About the race
The backyard ultra or last one standing is a form of race where competitors must consecutively run the distance of 4.167 miles in less than one hour, which is a pace of 100 miles per 24 hours. Each hour the race starts again, and those runners not on the start line are disqualified. The race is over when only one runner remains to complete a lap (referred to as a Yard). This runner is marked as the winner and only finisher, with all other runners receiving a “DNF” (Did Not Finish).
The Longbridge version is on the edge of the South Downs and the race director has created the toughest BY course in the country. The elevation gain and 6pm Friday start time ensures a very tired group of runners.
The Longbridge race is in its first year and has a winter edition in January as well as the summer version, this year on 21 June. I ran the winter version but the cold weather and stopping at the end of each lap meant I was frozen and dropped out very early.
This Friday the weather was beautiful and we set off at 6pm under blue skies. The joy of this format is that the race restarts every hour so you get to chat to most of the runners. I’d aimed to run each lap in 53 minutes (13 minutes per mile) to give enough time between laps for refuelling or toilet breaks. This also means enough time to walk the uphill sections. The first four laps were fantastic as we saw the sunset and the temperature started to cool.
There was a coffee shop onsite and a pizza oven so I ran lap 5 a little quicker to get my order in.
Runners all had different strategies- some were running 40-45 minute laps then lying down to rest, while others were treating it as a non stop race, running 58 minutes with a short stop to pick up supplies.
At about 02:30 it started to rain but it wasn’t too heavy although I did put a jacket on for the next couple of laps.
My hamstring injury is not fully recovered so I had planned to stop when it started complaining which was half through lap 10. However I decided to carry on to Lap 12 for a total of 50 miles and 7500ft of elevation gain.
Results
Sam Bracke 30 yards
Zoe Salt 29 yards
Jan Voorspoels 26 yards
David Barker 12 yards
FYI
The UK record for this format is 87 yards, set at the Suffolk BYU last month.
David Barker