The Barkley Marathon...
This iconic ultra race is infamous, held in Frozen Head State Park in Eastern Tennessee. If you aren't familiar with this race, look it up on Netflix, google it, heck find any ultra runner and ask them about it. The race was inspired by a jail break in 1977. The first race was held in 1986, and there have been only 21 finishers. It's wild, and extremely difficult, 100 miler that has a 60 hour cut off. The start begins at this famous yellow gate in Eion's picture above, signaled by blowing a conch shell and when the Race Director known as Laz Lake, lights his cigarette. Just getting into the race is crazy hard. Participants span the globe, including our new friend from Dublin, Ireland, Eoin Keith.
Eoin has quite the ultra resume. You can google him, and be immersed in the incredible accomplishments, articles and world records this guy has. He is a Columbia Sportswear sponsored athlete.
"He’s gone without sleep for 52 hours, set the world record for running the length of Ireland, come first in ‘The Spine’, Britain’s most brutal running race, covering 431km in 95 hours 23 minutes, but Eoin Keith only ran his first marathon at 30 years old…In the world of ultrarunning the Columbia ambassador, who is currently the Irish record holder for 6-day running, 24-hour track and 48-hour road running, is a living legend.His mantra is ‘just go and do it’."-RSNG Magazine
Bottom Line, Eoin knows what he is talking about, travels the world to compete at the highest levels and stumbles upon Salty Britches.
While competing in this past weekend's Barkley marathon, he was crewed by Jeremy Kaiding, yet another incredible Ultra athlete that we are proud to know and uses and trusts Salty Britches. Oh doesn't God put people where they need to be... Jeremy, we are grateful you are a part of our team for all sorts of reasons!
With Eoin's permission, I am going to share his message to us because it's just fantastic to hear our little Salty Britches made such a difference. Our goal is to rid the world of chafing and blisters so we can all do what we do longer and without distractions!
"Salty Britches seemed to work really well for me on the Barkley. I've had some painful butt issues in some of my more recent big races, so I used it from the start to try to prevent those from recurring. I had no issues at all during the Barkley, so that was a great result. I slathered my feet with run goo before the start (I've found it works well), but could feel some blistering potentially starting towards the end of my first lap after 12 hours. I applied Salty britches to my feet before heading out for lap 2. There was no further deterioration of my feet. So I was very impressed with SB. It's always hard to say that the absence of problems was a result of using something, but I'd be convinced enough to say that the chances are very high that it helped in a big way. So much so that I asked Jeremy for whatever supplies he was willing and able to let me travel home with. It was also much easier to apply than Nut Butter. In fact, I didn't even use Nut Butter on the race as a result. SB was simply a better product on all fronts from my point of view."
BOOM! Pretty awesome for a Mama that was just trying to help her kiddo enjoy swimming in the ocean. Yep, our people are finding us, and how awesome to say it started at the Barkley Marathon! Before you know it, we will get Laz wearing our Salty Britches hat (wink!).