Lots of history in Barkley, Tennessee
Last Friday, the Scott Central Rebels played Charleston, a 2A class team with an identical 3-1 record to that of Scott Central. Scott Central was able to improve its record with a 13-12 win over Charleston. The Rebels will be on the road for the next two games playing Raleigh this upcoming Friday and Philadelphia the following week. Congratulations to SC players, Elijah Robinson, Austin Doughty, and Lajavius Patrick on being selected as Farm Bureau players of the week this season.
This past weekend, Greg and I traveled to the beautiful, but rugged, Frozen Head State Park near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We went there so Greg could take part in the Barkley Fall Classic. The Barkley is an endurance race in which its contestants subject themselves to all manner of torture, both physical and mental.
The 50K race course consists of miles and miles of trails up and down mountains with thousands of feet of elevation changes. It is running, crawling and sometimes sliding through briar-filled areas known by colorful names such as Rat Jaw, Chimney Top and Bald Knob. It consisted of traversing a fire tower and running thru the old Brushy Mountain Prison.
At each stage of the race, contestants had to get their bibs punched to show that they completed the required course, and do so fast enough to beat the cutoff times and avoid elimination. Success at the Barkley is not guaranteed, and is, in fact, unlikely. Of the 456 people who started the race, only 42 percent completed the 50k, 22 percent finished the marathon and 36 percent did not finish at all. Congratulations to Greg on successfully completing the Barkley Fall Classic marathon.
While Greg was out there giving it his all on the race course, I got to indulge my history nerd by visiting a couple of museums in Oak Ridge. There I learned that Oak Ridge was known as the “Secret City” and was developed during WWII as part of the Manhattan Project to produce the first atomic bomb. It is a fascinating story and one that I had never heard of before visiting the area.
