The Extra Mile

After a horrific accident, doctors told Todd Barcelona that he’d likely never run again. So he and his wife decided to run farther than they ever had before.
By Maggie Gigandet

One hundred and twenty runners stood in a clearing overlooking the Mississippi River, listening as a man with a curly gray beard needled them. He checked his watch; an unlit cigarette dangled from his fingers. “Thirty seconds,” he announced to the crowd. “You’re running out of time to change your mind.”

Over the next ten days, these ultramarathoners hoped to cover 314 miles on foot. From the clearing in southeastern Missouri, they’d board a ferry to cross the river, disembark in Kentucky, traverse a narrow corner of the state, then cross Tennessee to finish at the Rock, a cliff on a ranch in northern Georgia. “Remember, the earliest quit was at the Tennessee state line,” the man with the beard said. Someone in the crowd yelled out, “I can beat that.” Everyone laughed. Tennessee’s border with Kentucky was less than ten miles away.

Other than the ferry ride, the participants would have to run or walk every inch of the course. Most wore a hat to protect their face from the July sun and carried a small backpack with water and other essentials. Some stood with a crew, people who would supply them with necessities along the course. Runners without crews were called “screwed” runners. Among them were the Barcelonas.

Todd and Allison Barcelona, 57 and 55, respectively, had completed 20 ultramarathons together. Allison stood with her hands clasped in front of her polka-dot running skirt. Todd’s nerves had kept him awake for most of the previous night, and he felt a little sick to his stomach. But evidence of his grit and the battles he’d already waged in his life was etched into his skin: a jagged-edged divot in his lower left shin.

“Five seconds,” the bearded man warned. A dark wall of clouds encroached on the pale peach sunrise behind him.

At 7:30 a.m. exactly, the man transferred his cigarette to his mouth and lit it, cupping his left hand around the flame to shield it from the wind. He tilted his head back and exhaled a puff of smoke.

“You’re off!” he announced.

Whooping, the throng surged forward. The 2023 Last Annual Volunteer State Road Race was under way.

The beginning of Todd and Allison’s story is the stuff of a sweet country song. They attended the same elementary and high schools in Memphis, where Allison was a year behind Todd. When their friendship turned romantic, Todd asked Allison if she would go with him. Allison asked him where he wanted to go. He still teases her about that.

When they were dating, they mainly stayed home, preferring to save money for their future. Allison’s parents joked that they were “16 going on 30.” Allison finished school a year early to be with Todd; they graduated together in 1984. Three years later they were married—Allison was 19 and Todd was 21.

The Barcelonas welcomed a daughter in 1988, another about a year later, and a son in 1991. After they moved to Atoka, a small community about 40 miles north of Memphis, Allison gave birth to their youngest child, Ashleigh. Allison worked full-time as a paralegal, and Todd as a line mechanic at a Cadillac dealership.

In his mid-forties, Todd was diagnosed with high cholesterol. To avoid medication, he changed his lifestyle. He bought a treadmill and began running. He didn’t enjoy it at first, but it grew on him, and after a while he began jogging outdoors.

Eventually, Todd graduated to races. He enjoyed the camaraderie he felt with other runners. Each finisher medal he received was a point of pride. On August 31, 2014, Todd ran a marathon in Tupelo, Mississippi. His goal was to finish in under five hours; he did that with about ten minutes to spare. Allison ran a half-marathon at the same time.

Whether racing or training, the Barcelonas usually ran separately. Allison liked to run with friends, while Todd kept to himself. It might have stayed that way if not for what happened on September 29, 2014.

During their workdays, Todd and Allison stayed in touch. That afternoon, Allison called Todd to let him know that Ashleigh, the only Barcelona child still living at home, wasn’t going to her guitar lesson as planned. When Todd didn’t pick up, Allison assumed that he was still working. But when she looked at the clock a little while later and saw that it was almost 6:30, she got worried. Todd always called her by six.

With Ashleigh standing next to her at the kitchen table, Allison called her husband again. A male voice she didn’t recognize answered. She still recalls how it felt hearing a stranger on her husband’s phone: “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.”

The man asked her who she was, but she didn’t respond and repeated the question to him. The man said that he was with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and that Todd had been in an accident. He was at a hospital in downtown Memphis. Allison felt sick.

Allison hung up the phone and turned to Ashleigh. “Dad’s been in an accident,” she said. “We have to go.” Ashleigh said nothing, and mother and daughter got in the car and left.

As Allison drove, she and Ashleigh were both crying. They began pleading with God aloud. “Lord, please, please keep him here,” Allison prayed. “Please don’t let this be his time.” Later she recalled, “I told Him I couldn’t do life by myself.… We still needed Todd.”

En route to the hospital, Allison tried to take the Austin Peay Highway into Memphis, but it was closed. She didn’t know that it was because of what had happened to Todd.

A spreadsheet tracks their progress, and among the names in the document, one always stands out: Oprah. That is the moniker given to the minimum pace—15.7 miles every 12 hours—runners must maintain to stay in the race.

