When the conch goes to signal to the runners that they have an hour to the start of this year’s Barkley Marathons one of the first things they’ll do as the clock starts ticking is go and grab a watch.
For unlike nearly every other big race – or training run for that matter – they can’t wear their usual GPS-enabled smart / sport watch.
Instead it’s “a cheap Walmart” device that they’ve never seen before…
‘It’s map and compass time’
So before the race has even begun, race creator Lazarus Lake sets them another Barkley puzzle to solve as he explained in a fascinating post on his Facebook page recently.
He said: “In the Barkley Marathons the athletes are not allowed to rely on technology. It is map and compass time.
“But they need to know the time to make cutoffs so each runner is issued a cheap Walmart watch set to race time on 24 hour mode.
“This means they can look at their watch, and if it reads 7:00 they are 7 hours into the run, and have 5 hours left to finish the loop on 12-hour pace.”
The race start time is within a 12-hour window from midnight to midday which is kept secret from the runners, explaining why the watch collection comes so close to the start of the race.
Laz added: “The runners pick up their watches after the conch sounds and before the starting cigarette. You can’t collect them any earlier, because it would give away the starting time.
“They come up to the kowalski manor after the conch sounds and select one of a stack of identical watch boxes and that is their watch!”
One watch is a ‘ticking time bomb’
But there’s another important twist.
Going into more detail on the available watches, Laz revealed: “Some watches have nothing on the screen but the time in HUGE numbers. Others have busy watch faces with 19 kinds of information the runner could care less about and the time is hidden in a tiny box in tiny numbers… but the tiny number watches are merely a nuisance.
“The ticking time bomb in the stack of watch boxes is the box containing the “touch screen” watch.
“Because touch screen might be the worst idea in watchmaking. Every time something gets close to the screen it changes something. Maybe just the display. Maybe the mode. But resetting it is an ever-present danger and once it starts resetting itself you will never know the correct time again!
“Last year it took two of us 40 minutes to set the touchscreen watch. Then we put it carefully in its box to never be touched again until it was awarded to some poor, unlucky soul.”
But as Laz admits, maybe it’s a generation thing: “Probably an 8 year old could make the watch work by instinct. But for old people it is a nightmare.
“So the question is, what is the winning strategy? You have an hour to collect your watch that you will rely on for the next two and a half days.
Do you hurry to be first in line and pick a watch when there is only a one in 40 chance of drawing the touch screen? Or do you wait until later, in hopes someone else gets it first?
“What would you do?
