Jasmin Paris knew, deep down, that she didn’t have a choice.
Before she would become the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons in 2024, before she would collapse at the famous gate in perhaps the most iconic image in the race’s long history, before she would catapult to international fame because of her heroic performance, Paris had to face the prospect of leaving camp for her fourth 20-plus-mile loop on the unforgiving, off-trail terrain route throughout Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee.
“On the third loop, I started to feel bad,” Paris recounts around the 28-minute mark of “The Finisher: Jasmin Paris and the Barkley Marathons,” the Singletrack media entity’s new documentary chronicling her historic 2024 race. As she talks, the film pans between her sitting in her chair at the race, wearily spooning food to her mouth, and a one-on-one interview from her home in Scotland.
“That was one of the worst moments, really, because I sort of knew I was going to make myself go out again — I had enough time to finish the thing.”
Paris had finished the third loop in just over 32 hours — 3.5 hours faster than her time at the same point in the previous year’s race and right on pace for a potential finish.
“When you’re feeling pretty bad and you just feel kind of sick and drained, the thought of going back out and doing those climbs again and going back out into the wilderness on your own, it’s pretty hard to face,” Paris says. “And that combined with the fact that you know there’s no choice — you’re going to have to do it because you could finish this thing.”
Jasmin Paris feeling despondent after loop three of her 2024 Barkley Marathons. All photos are screenshots from “The Finisher,” unless otherwise noted.
It’s this level of detail and access that makes “The Finisher” a compelling, enlightening, and ultimately inspirational film about one of the most iconic ultrarunning performances in history — one that captured the general public’s attention in a way that most do not. Featuring detailed footage from Paris’ three attempts at Barkley, beautiful shots of her running near her home in Scotland, and creative animations — the film explores the history of Barkley, Paris’ two previous attempts at the race, her training for 2024, and a play-by-play of her historic run.
Throughout the film, Paris comes off as humble, genuine, and supremely dedicated. During the portion of the documentary that dives into her training for last year’s Barkley, she recounts a key training run from her home in Scotland.
She went to bed at 8 p.m., she says, and then woke up at midnight to run. It was, in her words, “lashing it down with rain outside.” Her husband and devoted crew member, Konrad Rawlik, looked at her and said, “You’re not going out in this, are you?” Even her dog looked at her “questioningly.” In a cold rain that turned to sleet and then snow, Paris ran 17 repetitions up and down a local hill — more than 16,000 feet of elevation gain across eight-and-a-half hours. “It also really builds confidence to do things like that,” she says, typically understated.
In addition to the in-home interview with Paris, Singletrack sat down with ultrarunning legends Courtney Dauwalter, Amelia Boone, and Beverley Anderson-Abbs — plus Paris’ fellow 2024 Barkley finisher, Jared Campbell and, of course, the race’s eccentric longtime director, Gary Cantrell, a.k.a. Lazarus Lake.
The film begins and ends with the now-infamous 2015 footage of Cantrell hiking and explaining why he thought a woman would never finish the race he conceived of nearly 40 years ago. “They are simply not tough enough to do it,” Cantrell says. “And I get to say that for as long as it goes that no woman proves me wrong.”
Seconds later, it cuts to Paris sitting in her home. “When I heard that people thought a woman couldn’t finish this race,” she says, “I sort of saw that as a kind of personal challenge: Let me prove you wrong.”
Jasmin Paris looking strong on Loop 3, on her way to finishing the 2024 Barkley Marathons.
With parts of this introduction set against footage of Paris hiking through the forest during her 2024 race, it’s a fairly epic way to begin the film.
One of the funniest moments in the documentary comes when Singletrack host Finn Melanson asks his interviewees what they’d want the general public to know about Cantrell. Boone takes a deep breath and begins to respond before breaking out into a laugh. Cut to Campbell smiling and saying, “I mean Laz …” Cut to Dauwalter just chuckling.
“Like the race,” Campbell says, “I think he’s pretty misunderstood.”
Cantrell, during his interview, comes across as an affable mad scientist who was rooting for Paris to become the first woman to finish Barkley. “Nobody’s ever come there that wanted it more than Jasmin did,” he says.
If Paris is the star of the documentary, then the best supporting actor would be Campbell, the runner who has completed Barkley more than any other — four times — and adds thoughtful commentary and perspective throughout.
Along with Paris, he details the story of the choice of direction on the fifth and final loop. At Barkley, runners have to complete the last loop alone, which means if there is more than one runner running it, they must choose to go in opposite directions based on the order in which they leave the start-finish area and head back out on course. Navigating the course clockwise is considered slightly “easier” than counterclockwise, providing more margin for error.
“Jared then came over and said, ‘If you want clockwise … If you go now, you can have it,’” Paris remembers. “The gravity of that moment and that decision,” Campbell says, “was not lost on me.”
A touching moment between two runners when Campbell (foreground) encourages Paris (sitting) to take the preferable direction for the final loop.
The film climaxes, of course, with that final loop, and its storytelling is fittingly epic. Paris discusses a small navigation error that she had to overcome, how she started chanting names of people in her family to keep a running rhythm, and her acute awareness of her race against the clock.
“I got into that last bit of trail and I think that’s when I looked at my watch and I think I had eight minutes,” Paris says. “And that was the moment I was suddenly faced with the idea: You might not make this. The whole race, and the run up to it as well, I really believed that it could happen … that’s why I think when I was doing that final section up to the gate, it was so awful because I was suddenly struck with the possibility that after all that it was drifting — it was slipping through my fingers, that moment.”
Cantrell remembers that everyone at the finish line had been crestfallen and accepted that she wasn’t going to make it. “But humans are amazing,” he says, “so you kept it open till you got right to the end.” Cut to soft murmuring among spectators at the finish line that Paris was coming, and then Paris, in her distinctive orange shirt, shuffling, hobbling, willing her way to the finish line.
She touches the gate and collapses, 99 seconds before the 60-hour cutoff, and becomes the first women’s Barkley finisher.
“I thought in the past that I’ve dug deep in races,” she says. “But for that moment, for those final minutes, I opened a door onto a new level of what I was capable of.”
Jasmin Paris becomes the first woman finisher of the Barkley Marathons at the event’s 2024 edition, with 99 seconds to spare. Photo: Howie Stern
Call for Comments
- What were your thoughts on the film? Did you find it inspiring?
- Who do you think could be the second woman to complete the Barkley Marathons?