After getting off the ferry, the Barcelonas climbed a ramp to a two-lane road and strolled past a blue “Welcome to Kentucky” sign. Rounding a curve, they passed a cornfield, ears heavy on the stalks. Vol State, or LAVS, as this ultramarathon is sometimes called, winds through urban and rural communities. The course’s terrain is also varied—sometimes flat, sometimes steep.

The Barcelonas, like most of the other race participants, walked to start with, because speed isn’t the most important factor for a successful finish in Vol State. With such a sizable distance to cover, most racers gain little by bolting ahead and tiring themselves out. The key to Vol State is the ability to put one foot in front of the other, hour after hour, day after day. “Many will fail,” a website advertising the race explains. “But, for those who find the steely will and muster the sheer dogged tenacity to overcome the impossible obstacles … [it] can be a transcendental experience.”

Nonetheless, participants would need to manage their pace, because per the race’s rules, Vol State must be finished within ten days. At 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. every day, runners are required to check in via their phones to report mileage. A spreadsheet tracks their progress, and among the names in the document, one always stands out: Oprah. That is the moniker given to the minimum pace—15.7 miles every 12 hours—runners must maintain to stay in the race. Every morning and evening, Oprah advances up the spreadsheet, and any participant whose name falls below hers risks disqualification if they don’t hustle.

Quirks like Oprah are one of many attributable to Vol State’s founder, the man with the beard at the starting line. Even the full name of the ultra—the Last Annual Volunteer State Road Race—is an inside joke. Amused by race directors who, confident about the long-term prospects, declare an inaugural event the “first annual,” Vol State’s founder decided to dub his the last. (It’s now been run for more than forty years.) The founder once explained his choice to call the minimum pace Oprah: “She is real life. A world of celebrities and politics and ‘luxury.’ ” In other words, she represents the world the runners had left behind when they entered Vol State.

Even the founder’s name has a peculiar backstory. Born Gary Cantrell, he began using Lazarus Lake online years ago for privacy reasons. Now he’s equally well-known by his self-anointed nickname, or Laz for short. In the ultra world he’s a legend: a showman whose long, grueling races, designed with signature flair, have attracted a devoted following.

As the Barcelonas and other runners headed toward Hickman, Kentucky, the first town on the Vol State route, a boxy van approached. This was the meat wagon—another race fixture, driven by a woman named Jan. When runners fell too far behind Oprah, or if their willpower was simply crushed, they’d call Jan and wait for her to deliver them from the course. For now she drove alongside the crowd, a harbinger of what would be the runners’ greatest obstacle: the temptation to quit. Then she honked and drove on.

Chatting with two other runners, the Barcelonas entered Hickman. Todd stopped to take a photo of a black-and-white mural of Mark Twain. The author had once described Hickman as “a pretty town perched on a handsome hill.” Touches of Twain’s pretty town were still visible in the decorative brickwork and keyhole doorways of buildings along Hickman’s main drag, but few places seemed to be occupied. One structure, a popular hotel of yore, stood out with its horseshoe-shaped entryway and windows running the length of its facade. “LaClede,” the name of the shuttered hotel, was painted above the door.

Time and creativity were invested in building Hickman. Now it was a shell of its former self.

On the afternoon that changed his life, Todd was driving home from work in his sky blue 1994 GMC Sierra truck. He had purchased it used and lowered the suspension so it sat closer to the ground. It did not have airbags.

Todd approached the intersection of Austin Peay Highway and Old Brownsville Road heading north. A Shell gas station, fields of crops, and stands of trees filled his view. The light ahead turned yellow, and he continued through the intersection. A gray Honda Accord driving south made a left at the light at the same time, failing to yield the right of way. It smashed into Todd’s truck almost head-on.

Michael and Amy Matthews were in a car stopped at the intersection—they heard the screeching tires and saw the collision. Profanities slipped from their mouths. Amy grabbed her phone and called 911 as Michael drove toward Todd’s mangled truck. Before she exited the car, Amy told her 11-year-old son to stay inside. “Don’t even look over here,” she warned.

Michael checked on the Accord. Its airbags had deployed, and the driver and passenger, both teenagers, appeared to have minor injuries. He then walked over to Amy, who was standing near Todd’s truck. The impact of the crash had crumpled the front left corner as if it were a sheet of blue aluminum foil. The hood had been wrenched open and the cab’s frame above the driver’s seat rammed skyward, like the tallest peak in a newly formed mountain range.

The gore on Todd’s face made it hard for Amy to determine his age. To her it looked as if “his nose was almost off”—in fact, it had been flattened to one side. Blood spilled from his head and a gash on his arm, mixing with vehicle fluids that collected on the road beneath the battered Sierra.

The Matthewses tried to reassure Todd that he’d be OK, but he was drifting in and out of consciousness, his guttural moans replaced by silence when he went limp. “I just didn’t want him to die with me, you know, right there,” Amy recalled.

A nurse who had just finished her shift at a nearby hospital stopped to help. She reached in through the shattered driver’s-side window and placed two fingers against Todd’s neck, checking his pulse. In case he had a spinal injury, she put her hands on either side of his head to keep it stationary.

