Sean Blanton on a disputed call at Georgia Death Race, and the state of the sport

The 2019 Georgia Death Race produced a race-director decision that a lot of people had opinions about, including the host of this show, who disagreed with it. Rather than write it up, he got Sean Blanton — the RD in question, of Run Bum Tours — on a call and argued it out.

The rule question

Underneath the specific incident is a question ultrarunning has never settled: what happens when a runner does not cover the exact course. Not cheating, not shortcutting deliberately — the ordinary case where markings are missed, a turn is taken wrong, and a runner ends up having run a different route, usually a longer one.

Some races treat the course as an absolute: everyone runs the same ground or they are not ranked. The episode cites precedents in both directions, including a well-known case where a runner who took a loop the wrong way was sent back to run it correctly, and another where a runner was disqualified for following the wrong trail. Published race rules — including those of the biggest races in the sport — tend to be silent on whether intent matters.

Nobody is convinced by the other. They say so and move on, which is the useful part. The disagreement stays a disagreement.

Everything after that

The remaining hour is a wide-ranging conversation between two people who run things and talk for a living:

• Barkley, and what makes its rules legible when they are barely written down
• sponsorship, and what the money is actually buying at the level below the top ten athletes
• podcasts, media, and the coverage the sport gets versus the coverage it deserves
• the East Coast ultra scene, which by 2019 had grown well past its old reputation
• skydiving, at some length, for no defensible reason
• the wild ponies at Grayson Highlands 50k, which are exactly as much of a factor as they sound

Note

The original recording was unedited and profane throughout. That was the point of it.