The wait is over for surely the most eagerly anticipated book release around ultrarunning.
Lazarus Lake – real name Gary Cantrell – is the enigmatic creator of arguably the sport’s most feared yet celebrated event, the Barkley Marathons. Just 20 people have finished in it’s near 40-year history, including Jasmin Paris who became the first woman to do so in 2024.
Books hidden in the woods for runners to find, the blowing of a conch, followed by Laz lighting a cigarette to get it started make it a race that really is like no other.
And he’s also the genius behind Big’s Backyard Ultra which has led to a global phenomenon and an upcoming World Championship at Laz’s home in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, next month.
But relatively little is known about the man who was inducted into the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame in 2023 – indeed sometimes it can be hard to decipher whether the information out there is fact or fiction.
He really came to global recognition in 2014 thanks to the Netflix documentary ‘The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young’ and has been labelled everything from a ‘bearded saint’ to the ‘Leonardo da Vinci of pain’.
So today’s (Tuesday 16th September) publication of the first authorised biography is hugely significant and here at RUN247 we’ve been speaking to both Laz himself and author Jared Beasley about ‘The Endurance Artist: Lazarus Lake, The Barkley, and a Race with No End’.
Pushing the boundaries
The first thing to say is it’s a tour de force from New York Times and Guardian journalist Beasley and multi-layered, not least in his own journey into making it a reality.
We’ll be reviewing it later this week and that will be followed in the coming weeks with features and insights from Laz around those two key creations – the Barkley and Big’s.
But the book is about so much more than those races and has been pieced together brilliantly from hundreds of hours of chats and interviews with Laz and his family and friends.
It charts some of the very early and unorthodox races which would be the precursors to the Barkley and Big’s – and the rationale and mindset behind them, whether that’s pushing the boundaries of human endurance or what it means to succeed or fail.
And Laz’s role – so often portrayed as fiendish – is actually something very, very different.
‘It’s not really about you’
The first question when we sat down with Laz and Jared for over an hour was a simple one – why has it taken so long for a first authorised biography of a man for whom books have been such an integral part of his life?
“I had never thought about it in the past,” says Laz. “My philosophy of race directing is that the race director sets up a venue for people to find greatness in themselves. It’s really not about you. You step into the background when someone does something good.
“You don’t run and stick your head in front of the guy so that you’re on camera. You ease into the background unnoticeably because your success is actually other people’s success.”
Laz then confesses he hasn’t yet read the finished version – though it’s clear he’s not exactly been hands off.
He told us: “During the writing of it, I firstly went through trying to make sure that things were accurate. And secondly, that there was nothing in there I would still be arrested or killed for!
“It’s like half of me hopes no one recognises who the book is about, while the other half hopes that Jared’s book is a huge success because he’s put a lot of himself into it. I’m not quite sure that that’s compatible!”
Parallel universe
Laz makes a fascinating subject – but also a seriously challenging one for Beasley, who had to overcome many tests en route, not unlike one of Laz’s races.
But as he tells us now: “I knew how private a person he was really, and that it meant a lot to him. So I made a promise with him that once I got the manuscript in reasonable shape to where I’m sending it to the publisher, I’m going to run it by you because I want you to be comfortable with what’s in there.
“That doesn’t mean that he wanted everything that’s in there – but equally there wasn’t one subject Laz wasn’t willing to talk about. There was never anything that I asked that he said, no, I don’t want to go there.
“People do want to know about those missing pieces in Laz’s story and they want to know more about his races.
“But there’s this odd parallel in that you’re going to get scraped in whatever it is that you do that’s connected to his races unless you make the effort yourself to prepare, ask, research and try to dig these things up.
“He wasn’t going to just give me everything – but without his full co-operation, I wouldn’t have started it. I told him that at the beginning.
“And then he said nobody will ever publish it! And I agreed with him as at the time it seemed impossible. It took numerous meetings, numerous rejections to get a publisher. But I kept going back to the proposal, rewriting it.
“I kept going back to certain chapters, the early chapters of the book, rewriting it, thinking about how I wanted to structure the book.
“I now feel like if I had just gotten what I wanted and I was asking for in the beginning then it would have been a much worse book. I would have missed out if it hadn’t been for all the failures and the rejections that I went through along the way.”
Not just about the ‘Golden Ticket’
All of which will sound very familiar to fans of the Barkley, which is often compared to films like ‘Fight Club’ or ‘The Blair Witch Project’.
But what comes through in the book is more nuanced. I suggest to Beasley it’s more ‘Field of Dreams’ – at least in the context of ‘if you build it, he / they will come’. And while he nods at that, he reckons the best parallel is ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’, pointing out that it’s not just about finding the Golden Ticket, but also needing to pass the subsequent test of character.
He continued: “I think the big takeaway for me was one of the very first things he said to me when I came to Little Dog’s Backyard Ultra, in what I guess was one of his tests before I got a press pass for the Barkley and Big’s. He said, ‘you can go a lot farther than you think you can’.
“I think writing this book has made me a more patient person, learning to let things happen – I don’t think you can force anything with Laz.
“And that has stuck with me because it applies to much more than just running. Whatever we do – anything from being a father, or a dog owner or a writer.
“I think we’re all capable of much more. And we leave a lot in the tank. And his races really bring out that quality in other people, seeing people push beyond their perceived limits.”
The early reaction to the book has been fantastic and we couldn’t recommend it highly enough but even in the course of our conversation about the Barkley, the treasure trove of information from Laz underlines the scale of Beasley’s project.
I’d asked Laz about this year’s Barkley and rookies latching onto race veterans for as long as they could and he chuckled as he recounted a tale from the past when one of the more naive runners was cut loose.
Jared jumped in and said: “Jonathan, this story here is a perfect example of one of the problems of writing a book and then feeling that you’re satisfied with the book. That’s the first time I’ve heard that story!
“I think we were a year into doing the book and then a friend of mine says, you know that Laz was shot in a marathon – but he kept going and finished the marathon?
“I said to him, no, you’ve got to be kidding me. I would know that. I’m writing a book on it. I’ve been talking with him three, four times a week, at least a couple hours at a time. And so my friend then sent me two newspaper articles which said ‘Gary Cantrell shot at marathon’.
“And I called Laz right away. I said, hey, man, what about this story about you getting shot? He goes, oh, you didn’t know that?”
It’s wonderful that thanks to Beasley that story and many, many others are now being shared with a wider audience.
And don’t for a minute think this is ‘just’ a running book. Laz’s races are a canvas for everything from possible versus impossible, what makes us quit, failure – and ultimately going the extra yard.
‘The Endurance Artist: Lazarus Lake, The Barkley, and a Race with No End’ is published by 80/20 Publishing.
We will be reviewing it later this week.
And then we’ll feature our interview with Laz, discussing all things Barkley as well as looking ahead to the Backyard Ultra World Championship from 18th October.