When first responders arrived, they had to pry open Todd’s door, revealing a pool of blood on the floorboard. Every time they tried to ease him from the truck, Todd came to, groaning in pain. Only when they realized why he was trapped—the emergency brake had impaled his left leg—could they remove him safely and rush him to the hospital.

When Allison found Todd in the emergency room, she saw that his face was mutilated with gashes and bruises. “It was gone,” she recalled. Todd asked her three questions.

“Where am I?”

“What time is it?”

“Am I OK?”

Allison answered, but Todd kept repeating the questions.

“Where am I?”

“What time is it?”

“Am I OK?”

Allison told her husband that whatever his injuries were, they would get through this together. They’d move on with their lives. She was just thankful that he wasn’t dead.

“I was thinking that it was going to be the bones, you know? The broken legs and things like that,” Allison said later. “I had no idea it would be the head trauma that would really take him out.”

After leaving Hickman, the Barcelonas soon crossed into western Tennessee. As screwed runners, they had no one to reliably supply them with food and water. They ate at gas stations and restaurants, and looked for motels with vacancies. Racers unable to find a bed slept on whatever flat surfaces were available: picnic tables, church pews, driveways, even the side of the road.

But rest only ever lasted a few hours. Oprah never slept, and because Vol Staters had to travel nearly 16 miles every 12 hours to stay ahead of her, few had the luxury of a full night’s sleep. Strong runners could cover enough miles to give themselves a buffer, but everyone needed to keep moving. “The lack of sleep was murder,” one runner later admitted.

At least traveling at night was cooler than suffering through the heat of the day. Less than 48 hours into the race, a woman’s glasses were ruined when high temperatures warped the frames. Another runner posted online, “I melted today. I’m just liquid skinbag goo walking down this white line with a giant backpack.” The Barcelonas used umbrellas to shield themselves from the unrelenting sun.

During desolate stretches, runners depended on the generosity of so-called road angels to sustain them. Because the Vol State course is the same every year, there is a strong tradition of people who live along the race’s path aiding runners; these volunteers aren’t race staff, but they’re crucial to participants’ success. Road angels might do something as simple as leave a pack of water bottles on the side of the road. Some set up tents in their yards, along with inflatable mattresses, food, and other supplies. Some road-angel stations have become so well-known that they’re race landmarks. “The people you meet along the way just take your breath away,” Allison said.

On the road, Vol Staters are concerned only with the pursuit of miles, calories, fluids, and shelter. But this winnowing of life soon becomes monotonous. As the world narrows to a seemingly endless stretch of pavement, there’s nothing to distract from the pain of sore joints, aching muscles, and fresh blisters. Each excruciating step chips away at a participant’s resolve, until for some the desire to be rescued from the course swallows the last of their stamina.

On the third day of the race, the Barcelonas were closing in on the 100-mile mark when heat and exhaustion overwhelmed Todd. He erupted with anger, blaming Allison for his misery and pain. They were only there, he said, because she wanted the race jacket awarded to finishers.

Allison did her best to calm him. She’d done it before. “She had to reel me back in,” Todd said. A race like Vol State, he continued, “is very, very, very mental.”

A TBI is a hidden injury. It’s not visible to the eye, like an oozing cut would be, but the effects can alter a person’s life forever.

At about 1:30 a.m. the day after his accident, Todd underwent his first surgeries. An orthopedics team worked on his lower left leg where the brake pedal had impaled him, fracturing his fibula in two places and exposing the bone. At the same time, surgeons worked to repair a lacerated artery in his left wrist. Later that day, Todd had a third surgery to repair the damage to his face. Doctors inserted a metal plate to help reposition his nose. They put a splint in each nostril and fitted another over the bridge.

Some damage couldn’t be repaired surgically. His neck was fractured in two places. The bone in his right heel had splintered. The doctors decided to let his body heal those injuries.

Todd spent eight days in the hospital. Allison never left his side. At one point, after being awake for almost 48 hours, she confessed to a nurse that she needed to rest. The staff set up a cot in Todd’s room so Allison could lie down next to her husband.

Todd was immobilized. He wore a neck brace, a boot on his left foot, and a splint on his right. Pain medications—Dilaudid, morphine, oxycodone—kept him in a stupor. Early in his stay he became disoriented, scratching himself and trying to get out of bed, so hospital staff restrained him and put mittens on his hands. Once, while his restraints were off, he tore away one of his nose splints. It wasn’t like him to be so unruly.  

When finally he was allowed to get up, Todd couldn’t put weight on his right foot. He was told to use a walker but didn’t have much strength in his arms. All he could do was inch himself forward.

Allison tried to feed her husband, but he had no appetite and was soon losing weight. He couldn’t understand what had happened to him. The last thing he recalled from the day of the accident was running an errand at lunch. He never regained his memory of the crash.

Tests revealed that Todd had suffered a traumatic brain injury, or TBI. The accident caused hemorrhaging in both sides of his frontal lobe, the large section of the brain behind the forehead, which governs emotions and personality traits. It was impossible to say exactly how that happened. Maybe Todd’s head had slammed into the steering wheel, or maybe the force of the crash jerked his brain violently enough against the interior of his skull that it caused tissue damage.

