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and residents of the towns along the course help out the so-called “screwed” runners, like Rogers and Monté, who do not have a crew helping them. (Entrants assisted by a crew, “crewed” runners, are not allowed to accept any outside help).

“Every year they say more and more people are popping up to help,” Monté says. “They are called ‘road angels.’”

Still, the super-long-distance runners often are a strange sight, and scent, to observers.

“We were resting outside a convenience store when a little kid asks his dad, ‘What’s that smell?’ and that gave us a good laugh,” Rogers recalls.

One fellow participant, a woman prone to roadside naps, was called in as a dead body to police, they recall.

“Twice,” Monté adds with a chuckle.

There were no visions, unfortunately, Rogers says, but the experience was transformative nonetheless.

“I had built preconceived ideas and notions on what to expect as I entered this race. I set out with a plan of action on what to do and a specific time in mind. I didn’t even come close,” Rogers says. “But by the time I finished, not only were these assumptions shattered, they were replaced with a new philosophy. By the time you finish, as Lazarus [Cantrell] predicted, you have new notions about success and failure.”

Monté learned his own lessons on the road.

“Vol State taught me that there is a way to break anything down, make it doable.”

So do they plan to take on the famous, weird and wonderous Barclays Marathon next?

Just to get accepted into that field could take three to five years, Monté guesses, especially now that the movie is out.

“I hope so, because I need the time to prepare,” he says, adding that all the training he does now — such as running circles around his neighborhood park dragging a tire tied around his waist, and regularly registering for 50 and 100-mile trail runs — is in preparation for a future Barclays attempt.

Rogers — who also does the tire-dragging thing, up and down the hills at Norbuck Park — says he would not turn down the opportunity to try if he ever finds out how to enter. (And, no, he won’t simply ask

Cantrell, fearing he might lose the man’s trust).

Meanwhile, both plan to run Vol State again next summer.

“Apparently you don’t do this just once. A lot of the people there had done it multiple years,” Rogers says.

Most people would not find this to be fun, they both acknowledge, but they say, for them, it is that and more.

“The lure of this race is there’s a certain subculture of trail running that is pure, do-it-for-thefun type deal and you see a lot of those people at this race,” Monté says. “The oldest finisher was a 75-year-old race veteran … he was clipped by a car a few days into the race but finished anyway,” Rogers adds.

None of it makes much sense when you try to put it into words.

Maybe it’s just knowing that “anything can happen in any given race,” as Monté says, and the longer the race, the broader the scope of possibilities.

— CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB