More crucible than race, the Barkley Marathons in the hostile backwoods of Tennessee remains the world\u2019s toughest footrace, where change, adaptation and the struggle to survive play out<\/p>\n
A month before the 2025 Barkley Marathons, Lazarus Lake is out on his daily eight-mile stroll along the rural roads near his Bell Buckle, Tennessee home. Pausing mid-step, he fixes his gaze on a vine creeping onto the asphalt \u2013 kudzu, the invasive scourge of the American South. Laz pins it with the toe of his worn-out shoe, then crushes it with a sharp twist. Pop<\/em>. \u201cNature isn\u2019t about balance,\u201d he says, kicking the remains aside. \u201cThat\u2019s a common misconception \u2013 it\u2019s war.\u201d<\/p>\n Frozen Head State Park, where he\u2019s held the Barkley since 1986<\/a>, has managed to fight off this botanical kraken \u2013 so far. Introduced from Japan in the 1930s to combat soil erosion, kudzu earned its reputation as \u201cthe plant that ate the South\u201d by swallowing entire forests, abandoned houses, and telephone poles at a pace of up to a foot per day. The government once paid farmers to plant it; now they pay them even more to destroy it.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More crucible than race, the Barkley Marathons in the hostile backwoods of Tennessee remains the world\u2019s toughest footrace, where change, adaptation and the struggle to survive play out A month before the 2025 Barkley Marathons, Lazarus Lake is out on his daily eight-mile stroll along the rural roads near his Bell Buckle, Tennessee home. Pausing … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}