A TBI is a hidden injury. It’s not visible to the eye, like an oozing cut would be, but the effects can alter a person’s life forever. Depending on the nature and severity of the injury, people may have trouble focusing and controlling their emotions and impulses, among other symptoms. Behavioral changes can affect careers and relationships. TBI sufferers may also be at increased risk of epilepsy, dementia, anxiety, and depression.

Allison didn’t yet grasp the impact that Todd’s brain injury might have on their lives. In the days immediately after the crash, she was focused on his physical recovery. Todd’s medical team wanted him to go to an inpatient rehabilitation center, but he refused when he learned that Allison wouldn’t be allowed to stay there with him. The prospect of caring for Todd at home scared Allison—she knew that he was too heavy for her to lift alone, for instance—but she agreed to it.

Satisfied with his progress with the walker, the hospital discharged Todd on October 7, 2014. Allison drove them home. They didn’t say much on the way, each lost in their own thoughts and worries. As they approached the intersection where Todd’s accident had occurred, they saw the stains on the pavement. Todd began to sob.

On the evening of the fifth day of Vol State, around mile 165, the Barcelonas walked single file down a country highway, listening to birdsong and the chirping of crickets. They were cooled by bursts of air as vehicles zipped past, the sound of motors concentrating into a vibrating crescendo before fading to an echo. They turned down a long driveway leading to a house. An orange sign advertised a road-angel station in the backyard. “Congratulations on surviving the hills so far!” it read.

The Barcelonas seated themselves in a pair of tan patio chairs next to the garage and took off their shoes. Todd pulled his left ankle onto his right knee and adjusted a doughnut-shaped piece of foam on the ball of his foot. A white patch of Desitin stained his shorts; he used the diaper cream to combat foot moisture. When he started the race, his feet weren’t in perfect condition. He already had a blister and a stone bruise, which feels like a pebble in your shoe. For the time being, his feet were holding up.

Allison knew that Todd’s feet would be a factor in this race and any they ran in the future. Lazarus Lake’s newest creation, called the Last Annual Third Circle of Hell, began two weeks after Vol State ended. The course covered 370 miles of mountainous terrain across Tennessee. Lake had likened finishing Vol State to getting a bachelor’s degree in his races and completing the Third Circle to earning a doctorate. Runners had to finish the former, along with another one of Lake’s ultras, to qualify for the latter. Even if she and Todd completed Vol State, Allison wanted to see how his feet fared before committing to the Third Circle.

The Barcelonas put on fresh socks, pinning the ones they removed to their packs to dry. Allison walked gingerly over to a cooler and returned with a bottle of water and an energy bar. After resting a few minutes, she signed a guestbook that had been placed on a fold-out table and the couple returned to the road. A floral smell wafted on the evening breeze.

Not far down the road, the Barcelonas stopped at another rest station at a horse farm. Because they hadn’t found a restaurant or a convenience store to get dinner, they hoped to stock up on calories. Allison rummaged through the cooler and pulled out an apple. She peeled off the sticker and handed the fruit to Todd. While he chugged a Sun Drop, Allison asked if he wanted her to pack another apple for later—she carried their snacks in a small drawstring bag. Allison said that she had to feed Todd to keep him going. Todd worried that she’d weigh herself down.

After the Barcelonas returned from the hospital, their two-story brick house, set in a peaceful neighborhood of spacious lots and pristine yards, became Todd’s prison. For months he couldn’t leave on his own. “It was like shutting somebody down and putting them in a suitcase,” he said.For Todd, the loss of independence was the loss of his humanity. Describing that time, he compared himself to inanimate objects: a mannequin, a dummy, “just a big lump.”

Because of his injured nose, he struggled to breathe. Sitting upright helped, so he spent most of his time in an overstuffed recliner. He couldn’t sleep comfortably, and sometimes he got so frustrated at his neck brace that he tore it off and threw it across the room. When Allison heard the telltale rip of the brace’s Velcro, she’d retrieve it from the floor and make Todd put it back on.

Eventually, his body began to mend. After a few weeks, the stitches from his left wrist and the splints in his nose were removed. After a couple of months, he didn’t need the neck brace. The splint on his right foot was replaced with a boot, which allowed him to put pressure on both feet for the first time since the crash.

But even as his lacerations and broken bones healed, his behavior worsened. Todd was like an obstinate child again, throwing tantrums when he didn’t get his way. Sometimes he hurled things at Allison: water bottles, magazines. “It wasn’t the man I married,” Allison said. In abandoning “he” for “it,” she emphasized the distance between the person she knew as her husband and the attitude that had accompanied him home from the hospital.

Allison couldn’t recall Todd laughing even once in the first year after the accident. “There was no joy in him whatsoever,” she said. While she was at work each day, Todd was alone wrestling with his anguish. To keep busy he tried memorizing Bible verses, but he quickly lost focus. He spent a lot of time on WebMD, his morbid quicksand. Desperate to know if he’d ever return to his old self, Todd searched for information about his injuries. When she got home, Allison would explain to her anxious husband that the doctors had done everything they could for him in the hospital.

