The blue gives the more reckless approach: a faster expected finishing time, but a long tail to the right past the 60 hour cutoff due to the added risk.

If we model the finish time as a Gaussian (any good engineer knows we can assume that everything is Gaussian), then we can see two of these risk/speed choices below. The faster of a runner you are, the more of a buffer you have that can be used for minimizing risk. For many of these the choice ranges from charging ahead to maximize your expected speed or proceeding with a bit of caution to minimize risk. Barkley has a multitude of places where disaster can be waiting. My strategy has evolved quite a bit over the past three years, and the name of the game this year was something that I took away from studying Jared Campbell’s race reports: disaster avoidance. If they weren’t, then I’d work with someone else and you’d see them here instead. They make great products that I’ve found are the best for me.

Parts of this might seem like plugs for my partners, but there’s a reason I work with these companies. This post is meant to give a small glimpse into my Barkley strategy, gear, and nutrition choices this year. If you’d like to revisit anything else related to the 2017 Barkley you can find it at the Barkley Archive. I was done with Barkley posts, but this is one that I told quite a few people I would make and hopefully it will answer a number of the questions I’ve received.

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