Of the 40 starters, only Nick and one other were left.Ī runner faces down Testicle Spectacle, one of Barkley’s brutal climbs With less than 10 hours left before the 60-hour cutoff, Nick needed to hustle. Runners were on their own in some of the nastiest terrain east of the Mississippi for 20 miles at a time. There were no aid stations doling out hot pasta or saccharine cookies.
Of the 10 or so climbs in the race, the water station at the top of Rat Jaw-just a few gallon jugs on a table-was the only place we could watch him on the course. As Nick’s girlfriend, I was crewing for him along with his mother, Marina Parenti, and his father, Troy Hollon. Nick, of San Diego, California, was on the fifth and final loop of Barkley, a notoriously difficult 100-mile race through Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee. Earlier, he had dipped his fingers into the clayish Tennessee mud and rubbed it across his face, his arms and his chest, thinking it was “Barkley blood.” Semi-delusional after 50 non-stop hours of running through damp, hilly forests at the 2013 Barkley Marathons, Nickademus Hollon imagined he could do physical harm to the grueling race. “Barkley,” he yelled, “you have taken my blood, my pride and my strength and left me nothing.” He pulled himself, step by step, up the hill.
He was naked from the waist up, except for the worn yellow pack, sticky and wet with old gels and half-eaten bags of rice, clinging to his shoulders. Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!Ī mud-covered, briar-scratched 22-year-old man, his hair adorned with burrs, pulled himself up Rat Jaw, a slick, steep slope of thorns and damp grass.
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