They Ran, They Ran So Far - Holy Crap

 I don't follow ultra-running very closely - there's really only one race that catches my attention, and I usually end up looking at the results only weeks after it finished. That race is Big Dog's Backyard Ultra which is run in October - and holy crap, what the actual fuck?

So this race is different than your normal race. It's not a fixed distance, it's an endurance race. But it's not a fixed time either. It's a fixed speed- a single loop that's a bit more than 4 miles long - and you get an hour to finish it. Sounds pretty easy, and everyone who starts it finishes that lap no problem.

Here's the catch - it's an endurance race. You have to do it again in the next hour. And you keep doing it until you stop. The person who completes the last loop in under an hour (technically - you just got to be in the starting corral for the next loop at the start of the hour) - that person "wins". There's no finish line - it's an open ended endurance race, where you keep running until no one else can run with you anymore. It's about pushing the limits of human endurance in a sick and demented fashion.

About seven years ago, there was this shift in ultrarunning. The previous record was 49 loops - 204-ish miles. Two runners quit after completing the first lap of the third day. Just crazy. Imagine going 49 hours straight where you get woken every hour on the hour - that's hard enough on it's own without having to push out four miles between every wake-up call. For two full days. Crazy.

Then in 2017 someone ran 59 hours. And then 68 hours the year after. And in 2021, Harvey Lewis broke into Day 4 by completing loop number 85. Over 350 miles. Three and a half days of running over four miles in each and every hour. It stopped making sense to me before it got to this point - but the maniacs kept running.

Harvey Lewis' wining distance this year was 108. 108 loops. 450 miles. Four and a half days. Just get up at the top of the hour and run four and a bit miles, and then do it again - 107 more times.

Also too - the winner is the person who is the only one to complete the last loop. Meaning that someone ran 107 loops to come in second (they call it the "assist"). This year, the person who came in third did 103 loops. 429 miles of running and finishing third.

I don't really have a point here. As I mentioned earlier - it stopped making sense to me when they were running a hundred miles less.  I guess I just find it really interesting.