Before the crash, Allison and Todd had been training for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital marathon in Memphis. Allison decided to keep going, treasuring her workouts as time for herself. Todd became jealous. When his orthopedic surgeon told him that running again would be too painful—the doctor suggested biking instead—Todd got even more upset. When he saw Allison lacing up her running shoes, his anger would explode into snide comments. “The bitterness would jab [at me],” Allison recalled of those moments, again separating her husband from his demeanor.

On Tuesday evenings, Allison and Ashleigh went to a Bible study group at a friend’s home. One night, the subject of the Barcelonas’ home life came up. When the group heard about Todd’s behavior, they told Allison that they would pray for her. A running friend offered her a place to stay if she needed to leave home. Allison declined. “I’ve got twenty-something years invested in him. I’m not giving up yet,” she said. When Ashleigh told her mother that she wanted to move out, Allison replied, “But if we leave him, he won’t survive.”

Three months after the crash, when Allison ran the St. Jude half-marathon, Todd and Ashleigh watched her cross the finish line, passing an Elvis impersonator in a cape and bell-bottom jumpsuit shaking a red scarf. From his seat in the stands, Todd saw his wife accomplish what he couldn’t. He was proud of her, but he felt his envy grow.

Around mile 184 on the Vol State course, a red bench sits in front of a cream-colored building in a small community near Columbia, Tennessee. The words “The Bench of Despair” are painted in black on the backrest. Scrawled signatures surround the ominous phrase, some more faded than others.

In the early 2000s, it had become clear that the bench marked a turning point in the competition. During one Vol State, Lazarus Lake found the race leader perched on it, wrestling with his desire to quit before giving in and abandoning the course. The following year, Lake again found the lead runner at the bench. Holding his head in his hands, this participant was also despondent, but he announced, “I won’t get there by sitting here.” He stood up and kept going.

Lake attributed the bench’s make-or-break quality to its location in the race. When runners reach it, they’ve already battled long and hard against fatigue, the elements, and the temptation to give up, yet they’ve only just passed the halfway mark. There’s so much ground left to cover, and burdened with the weight of experience, they’re are acutely aware of the suffering left to be endured. Without the energy or the hope they started off with, it’s easy to drown in the hardship. Lake summarized the stakes. “You either get in your car and go home and regret it for the rest of your life,” he said, “or get up and go on and regret it for the rest of the race.”

When the Vol State community first began calling the spot the Bench of Despair, the building behind it was home to a country store and grill. The owners heard about the bench’s importance in the race and embraced it. They painted it red and set out a permanent marker for runners to commemorate their progress as they passed.

When the Barcelonas arrived at the spot, they posed for a picture. Grinning into the camera, Allison sat on one side of the bench and Todd on the other, bookending the famed insignia. Allison added their names at the bottom right corner of the backrest, along with the year. Underneath she wrote “Team Barcelona,” affirming their commitment to each other: They’d either finish the race together or not at all.

Before he started running again, Allison described Todd as “a man that was out of control.” Running gave him a chance to regain control.

In early 2015, Todd was able to return to work. He struggled with anxiety during the commute. When he saw an accident on the side of the road, he’d get so upset he had to pull over. His doctor prescribed medication to help him cope.

That spring a letter arrived from the hospital where Todd was taken after the crash. Addressed to Allison, it advertised a seminar for the families of people who’d sustained a brain injury. Allison, a self-described introvert, attended the event but kept to herself.

Listening to the speaker, she felt like she was finally getting the tools she needed to help Todd. She grabbed all the pamphlets on offer. At home afterward, she dived into research, hunting for anything that might improve her husband’s well-being. She burned frankincense to help Todd’s brain heal and lemongrass to improve his mood. She also changed their diets.

Allison learned that Todd needed something enjoyable to focus on instead of obsessing about his injuries and anxiety. Todd had an idea: He wanted to run. Registration for a number of annual races was approaching, and he didn’t want to sit them out again.

One day, Allison and Todd made their way from their house to a nearby street. Todd, finally rid of his boots and braces, had wrapped runner’s tape around his legs and ankles for support. The couple began a slow jog together. Pain raged from Todd’s heels up into his legs. “I was boiling in tears,” he recalled. “It was hurting so bad.”

Seeing her husband in agony, Allison asked him if he wanted to stop. He said no. It broke Allison’s heart to see him suffer, and she worried that the experiment would set Todd back mentally and physically. He covered maybe a few hundred feet before he had to stop.

Still, the brief jog was a victory. Todd felt great. To his mind, he’d struck a blow against the misery that had plagued him for months. When he recalled the experience more than eight years later, the emotion of that day flooded back. He choked back sobs as he described it, slipping at times into the present tense as if he were still standing on that stretch of pavement. “I finally got out on the street,” he said. “This is going to be the start of something that I can do. Regardless of how hard it was and how painful it was, it gave me some hope.”

That summer and fall, Allison and Todd ran together, adding distance as his stamina improved. This was the unglamorous phase of distance running, the repetitive slog of returning to the road again and again to train, and Todd’s constant pain made it even more challenging. That October they ran a half-marathon, the Greenline at Shelby Farms Park in Memphis. Propelled by willpower, Todd finished the race in tears—happy ones.

