Maggie Gigandet | The Atavist Magazine | June 2024 issue | 1,712 words (6 min)
This is an excerpt from Issue #152, “The Extra Mile.”
One hundred and twenty runners stood in a clearing overlooking the Mississippi River, listening to a man with a curly gray beard ribbing them. He checked his watch, an unlit cigarette dangling from his finger. “You’ve got 30 seconds,” he told the crowd. “You don’t have time to change your mind.”
Over the next 10 days, these ultramarathoners would walk 314 miles, starting in a clearing in southeastern Missouri, taking a ferry across the river, disembarking in Kentucky, traversing a narrow corner of the state, crossing Tennessee and finishing at The Rock, a ranch cliff in north Georgia. “Don’t forget, the earliest dropout was at the Tennessee border,” the bearded man said. Someone in the crowd yelled, “I can run faster than that.” Everyone laughed. The Tennessee-Kentucky border is less than 10 miles apart.
Apart from catching the ferry, participants had to run or walk every inch of the course. Most wore hats to protect their faces from the July sun and carried small backpacks with water and other essentials. Some participants stood with crew members who resupplied them along the course. Runners without crew members were called “screwed” runners. Barcelona was one of them.
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Todd and Allison Barcelona are 57 and 55, respectively, and together they’ve completed 20 ultramarathons. Allison stood with her hands clasped in front of her polka-dot running skirt. Todd had slept very little last night because of the stress, and he was feeling a little sick. But the evidence of his grit and the battles he’d fought all his life was etched into his skin: a jagged indentation on his lower left shin.
“Five seconds,” the bearded man warned, as a wall of dark clouds obscured the pale pink sunrise behind him.
At exactly 7:30 a.m., the man held a cigarette to his lips, lit it, cupped the flame with his left hand to protect it from the wind, then tilted his head back and exhaled the smoke.
“Let’s go!” he announced.
The cheering crowd surged forward. The final Volunteer State Road Race of 2023 had begun.
Todd and Alison’s story begins with the makings of a sweet country song. They went to the same elementary and high school in Memphis, with Alison a year younger than Todd. When their friendship blossomed into romance, Todd asked Alison to go out with him. Alison asked Todd where he wanted to go, a fact he still teases her about to this day.
While dating, they mostly chose to stay home and save money for the future. Alison’s parents joked that they were “16 and 30.” Alison left school a year early to be with Todd, and they graduated together in 1984. Three years later, they were married; Alison was 19 and Todd was 21.
The Barcelonas had a daughter in 1988, another daughter about a year later, and a son in 1991. After moving to Atoka, a small town about 40 miles north of Memphis, Allison gave birth to their youngest child, Ashley, while Allison worked full-time as a paralegal and Todd worked as a line mechanic at a Cadillac dealership.
In his mid-40s, Todd was diagnosed with high cholesterol. To avoid medication, he made lifestyle changes. He bought a treadmill and started running. At first, he didn’t enjoy it, but he grew to like it, and after a while, he started jogging outdoors.
Eventually, Todd started competing in races. He enjoyed the camaraderie with the other runners. He was proud of the finisher’s medal he received. On August 31, 2014, Todd ran the marathon in Tupelo, Mississippi. His goal was to finish in under five hours. He achieved that with about ten minutes to spare. Allison ran the half marathon at the same time.
Whether racing or training, the Barcelona brothers usually ran separately. Alisson liked to run with friends, while Todd liked to run alone. This relationship might have remained the same for a long time, had it not been for what happened on September 29, 2014.
Todd and Alison kept in touch while at work. That afternoon, Alison called Todd to let him know that Ashley, the only person at home in Barcelona, would not be going to her guitar lesson as planned. When Todd didn’t answer the phone, Alison assumed he was still at work. However, after a while, she looked at the clock and realized it was almost 6:30 and became worried. Todd always called before 6 o’clock.
When their friendship blossomed into romance, Todd invited Allison to go with him. Allison asked Todd where he wanted to go, and he still teases her about it.
With Ashley standing next to her at the kitchen table, Allison called her husband again, this time with a male voice she didn’t recognize. She still remembers how it felt when her husband heard a stranger’s voice on the phone: “I don’t want anyone else to go through this.”
