So – I’ve signed up to a Backyard Ultra. And if you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry — most people haven’t, and neither had I until a matter of months ago. And even when it’s explained, the usual reaction is somewhere between confusion and mild concern.
Here’s how it works:
About 100 or so people (usually) get together in a big field somewhere. You all run a loop. The loop is 4.167 miles long (there is a reason for that oddly specific number, but we’ll park that for now). You have one hour to complete it.
If you finish in 40 minutes? Great. You get 20 minutes to rest.
If you finish in 59 minutes? You get one minute to sit down, question your life choices, and go again.
Because at the top (exactly the top) of the next hour… you start again. Everyone together again. If you are one second early you can’t start, and if you are one second late you are disqualified.
Same loop. Same distance. Same rules.
And you keep doing that.
Until you can’t.
There is no set finish distance. No fixed time. No medal for “having a good go.”
There is only one winner — the last person still able to complete a lap inside the hour after everyone else has stopped. So if there are at least two people left the race continues, and continues……..And some people can do this for days on end, as the organisers commit to stay until that last one person is still standing. That won’t be me by the way!
Everyone else?
They’re recorded, quite wonderfully, as a DNF, and they go home. I will be one of the early finishers I would imagine, as most people that I’ve seen so far doing these things are nutters. Maniacs pure and simple!
Why Would Anyone Do This?
A very reasonable question.
Because on the face of it, this is madness. It’s not just a race — it’s a slow, deliberate negotiation with your own limits. Physical, yes. But more than anything, mental.
What fascinates me about it is its simplicity.
No real pacing strategy over 50 miles (other than to find what feels right for you to be able to get up and go again). No timing chips (other than the bell on the hour every hour).
No “just get to the next checkpoint.”
No place to hide.
You bring with you a gazebo, enough food to sustain you over however many laps or hours you think you’ll be out there for, and also (critically) a nice kind soul to help you. They are your ‘crew’. This enables you to sit and rest between laps and they can toss jelly babies at you, help you find clean kit when it rains, get a drink, and allow your heart rate to settle and hopefully push you out of your chair when (or ideally before!) the next bell sounds.
It reduces everything down to one question, asked over and over again:
“Can you do one more lap?”
And early on, the answer is easy.
Of course you can.
But somewhere — and it’s different for everyone — that answer starts to wobble.
Your legs are tired.
Your body is complaining.
You’ve sat down for a bit too long.
You’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have and you have to go to the loo.
Or nothing at all.
And suddenly that very simple question becomes complicated if you are lucky, and more likely “no” if you think about it probably at all. Apparently 80% of people who do Backyard Ultras quit in the chair – decide they’ve had enough, or done enough. And that is fine, I just don’t want to be one of them. I want to go until I literally can’t go any more. It’s a bit like a day long bleep test.
The Bit That Gets Under Your Skin
What I think really draws me to this format is that it removes the safety net.
In a marathon, you know it will end.
In an ultra, even a long one, you know roughly what you’re in for.
Here?
You don’t.
You might run 3 laps (12.6 miles)
You might run 10 (which would be 42 miles)
Or you might surprise yourself completely, at either end of those two. I have literally no idea at the moment what I can do.
And that uncertainty — that quiet, nagging curiosity — is incredibly hard to ignore.
So… Why Now?
Because for reasons I can’t entirely explain, this one has got hold of me.
Much like UTMB did. Much like standing on a trail in Chamonix and thinking, I want to be part of this, and feeling the sound of Vangelis’ haunting Conquest of Paradise overwhelming my every emotion.
This feels incredibly just ‘under my skin’.
Not in scale (they only have about 120 people taking part, either for logistical reasons, or because there are only 120 people daft enough). Not in scenery (you run loops around a farmers field – the same field over and over again of course). But in something deeper – the sense that this is a challenge worth challenging myself on, even if I am not sure at all how it will end.
Or if it will go well at all.
Where This Is Going
In a couple of weeks’ time, I’ll be standing on a start line for my first Backyard Ultra in Morpeth, Northumberland.
No grand declarations.
No bold predictions.
Just curiosity (ok, a little bit more than that………:D)
And a quiet goal, somewhere in the background, of seeing how many times I can answer that question:
“Can you do one more lap?”
Watch this space………..
To Kilimanjaro (and beyond?) 