Making a Documentary about the Barkley Marathons
I showed up to the Barkley Marathons with a camera, no contacts, and a lot of nerves…
That’s probably not the recommended way to start documenting one of the most enigmatic races on Earth, but then again, nothing about Barkley follows the rules. I just showed up and tried to figure it out. It’s mysterious, gritty, oddly welcoming, and full of characters. From the yellow gate to the bugle signaling a dropout, every detail of this event is laced with tradition and unpredictability. It’s a race where finishers are rarely seen, and stories are carried more by word-of-mouth than media coverage. My goal was to capture what I could with the limited access we were given, and try not to get in the way.
The first challenge was not having a subject.
No athlete locked in, no plan and I didn’t know a soul. We had flown in on two hours of sleep and landed groggy in Tennessee but I knew the only way this would work was if I started talking to people, quick. That first evening, there was a community potluck set up just beyond the yellow gate in a "no media" zone, and I used that opportunity to meet people as a human, not just a filmmaker. That made all the difference. Over homemade brownies and shared folding chairs, I met a number of folks, most notably Kelly Halpin and Maggie Guterl. Kelly would go on to be the top female runner at the event, and Maggie was crewing for John Kelly, who would later become the only runner to complete the three-loop fun run. Pretty soon, I had two anchors to follow… or at least not feel as awkward about asking to film.
Finding Community at the Barkley Marathons
Kelly Halpin at camp preparing her running vest for the 2025 Barkley Marathons
Thankfully, the Barkley Marathons makes it really easy to continue to find community, which is one of the reasons they keep it secret and don’t publish the dates of the race. They want to protect that summer camp vibe and keeping it small achieves that. Everyone was paired with other athletes and crew and our random campsite pairing brought us next to Maggie and Sean Butler from North Carolina, who offered us kindness, stories, and access to intimate moments like prepping gear and applying chafing cream before the start. Sean ended up getting pretty deep into the course himself. We were in.
For those unfamiliar with Barkley: there is no set start time. The race begins with the blow of a conch shell, which can happen anytime between 11 p.m. and 11 a.m. the next day. Once the conch sounds, runners have exactly one hour to prepare before the race officially begins with a lighting of Laz’s cigarette. Yes, that is how it starts. No music, no countdown clock. Just a puff of smoke and off they go into the Tennessee wilderness.
Because we didn’t know when the conch shell would blow, I stayed up until about 3 a.m. then went to bed since I couldn’t last much longer after almost 24 hours of being awake after traveling. I woke up at 6 to be ready for the conch but it didn’t blow until later that morning, and by the time the race began at 11:37 a.m., most of us around camp were already deep into the exhaustion hole. Still, I always kept my camera in my hand and filmed and photographed the buzz around camp as runners tied shoes, zipped jackets, and made final mental checks.
The Realities of Filming the Barkley Marathon
We were only allowed to film in two locations: the main camp and the fire-tower roughly five miles out from camp. That might sound like enough, but for a multi-loop, 100+ mile event with notoriously brutal terrain, those limitations meant we had to get scrappy. The first day, we hiked up to the firetower to try and catch runners coming up Rat Jaw, one of the steepest sections of the course. But they were slower than anticipated, and with strict filming cutoffs in place, we had to leave before anyone came through. Missed it.
That night, I hung around camp as runners trickled back in from their first loop. Some dropped out, some made the cutoff, and some missed it by heartbreaking margins. Kelly Halpin was one of them. After a strong loop, she arrived back at camp just two minutes too late. After 13hrs and 22 minutes of adventure, she came back as the top female runner in the field making it further than any other women in the race.
With very little sleep again, I was back up the next morning to film the aftermath of loop 1 and got prepped for loop 2. Some runners still hadn’t been accounted for, including our neighbor Sean Butler. His wife Kelly was nervous, and so were the rest of us. Around 8 a.m., word came in that he was hiking and running with a group. Not alone. Not hurt. Just slow. Relief swept over as we figured he was probably just out for an exciting adventure but was safe.
That morning, I tried to film an interview with Carl Laniak, the co-race director, but about ten minutes in, a runner came into camp and we had to pause. We never got the chance to resume it, but even though we only chatted for 10 minutes I think I had enough from that segment to work with in the edit. Later that afternoon, we returned to the firetower and finally caught a few runners. John Kelly and Tomokazu “Tomo” Ihara came up Rat Jaw about 30 minutes apart, pausing briefly to fill up from gallon jugs of water and eat something salty before disappearing back into the woods.
The 2025 Barkley Marathons Documentary I made for Singletrack
My Strategy to Capturing the Chaos
My approach to documentary filmmaking, especially for something like this, isn’t about staging the perfect moment. As much as I love to get the best shots possible, my hope is that I can embed myself just enough into the experience to feel the important emotions and then translate them into something meaningful. I try to reflect the atmosphere, the emotion, the strangeness, the quiet beauty of what's unfolding - not just to show what happened, but to convey what it felt like to be there.
For this race, I wasn’t trying to capture the entire Barkley. I was trying to capture the spirit of it and share some of the stories and magic from this remote event.
Since I couldn’t film on the course beyond those two spots, I made do with what I could. I shot scenes of the forest, focusing on texture and atmosphere. Leaves covering the forest, the shades of brown in tree branches, wind pushing through empty hollows. Anything to capture the feeling of Barkley when you can’t see the runners themselves.
The Final Minutes…
John Kelly tapping himself out at the 2025 Barkley Marathons
That final night was cold and brutal. Rain fell. Winds kicked up. The last two runners had a shot at completing the fun run, which is three loops in under 40 hours. As the deadline crept closer, I huddled under a tent with Lazarus Lake, Carl Laniak and the bugle players, watching the gate. We waited for headlamps. After 3 hours of waiting, it felt impossible. But, this race taught me there’s a very thin line between the impossible and the possible and a strong mind and body can play jump rope with that line.
At 3:20 a.m., John Kelly came down the trail, soggy, exhausted, and carrying all sixteen pages from the course books. He tagged the yellow gate in front of my lens and collapsed. It was a full-circle moment, and it landed hard.
Filming this wasn’t just a job. I treated it as its own endurance event. I was tasked with creating a full documentary, plus photos and short-form social content, all within hours of the race ending. I slept maybe six hours total over three days. Ate bananas on the trail. Charged computer and camera batteries from the van. Edited on the plane home. Released a 19-minute documentary less than five days after the race.
Personal Reflection on the Experience
I don’t know if it’s my best film, but I know it’s honest. I know it reflects what I saw and what I saw wasn’t just a test of endurance. It was a gathering of people who love doing hard things, not for glory, but for the sake of trying. It was friendships made over headlamps and hot drinks. It was strangers becoming friends at three in the morning.
That’s what I’ll remember. Not the finishing times, but the spirit of the thing. The idea that if we unplug from the noise, walk into the woods, and chase something with other people who love it as much as we do, something beautiful happens. And maybe that’s what Barkley really is.
People call the Barkley Marathons a social experiment to test the limits of human endurance. But maybe the real joy is what happens when you unplug, go into the woods, and share stories under a canopy of trees.
When you realize the best part of pushing yourself is not succeeding, but who you meet along the way.
Let’s Connect
Roo is a Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Boulder, Colorado but travels all around the world for his filmmaking career. He has directed documentaries for Patagonia in California, produced films for Outside Magazine throughout Europe and Africa, camera operated for Netflix in the Rocky Mountain West, photographed among indigenous communities in South America, and has received notable recognition in the outdoor industry for his work telling uplifting stories in the outdoor space.