The man asked Allison who he was, but she didn’t answer and asked him the same question over and over again. The man said he was a Tennessee Highway Patrolman and that Todd had been in an accident. He was at the hospital in downtown Memphis. Allison began to feel sick.
Allison hung up the phone and turned to Ashley. “Your dad’s been in an accident. We have to go,” she said. Ashley didn’t say anything, and mother and daughter got in the car and drove off.
As Allison drove, she and Ashley both cried. They began to plead aloud to God. “God, please keep him here,” Allison prayed. “Please don’t let this be the way he dies.” She later recalled, “I told God I couldn’t survive on my own. … We still needed Todd.”
On the way to the hospital, Allison tried to take the Austin Peay Highway to Memphis, but the road was closed, not knowing that it was because of what had happened to Todd.
After disembarking the ferry, the Barcelona family walked up a ramp onto a two-lane road, past a blue sign that read “Welcome to Kentucky,” rounded a curve, and passed fields of ripe corn. The ultramarathon, also known as Bol State, or LAVS, weaves through urban and rural areas, with varying terrain that can be flat or steep.
The Barcelona brothers, like most of the race’s participants, started out on foot, because speed is not a key factor in success in the Vol State. With so much distance to cover, most racers have little to gain by running ahead and exhausting themselves. What matters in the Vol State is the ability to keep going, step by step, for hours and days. “Many fail,” explains the race’s promotional website. “But those who have a will of steel and who muster the tenacity to overcome impossible obstacles… [it] It can be a transcendental experience.”
Still, participants must manage their pace: race rules require that Vol State be completed within 10 days. Every day at 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., runners must check in by phone and report their mileage. A spreadsheet tracks the runners’ progress, and among the names on the document, one always stands out: Oprah. That’s the nickname for the minimum pace (15.7 miles every 12 hours) that runners must maintain to stay in the race. Every morning and night, Oprah advances to the top of the spreadsheet, and those below her must hurry or risk disqualification.
The Oprah-like eccentricity is one of many eccentricities attributed to the bearded man at the starting line, the founder of Volunteer State University. Even the official name of the ultramarathon, “Last Annual Volunteer State Road Race,” is an inside joke. Amused by race directors confident in their long-term prospects declaring their inaugural event the “First Annual,” Volunteer State University’s founder decided to name his event the last one (the race has now been held for over 40 years). The founder once explained why he decided to call the lowest pace Oprah: “She’s real life: the world of celebrities and politics and ‘luxury.'” In other words, she symbolizes the world runners are leaving behind when they join Volunteer State University.
Even the founder’s name has a strange story behind it. Born Gary Cantrell, he started using Lazarus Lake online a few years ago for privacy reasons. Now better known by his self-adopted nickname, Laz, for short, he’s a legend in the ultramarathon world, a showman who captivates his dedicated fanbase with long, tough, and uniquely designed races.
As the Barcelonas and other runners raced toward Hickman, Kentucky, the first town on the Borough route, they saw a box van approaching. It was a wagon loaded with meat, another race staple driven by a woman named Jean. If the runners fell too far behind Oprah or their willpower weakened, they called Jean and waited for her to pull them off the course. For now, Jean ran alongside the crowd, a harbinger of the runners’ biggest obstacle: the temptation to quit. So she honked the horn and kept going.
The Barcelona brothers chatted with two other runners as they entered Hickman. Todd stopped to take a photo of a black-and-white mural of Mark Twain, who once described Hickman as “a beautiful town on a beautiful hill.” Twain’s beautiful-town feel was still apparent in the decorative brick and keyhole doors of the buildings along Hickman’s Main Street, but few of the neighborhoods were inhabited. One once-popular hotel stood out for its horseshoe-shaped entrance and windows that ran the length of the facade. Painted above the door was the name of the now-closed hotel, “Laclede.”
Time and creativity were poured into constructing Hickman, and now it is gone.
On that life-changing afternoon, Todd was driving home from work in his sky blue 1994 GMC Sierra truck, which he’d bought used with the suspension lowered to the ground and no airbags.
Todd was traveling north approaching the intersection of Austin Peay Highway and Old Brownsville Road. A Shell gas station, crop fields and trees filled the view. The light ahead turned yellow and he proceeded through the intersection. At the same time, a gray Honda Accord traveling south made a left turn at the light but failed to yield the right-of-way. The Accord struck Todd’s truck in a near head-on collision.