Before he started running again, Allison described Todd as “a man that was out of control.” Running gave him a chance to regain control. If he wanted to return to the sport, he had to manage his pain, both physical and mental. As he worked toward that goal, Allison saw his attitude improve; he even seemed happy. Over time, flashes of the old Todd returned. “You could see a little bit of him come back, piece by piece,” Allison said.

Running did more for Todd than give him purpose. Exercise helps injured brains in numerous ways. It stimulates production of important chemicals in the body, including brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that promotes cell growth and helps the brain heal itself. Exercise reduces cerebral inflammation and supports essential processes—sleep, for instance, which is necessary to remove toxins that build up in the brain, and hormone regulation, which can ease depression. It isn’t a miracle cure for a brain injury, however. Many factors affect a person’s ability to heal; genetics, personality, diet, even education can affect outcomes.

Sometimes, Todd’s determination almost outweighed his capabilities. In January 2016, the Barcelonas ran the Herb Parsons Trail half-marathon. Todd typically ran on flat surfaces, but this was a trail race. Because he still struggled with mobility in his ankles, it was difficult to maneuver his feet over rocks and roots. Again and again, he tumbled to the ground—so often that it scared him. But he picked himself back up, and after three hours he and Allison finished together.

In April 2016, the Barcelonas ran the Tanglefoot Trail marathon in Mississippi, Todd’s first full marathon since the crash. He finished in about five hours—remarkably, that wasn’t too far off the time it took him to complete the last marathon he ran before the crash. But the Barcelonas were a little bored by the course. They decided that they needed a bigger goal.

Their new plan was to run an ultra.

Lazarus Lake founded Vol State on the notion that people “are built to overcome challenges.” He wanted to run across Tennessee, and in 1980 he decided to try. Lake, who had been interested in running since his high school cross-country days, ran 65 miles in his first 12 hours on the road, then stopped in Murfreesboro, where he caught a football game in a bar and drank free beers provided by patrons who got wind of what he was doing. When he hit the road again, he was caught in the rain. He stuffed his jacket with newspaper to keep warm, but it turned to mush. He finally called someone to pick him up after running 93 miles in about 20 hours. Lake tried the run again and again; others joined, and Vol State was born.

Lake declared Vol State 2023 “the year of the thunderstorm,” predicting that it would “be remembered for the most mercurial weather in the history of the race.” The Barcelonas equipped themselves with ponchos and umbrellas, but they were continually soaked from either rain or sweat. Almost a week into the race, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for the area. During one storm, runners and road angels huddled under a purple supply tent as hail pelted the ground. Other tents were crushed.

The Barcelonas avoided one deluge by sheltering in a Dollar General. When they felt the first drops of rain, they headed for the store, which was about a quarter-mile off the course, sacrificing hard-earned mileage for a dry haven. Next to the household cleaning supplies, the Barcelonas sat on flattened cardboard boxes and took off their shoes. They made sandwiches with ham, cheese, and a loaf of bread they bought on-site.

For a few hours, the couple shared their food and chatted with other runners who’d found their way to the Dollar General. It was a fun break from the race, but Todd knew that time spent inside was time they weren’t making progress. When the rain stopped, they had to recoup the lost mileage by walking or running late into the night.

As the race wore on, runners vented via online check-in comments about blisters and hip and knee pain. “All my body parts are screaming at each other. Can’t we just learn to get along? Just for 94 more miles?” one person wrote. Another complained, “Pain. My body is in pain. A lot of pain. Agonizing pain. Wow.”

Days of suffering frayed runners’ nerves. One confessed, “2 miles of tears for zero reason today. Yes, we are having fun.” Even Allison, usually the more stoic of the Barcelonas, had a deprivation-induced meltdown. She had to sit on a guardrail until she collected herself enough to continue.

The race conditions also shook runners’ sanity. At one check-in a participant joked, “Want to experience killer hallucinations, but need to pass a urinalysis? Run LAVS.” Another runner reported having a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt. Allison once thought she saw a horse standing in the middle of the road. Todd had to tell her that it wasn’t there.

Ultramarathons all have one thing in common: Runners must cover a distance greater than a marathon’s standard 26.2 miles. Beyond that, the races can vary significantly. Some are defined by a set distance, anywhere from about 30 to hundreds of miles; others are classified by duration, with participants covering as much ground as they can in a set period. Some ultras can be finished in less than a day; some require several days. Participants might run on paved roads or trails; they might start at one point and finish at another or circle a looped course. Some courses have aid stations that provide food and fluids; others, like Vol State, lack official support. Ultras occur all over the world in all types of terrain and weather, from the frozen Arctic Circle to the extreme heat of Death Valley. No matter what race an ultramarathoner finishes, there’s always something harder out there.

After deciding to enter the ultra world, the Barcelonas hired Kevin Leathers, a running coach. At first Leathers was skeptical that Todd could finish a race that long. He’d never worked with anyone required to manage as much daily agony as Todd did. Leathers soon realized, however, that “Todd had a different definition of pain and discomfort” than most people—an asset when it came to ultras. “No sane person who has lived a stress or trauma-free life typically indulges in the voluntary trials, difficulty, and mental and physical dark places that the sport requires,” Leathers wrote to me in an email.

