[ebergen]

For a tech connection the first person to ever finish the race was Mark Williams who also worked on HHVM at Facebook.

[dtf]

I just googled a bit and found his race report from that event, dated April 1995:

https://www.mattmahoney.net/barkley/bark100.txt

[TheAlchemist]

John Kelly, the guy who is one of 2 people that managed to finish the race 3 times, is a Data Scientist.

He has a blog, with a great name to combine both of his passions ! https://randomforestrunner.com/