Thomas Grinovich does. Another participant in the race tried to cross Highway 72 with McCoy. One moment, he said, McCoy was near his left shoulder, halfway across the dark, wide road. The next, a headlamp, the roar of an engine, then a horrible, bulging kiss.
“When I get the flashbacks,” he said, “that sound is what I hear.”
On June 18, McCoy and Grinovich were among the 66 runners leaving West Memphis, Ark., For the inaugural run of the Heart of the South Road Race, the brainchild of Gary Cantrell, known worldwide as Lazarus Lake. .
Since the mid-1980s, Cantrell, a bearded, comb-smoking ultra-runner from Tennessee, has been making some of the hottest events in the world. His leagues are more trips than races, which many rounds never end. In the past three decades, only 15 people have completed Cantrell’s Barkley Marathons, a 100-mile (100 km) venture across unmarked terrain in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Tennessee.
As ultra-running – each race longer than a 26.2-mile marathon – has become more popular, the sport’s hard-core practitioners have pushed the boundaries of sport and human endurance. Races that span several 200 miles over several days are no longer uncommon.
Catastrophic injuries and collisions with cars are rare in ultra-running, although the sensation of appalling death – from exposure, exhaustion, dehydration or even an encounter with a bear, a mountain sledge, a rattlesnake or rapid traffic – may be part of the profession. But McCoy’s accident, crossing a highway after five endless days of running, raises the question of whether this race was a test of rigor or of indifference.
