Barkley Marathon documentary is predictably insane

The Atlantic made a 22 minute documentary about the 2014 Barkley Marathon, a forbidding ultramarathon run through hellaciously hilly Morgan County, Tennessee. It only took the sole finisher in the documentary fifty hours to collapse, nearly give up, and then notice the waving of the tree branches in the wind, but bloody feet and physical annihilation are a small price to pay to star in your own Terence Malick movie in the freezing woods of East Tennessee.

P.S. Bonus points for showing the race’s founder firing up a cigarette the minute the starting bell goes off.