The Barcelonas ran several times per week and dedicated some of those runs to tackling longer and longer distances. They grew stronger by running hills and by exercising their upper bodies and core muscles. They optimized their diets and experimented with gear and fueling strategies. They persevered through blisters and sore muscles; Allison broke a toe. Eventually, Todd’s legs were strong enough that he no longer felt pain while running, although the ankle that was crushed in the accident still got tired and tight. Leathers never heard Todd complain.

Leathers also trains clients to deal with the mental side of ultras. “It’s like you’re in a nice room-temperature pot of water, and then gradually, all day, they turn it up—just tick, tick, tick, all day. It’s a very slow burn,” he said. “All of a sudden, it’s just awful.”

Todd and Allison competed in their first ultra, Run Under the Stars, in Paducah, Kentucky, in the summer of 2016. Overnight they circled a half-mile track, covering as much distance as they could in ten hours. Their goal was 38 miles. After nine and a half hours, they stopped at 36.5, pleased with the accomplishment. They’d found their niche: Endurance, it turned out, was a Barcelona specialty.

On June 26, 2017, almost three years after the crash, Todd was rear-ended by another driver. It happened while he was on his way home from work, this time driving a gray 2003 Dodge Durango, Allison’s old car. Allison was at work when her phone rang. She answered and heard Todd crying and shrieking. At first she couldn’t understand what he was saying. When finally he was able to communicate where he was, she left work and drove to the scene. She calmed Todd as much as she could. After speaking with the police, Todd was able to drive his vehicle away; the car that hit him had to be towed.

Todd’s fender-bender was a reminder that trauma still haunted him. Still, no matter what else was happening in their lives, the Barcelonas kept running. They met with Leathers regularly at a coffee shop to get new training plans. “As a couple and individually,” Leathers said, “I found out there was a lot more under the hood than meets the eye.”

Leathers once advised the Barcelonas about what to do if one of them was unable to continue in a race. He said they each needed to be clear that it was OK for the other to keep going. In time, however, he learned that his advice was moot. Allison and Todd never left each other’s side during a race, no matter what—one would never abandon the other to finish. It was Leathers who first referred to the couple as Team Barcelona.

Running had become part of Todd’s identity and key to his survival. “It’s something for me to hold on to,” he said. “And if it’s not there…” He tried to find words to explain. “I don’t know, I can’t go there,” he said.

Allison’s relationship with running had changed, too. During their meetings with Leathers, she asked pointed questions and listed their goals. Leathers had worked with many women like Allison. They’d had a career, raised a family, and come to running later in life. “They discover this inner beast, competitive, tough as nails,” Leathers said. “She’s got something there that she unleashed.”

One day, Todd and Allison came to Leathers with a new idea: They wanted to run 100-mile ultras. When a client mentions this goal to him, Leathers’s first job is to push back. “Are you sure?” he’ll ask. “Do you have any idea how hard that is?” He details the physical and time commitments that pushing the human body to cover such a long distance requires. But he couldn’t dissuade the Barcelonas.

In November 2017, Todd and Allison ran their first 100-mile race in Vienna, Illinois. Eventually, they advanced to multi-day races. And in June 2021, they ran their first ultra designed by Lake—the Last Annual Heart of the South Road Race.

HOTS is unique even by Lake’s standards. Runners board a bus at the Rock—the finish line of Vol State—and only learn where the race starts when the bus stops somewhere about 350 miles away. Every year it’s a different location. Lake designs the course to pass through as many towns and by as many interesting sights as possible, and despite the challenges of the race, the Barcelonas enjoyed taking in the scenery. They did the race the next year, intrigued by the idea of a new course. “Laz is such a detail man,” Allison said.

When Lake learned the Barcelonas’ story, he wasn’t surprised that they’d turned to ultras. “When you run ultras, you’re always rebuilding yourself,” he said. The Barcelonas were doing that as a unit. “They’re struggling together,” Lake said, “and they’re struggling to do something new.”

At about 6:15 p.m. on Friday, the eighth day of Vol State, the Barcelonas arrived at the Mountain Mart, a race landmark that sits high above the Sequatchie Valley, about 23 miles from the finish line. The store’s name was spelled out in individual letters cut from wood, painted red, and cracked by exposure to wind, sun, and rain. Inside, Allison ordered two of the store’s famous giant burgers from a woman in a black hairnet behind the counter. Then the Barcelonas found a table where they could wait for their food. They sat in chairs bolted to the tile floor, sandwiched between shelves of paper towels and toilet paper on one side and display cases of rifles and handguns on the other.

A middle-aged woman with short blond hair and an oversize black purse walked up to a cooler near the couple. Noticing the Barcelonas’ packs, she asked them why she’d seen so many people walking on the highway. Allison and Todd explained.

“What an adventure,” the woman said. “It’s like you’re really living life.” They exchanged pleasantries, and the woman turned to pull a case of hard seltzer from the cooler. Then she blurted out, “Yeah, get all the life you can, because tomorrow I’m burying my husband.”

