On Friday, the notorious Gary Cantrell (a.k.a. Lazarus Lake), creator of the Barkley Marathons, halted his cross-America trek due to health issues. He made it as far as Foyil, Oklahoma, the town where his father grew up. “A fitting end. Lazarus Lake, at 69, walked 1,700 miles,” author and ultrarunner Jared Beasley (and one of Laz’s crew members) wrote on Instagram.
Laz began the journey in early April, in the wake of perhaps the most successful Barkley Marathons ever (the race had five finishers, including the first woman and the first Canadian). Entitled “Lazcon 2024,” the trip was a reprise of his previous Lazcon, accomplished in 2018 (east to west, like the current trip, but traveling a different route). Laz started in Delaware and was heading toward San Francisco, with the hopes of reaching it on Aug. 26. The original goal was around 3,000 miles, or 4,800 km—Laz’s total mileage on Friday was just over 1,700 miles, or 2,785 km.
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Despite having to halt the journey early, Laz, now 70, expressed hope of returning to complete the walk. “How I can come back and pick up where I have left off. If I cannot finish this journey in one piece, can it be done in several?” Lake wrote on Facebook. “Our journey is not over until we have no more goals. and I am not yet ready to sit at home and wait to die.”
Laz is a longtime smoker (the Barkley is famous for starting when Laz lights a cigarette, an hour after blowing the conch) and battles numerous health issues, including a 90 percent blockage in a carotid artery. During his walk, he turned to Facebook daily, sharing philosophical reflections on life, his surroundings and the challenges he faced.
After the walk, Laz revealed that his limited access to daily news and world events profoundly shifted his perspective on the world:
everywhere i went people loved their home
they had good relationships with their neighbors.
they thought they lived in a great place.
but the rest of the country was in a mess…
.
because they read every day what a mess it is in.
.
stop believing that crap!
.
it is changing.
i has always changed.
that is what the world does
and always will.
sometimes things dont turn out the way we thought they would
but they pretty much always turn out the way they should.
life is like a journey run.
you may have a plan on a map.
but every day you have to adjust your plan to the reality on the ground.
.
here is the truth no one seems to want to tell you:
you live in the best place there is
in the best time there ever was to be there.
