Barkley Pre-Race Stats 2025

I love the Barkley, it’s why I started dabbling in data journalism in the first place. I will sporadically be posting some updates to my bluesky, but Substack seems better for long form content.

Finn shared this quote on his podcast a few weeks ago, and I keep thinking about it. It’s a quote from 2009 Barkley finisher Andrew Thompson:

Remember the Sunrise/Sunset principle. All things in life exist on a curve. When conditions are at their worst, the hill is at its steepest, the miles are furthest from the finish, remember that any improvement regardless of size or scale or outcome, is an improvement nonetheless, and instantly makes progress easier. Nothing in life becomes exponentially more difficult; all things exist on a curve. If it easy, it will become hard; if it is hard, it will become easy.

Andrew Thompson, https://www.mattmahoney.net/barkley/2005/concepts.html

Super powerful; make sure to read all of Andrew’s Concepts for Success at Barkley for 3 Loops and Beyond.

Ok, anyway, on to the analytics. With the help of Taka, I’ve analyzed historical finish times for each loop on the Barkley (1998 onward; Taka has data back to 1995, but 1996 and 1997 record keeping was a bit screwy), and came up with these summary tables, suggesting a runner’s likelihood of finish given their time for completing Barkley loops.

Likelihood of Finishing, Based on Loop 1 Performance

Runners have 13 hours, 20 minutes to complete the first loop. However, no runner has completed the Barkley if they finished the first loop after 9.5 hours. (Many fun runners, however, came in after 9:30.) Only 3.8% of runners who complete loop 1 actually complete the Barkley.

Likelihood of Finishing, Based on Loop 2 Performance

Runners have 26 hours, 40 minutes to complete the second loop, if they want to keep going until the end. However, no runner who has finished the second loop over 22 hours has ever completed the Barkley. Only 11.2% of runners who complete loop 2 actually complete the Barkley.

Likelihood of Finishing, Based on Loop 3 Performance

Runners have 36 hours to complete loop 3, if they want to go onto loop 4. (However, if they don’t complete loop 3 under 36 hours, they still have 40 hours to try and complete a “fun run.”) However, no runner who has taken more than 34 hours to complete loop 3 has ever finished the Barkley. 19.4% of runners who complete loop 3 actually complete the Barkley.

Likelihood of Finishing, Based on Loop 4 Performance

Just finishing loop 4 is huge — 73.5% of runners who finish loop 4 complete the Barkley. That being said, despite the cutoff being 48 hours, no runner who has taken more than 47 hours through loop 4 has ever finished the Barkley.