write a letter to the organizer explaining why they should participate. Reasons can be something personal, not that they won Spartathlon in Greece in 2010.

There is a short documentary about the event available https://vimeo.com/97270099, and a full-length documentary making rounds at film festivals at the moment https://barkleymovie.wordpress.com/

One of the joys of putting on your own race is making up your own rules. This race is decidedly unlike a marathon by design.

>I think this "addition" of complexities needs to be treated as totally new course each time such addition is made.

I'm a trail runner and this isn't done, probably because conditions are always different year to year, so a modified route is just another misc change along with weather conditions which arguably would introduce more variance. Courses vary slightly all the time, due to trail conditions, environment and permit/access issues, plus minor rerouting around trail sections that are damaged or under repair, etc.

Western States, probably the most famous trail ultra, has had several minor route changes (due to fires, floods, snow, etc) in its history. They do not keep separate records for every variation of the route. Even Leadville rerouted the turnaround last year, which caused some confusion (including Krar technically going off course before regaining the route).

In the case of Barkley, the event is already pathologically designed so making it slightly tougher after each finisher is one of the quirks of the event. Nobody runs Barkley for time, just finishing is a huge deal (hence 14 or whatever finishers in 30 years). Heck, just completing the "fun run" (3 laps within the time limit) yields bragging rights, among trail runners at least. ;)

EDIT: grammar

I would agree with you if the competitors were in any way competing on time over the course of multiple years, but in reality they aren't. It's a one time race, repeated annually, and each course & victory stands alone. (Not like other extreme ultras like the Leadville 100, etc, where there absolutely is competition each year to lower the record.)

I don't think many ultra runners would consider Leadville extreme. It's mostly fire roads. Ever since the buy-out from Lifetime Fitness, the top runners seem to skip the event.

It's not the case that the race gets made longer each year, or ever. It is, however, rerouted to some extent each year. This is because part of the race is testing orienteering and route-finding skills. If it used same course every year people who returned to run again would have unfair advantage over the new people. Because the race director has a sense of humor, he may well choose to add elevation gain if too many people are doing well. His quip when people stop after one of the loops, unable to go on, "My only regret is that you could not suffer more."

The challenge gets harder! I like it :) This race seems to be all about finding your own limits. Too often challenges have little success in failure.

> Marathon is not adding extra 10km every year to compensate for too many finishers.

However, the orgranisers can alter its route. So technically, they could change the route accordingly.

They're not adding the extra obstacles to jump over either.

It's no brainer to come up with unfinishable course to "test the limits". Just add extra hill here and there, keep same time limit and call it a day with "mountains won!" statement.

Granted, this approach has it's own passionate followers and so it runs!

As someone who lives in the west, I'm just upset that they call the hills of Tennessee mountains.

Same sentiment; I'm really wondering how they managed to find 60kft of gain in (at best) hilly Tennessee. Then again, if you find a steep enough hill and run up and down it enough times (which it sounds like they do), I guess that would do it.

While I've no doubt this is a very difficult challenge, it seems contrived, and the comparisons to things like Everest are flippant. For one thing, you don't have to contend with the extreme weather of Everest, or the lack of oxygen, which you won't even get anywhere near because you never actually get anywhere near 8kft in altitude. Cross country hiking through brush? Yeah, I can do that; I avoid it when possible because that's not my idea of a good time and there are more interesting challenges.