A man who completed a gruelling 58 hours in a hellish marathon still has same recurring nightmare.
The Barkley Marathon is an exhausting 100 miles long and features 60,000 feet of ascents and descents.
Essentially the equivalent of running up and down Mount Everest twice, it’s practically designed to be impossible to complete.
The rules make it difficult enough to even apply for the ‘human sacrifice’ and beforehand runners are presented with a cake that reads: “Good luck, morons.”
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Once the runners finally get the go-ahead that the race has begun, they have 60 hours to complete the hellish Marathon – with only 17 out of 1,000 having successfully done it since 1986.
British runner Jasmin Paris recently became the first woman to complete the sadistic torture race - with less than 100 seconds to spare.
And last year, Aurélien Sanchez became one of the few men to ever cross the finish line of the Barkley Marathon – the first Frenchman to do so.
He completed all five loops of the Barkley between 14 and 16 March in over 58 hours.
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But the hellish race has had lasting effects as he told CNN that he’s ‘still having nightmares’.
“I'm still having nightmares." Sanchez said. "I’m dreaming that I’m in my fifth loop but not focused anymore. I’m lost in the forest, it’s dark and I’m waking up in a panic because I know I’m not focused, and I need to be focused to finish.”
Before the electrical engineer’s year of the Marathon, there hadn’t been any finishers since 2017.
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The brainchild of Gary Cantrell, it seems unsurprising Sanchez is having recurring nightmares about the race after being left to fend for themselves with a map and compass.
Barkley Marathon’s route is totally unmarked and checkpoints are unmanned with runners having to rip out pages from paperback books matching their bib number to prove they made it.
And according to Sanchez, navigating your way round the course is the most difficult.
"You really have to learn the course during the race,” he said.
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"There are some sections that are really difficult to remember and to know perfectly. I still struggled in the fifth loop to get around and made a lot of mistakes."
When 40-year-old Paris completed the loops around Frozen Head State Park last week, she collapsed at the finish line.
She told the BBC: "I only had like a few minutes to get up that hill. So I ended up sprinting at the end of the end of 60 hours of burning through the forest, which felt really hard."
She’d attempted the challenging race three times before this year and it ‘still hasn’t really sunk in’ that she’s done it.
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"This year I had a strong feeling in the months of training and run up to the race that I could do it. Those final moments have redefined for me what I am capable of." she said.
Well, rather them than us but you know, kudos.
Featured Image Credit: Instagram/aurelien_sanchez_Topics: Health, US News, World News