Allison couldn’t speak. Todd managed, “Oh no.” And then: “How old?”

“Sixty-four,” the woman said. “Yeah, love of my life. So ya’ll walk on.”

Then she stepped away, turned past some shelves, and was gone.

Allison was trying to hold back a flood of tears. Todd took a napkin from the dispenser between them and gave it to her. She clenched it in her fist as she hunched over, with her head bowed toward her knees. Todd leaned on his elbow, turning his face away.

“If people ask me now whether I’d want Todd to go through it again,” Allison said, referring to the crash, “and I automatically say yes, they don’t understand.”

One night back in 1986, Todd and Allison sat down to eat dinner. Todd had snuck a ring under Allison’s hamburger. When she picked up her food to take a bite, Todd proposed. Allison can’t remember the exact words he used. “Whatever he said, the answer would always have been yes,” she said. “I mean, we were just paired together for so long.”

Todd sees their bond in a similar light. “We’re just part of each other, I guess,” he said. “You can’t have one without the other.”

But given enough time, even soulmates can start to take each other for granted. The crash and its aftermath made Allison realize that, in her words, they’d been “going through the motions” as a couple. The accident became a catalyst for a different kind of relationship, one nourished by running long races together. “Now everything we go through, we go through as a team,” Allison said. What to many people might sound like the premise for a survival film is therapy for the Barcelonas: Pushing themselves to the limit with only each other to rely on has brought them closer.

“If people ask me now whether I’d want Todd to go through it again,” Allison said, referring to the crash, “and I automatically say yes, they don’t understand.” But they don’t have to.

The Barcelonas made it to Kimball, Tennessee, the last town they’d pass through before the Vol State finish line, a little after 11 p.m. on Friday night—a few hours after stopping at the Mountain Mart. They had a decision to make: Would they get some rest or push through to the end? They walked into the white, freshly remodeled lobby of a roadside hotel to discuss their options. A soft bed and air-conditioning awaited mere feet away. Still, they decided to continue.

Back outside, where the neon lights of gas stations and fast-food restaurants glowed in the dark, the Barcelonas headed for the Shelby Rhinehart Bridge spanning the Tennessee River. Called the Blue Bridge by runners because of the shade of its elegant metal arches, the structure marked 11 miles from the end of the race. They kept going, eventually crossing into Georgia’s northwestern corner. With six miles to go, they began their ascent of Sand Mountain and walked what’s known as the Cheesegrater, a road riddled with potholes. For many exhausted Vol Staters, taking a few extra steps to avoid the craters wasn’t worth it—runners remained fixated on the shortest, straightest course to the finish. “Had rocks in my shoes,” one participant said. “My brain kept telling me to stop and get them out, and I was like—no, we don’t care anymore. Just go.”

Finally, the Barcelonas made it to the private ranch where the Rock is located. They walked through a stone entrance and down a tree-lined driveway before turning left onto the race’s final stretch. A sign placed by Lake greeted them: “Finish—one mile! No kidding.” A red arrow pointed the way.

The couple followed a pair of tire tracks worn into a grassy path between cornfields. Runners who’d already finished the race had reported seeing a mountain lion in the area. One report could be dismissed as a hallucination; two were cause for concern. When the ranch owner confirmed that a wilderness camera had caught a large cat on the property, Lake posted a warning on Facebook. But the Barcelonas were too exhausted to worry about wild animals in the cornstalks.

The recent storms had made sections of the path almost impassable. The Barcelonas’ shoes squished when they slipped in the muck. At one point the ground sucked a sneaker right off Allison’s foot, but she managed to step back into it. More of Lake’s signs appeared, taunting her and Todd.

“Finish—Last Mile! (really) (trust me!)”

“Finish—only 1 more mile! We really mean it this time!”

“Finish—one mile! We would never lie to you!”

At about 4:45 a.m., after 24 hours of traveling nonstop over the final 38 miles of the course, the Barcelonas emerged from a wooded area into a clearing—Allison first, Todd a bit behind her. Their gasps for air joined an early-morning chorus of crickets and frogs. Lake appeared, too—he’d been sleeping in his car—and led them to the Rock to take in the view of victory. Just a hint of light had turned the sky from black to dark blue.

Allison walked out onto the moss-covered stone that forms the cliff’s edge and stood at a metal guardrail with a red stop sign. Lake announced her finishing time: She’d covered 314 miles in 8 days, 21 hours, 21 minutes, and 10 seconds. Todd then took Allison’s place at the guardrail. His time, Lake said, was 8 days, 21 hours, 21 minutes, and 53 seconds.

The Barcelonas hobbled to a nearby tent. Todd’s feet were throbbing, and he was scared to take off his shoes—because of what his feet might look like, because he might not get them back on, or both. Lake joked with them, inventing a story that Todd had battled the mountain lion with his bare hands while Allison sprinted to the finish. Slowly, the Barcelonas’ haggard faces became more visible as the sun rose.

Another runner finished. “Y’all been together the whole time?” she asked the couple. Todd told her they had. “That’s a crazy way to do it,” she replied. “I don’t think I like anybody enough to spend eight days suffering with them.”

The Barcelonas laughed.

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