Laz Lake, the Mind Behind Barkley, Walks Across America for a Third Time

Lazarus Lake, the cult-favorite race director who built the Barkley Marathons into the most notorious ultra in the sport, has finished walking across the United States again. He arrived at the Pacific shoreline on Saturday morning, May 30, 2026, completing what he is calling his third walk across America and his second full coast-to-coast Transcon.

Lake ended the journey at Baker’s Beach, just below the Golden Gate Bridge. Friend and chronicler Jared Beasley, who has tracked the walk online under the hashtag #lazcon, posted that Lake “stuck his cattle prod in the Pacific” to mark the finish. The cattle prod, an old Laz trademark, has stood in as walking stick, signpost and prop throughout the trip.

In a message released as he reached the ocean, Lake offered his own version of a famous surrender speech from the Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph.

hear me my friends
my feet are sick and sad
from where the sun now stands
i will walk no more
forever
apologies to chief joseph

The original 1877 line, “I will fight no more forever,” is one of the most quoted speeches in American history. Lake’s substitution of a single word landed quickly with the running community that has followed his miles since the walk began.

Beasley, who posts as @DbJared, had alerted fans the day before that Lake would reach the Golden Gate Bridge around 7 a.m. on May 29, and he urged anyone joining the final stretch to keep their distance. “The Geezer is expected at 0700 at the Golden Gate Bridge,” he wrote. “Be sure to give him space. He can bite.”

A small crowd turned up anyway. A later photograph from Olle Berg, who has documented much of the trek, showed Lake at Baker’s Beach with a chocolate drink in hand, the Pacific behind him. Among those following along, the mood was a mix of awe and envy. “I sooo wish I could be there,” one fan, Bridget, replied to Beasley’s post. Another, Mick, wrote, “would love to see a documentary on his walk.”

A finish years in the making

For readers who have followed the saga, the Pacific arrival closes a journey that has stretched across multiple summers. Laz first ended a Trans-America attempt in Foyil, Oklahoma, in 2024 after 1,716 miles, when health issues forced him off the road. He picked the walk back up in 2025, then extended the effort further as more setbacks pushed his timeline. Saturday’s finish at the Golden Gate puts a cap on that long stretch of miles.

The other side of the Barkley

For runners who know Lake mostly through Barkley, the long walk is the other side of the same coin. The race, held each spring in Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, is a roughly 100-mile course with around 60,000 feet of elevation gain, a 60-hour cutoff, and a finisher list short enough to fit on a single page after nearly four decades of the event. Lake, who was inducted into the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame, has spent decades building a race that chews up the world’s best ultrarunners, including at this year’s “Massacre” edition.

The walks, by contrast, are slow, daily, and largely solitary. They are not a race. They are Lake on foot, in his own time, getting from one side of the country to the other. This trip was his third such expedition and his second to cross the entire continent. He has not announced what comes next. After Saturday’s note from the beach, he may not need to. The cattle prod is in the Pacific, and as far as the official #lazcon updates go, the walk is, for now, complete.