The world’s most notorious race has done it again.
For the second straight year, the Barkley Marathons ended without a single finisher. Forty runners entered Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee on Valentine’s Day. Twelve made it through the first of five grueling, unmarked 20-mile loops. Only four survived the second. And when the fog finally rolled in and soaked the mountain in a cold, greasy misery, even the last ones standing had nothing left to give.
Damian Hall was one of them.
The British ultrarunner — known online as “ultra_damo” and one of the most respected endurance athletes in the world — made it further than almost anyone in the 2026 field before a missing handful of book pages ended his race somewhere deep in a cold ravine on loop three. He walked back to camp, soaked and shivering, to find a crowd waiting to cheer him in.
His reflection, posted to social media after the race, was equal parts self-deprecating and deeply honest.
“I self-pityingly make my way back to camp for an undeserved hero’s welcome. Thank you BM. You always mock and hurt me but you are so very special.”
A Race Designed to Break You
For those unfamiliar, the Barkley Marathons is not a normal race. There are no GPS devices, no mile markers, and no aid stations. Runners navigate by map and compass through dense Tennessee wilderness, climbing a cumulative elevation gain that rivals Everest. To prove they’ve hit each checkpoint, they must tear a specific page from a hidden book buried somewhere on the unmarked course.
Miss a page, and your race is over.
Since the event began in 1986, only 20 people have ever finished all five loops within the 60-hour cutoff. In the race’s 40-year history, there have been no finishers 26 times. The 2026 edition was one of them.
Race director Gary Cantrell — known as “Lazarus Lake” — had already promised to make the course harder after the 2024 race produced a shocking five finishers, including Jasmin Paris, who became the first woman ever to complete it. He kept that promise. The 2026 edition used the same course that produced no finishers in 2025, kicked off on the earliest start date in the race’s history, and featured a new river crossing that Hall cheerfully skipped — going barefoot to keep his shoes dry.
“I like dry toes,” he noted.
The First Loop: A Warning Sign
Hall’s first loop alone told the story of how brutal the conditions had become. His previous opening loops had come in under eight and a half hours. This one took nearly ten.
Only 12 of the 40 starters made it through loop one, a dropout rate among the worst the race has ever seen. In a typical year, roughly 26 runners finish the first loop.
Hall did make it through, along with French runner Sébastien Raichon, who took charge early. The double counter-clockwise start — a new twist this year — had runners moving together in the dark, with book pages being collected efficiently and a rare sense of collective momentum.
“At the beginning everyone is French and pages are hoovered up at will, with Sébastien Raichon mostly at the helm.”
Loop Two: Down to Four
By the end of the second loop, the field had been cut to four: Raichon, Hall, French runner Mathieu Blanchard, and American legend Max King. Coyotes howled in the darkness. One more runner peeled off before they finished.
Hall ate chocolate porridge and went back out at around 4:30 in the morning for loop three, moving clockwise this time — which meant passing other Barkley runners heading the opposite direction, one of the race’s quietly surreal pleasures.
“It’s good to meet Barkers coming the other way.”
When daylight came, Blanchard accelerated away. Hall was encouraged by Raichon to push too, but held back. Raichon eventually passed him again with a more direct line down one of the course’s steepest descents, the Rusty Spoon ravine.
Then the weather moved in.
“It’s wet now, that infamous Barkley fog smothers us, cools us, steals views and greases the ground.”
The Moment It Ended
King and Blanchard both withdrew during loop three. Mathieu Blanchard — one of the strongest mountain runners in the world — called it a day in a ravine. Hall, still hunting for his book pages, found himself in the same ravine shortly after, cold and shaking.
“It’s c-c-colder and I get shivery hunting for my page amid slippery rocks. I’m not sure I’m safe. That might be enough for this time.”
He came in off loop three without all his required pages, which ended any possibility of continuing. Under Barkley’s strict rules, an incomplete loop is a DNF regardless of how close you came.
Raichon was the only runner to finish loop three, crossing the line in 38 hours and five minutes. That was enough for a “Fun Run” — the race’s unofficial designation for completing three loops within 40 hours — but he missed the 36-hour cutoff to begin a fourth loop by over two hours. For the 53-year-old Frenchman, who had won the 268-mile Winter Spine Race just weeks earlier, it was still a remarkable achievement under the circumstances.
Still Processing
As of his post-race reflection, Hall hadn’t fully closed the door on a return.
“Try again? Still processing this one…”
For most runners, being turned inside out by a mountain for the better part of two days, finishing with hypothermia symptoms in a cold ravine, and coming home without completing the race would be enough to call it done. But the Barkley has a strange pull on the people it chooses, and Hall’s tone — grateful, rueful, already a little nostalgic — suggests he hasn’t heard the last conch horn yet.
“I already miss the people. And the sawbriars.”
The sawbriars, for the record, are the thorny vines that tear at runners for every one of those 100-plus miles. If you can miss them, you’re probably going back.
For the full 2026 race breakdown, see our complete 2026 Barkley Marathons results. For a review of the live coverage, visit our 2026 live updates page.
