Backyard Ultra - Another Level of Crazy or The Race of Hope
THERE IS NO FINISH!
I think this sentence expresses well the spirit of this new level of madness.
This is a race that in its early hours doesn't seem to be particularly demanding.
After all, it's about running consecutive laps of 6706 meters in less than 60 minutes.
The ultimate goal is to complete 24 laps, or continue until all other athletes have given up.
However, as the hours, the kms, and above all the repetitive laps accumulate, and there is no end in sight ("There is no finish"), we start to lose hope that this torture will ever end.
For that to happen, opponents must capitulate first. We are not dependent only on ourselves. And as we all know, hope is everything, as the following experiment demonstrates:
(...) the work of late Johns Hopkins professor Curt Richter. In the 1950s, he
conducted a gruesome experiment with domesticated and wild rats (...)
Now came the wild rats, renowned for their swimming ability. The ones Richter used had been recently trapped and were fierce and aggressive. One by one, he dropped them into the water. And one by one, they surprised him: Within minutes of entering the water, all 34 died.
“What kills these rats?” he wondered. “Why do all of the fierce, aggressive, wild rats die promptly on immersion and only a small number of the similarly treated, tame, domesticated rats?”
The answer, in a word: hope.
“The situation of these rats scarcely seems one demanding fight or flight—it is rather one of hopelessness,” he wrote. “[T]he rats are in a situation against which they have no defense … they seem literally to ‘give up.’”
Richter then tweaked the experiment: He took other, similar rats and put them in the jar. Just before they were expected to die, however, he picked them up, held them a little while, and then put them back in the water. “In this way,” he wrote, “the rats quickly learn that the situation is not actually hopeless.”This small interlude made a huge difference. The rats that experienced a brief reprieve swam much longer and lasted much longer than the rats that were left alone. They also recovered almost immediately. When the rats learned that they were not doomed, that the situation was not lost, that there might be a helping hand at the ready—in short, when they had a reason to keep swimming—they did. They did not give up, and they did not go under.
“After elimination of hopelessness,” wrote Richter, “the rats do not die.”
There are obviously many differences between humans and rats. But one similarity stands out: We all need a reason to keep swimming.Original paper published in Psychology Today.
And that's what makes this race unique.
The 2018 winner, Johan Steene of Sweden, held a lap longer than the great Courtney Daulwalter of the USA. In the end he claimed that he had only won thanks to the format of the race. In his words: "in any other format or distance, Courtney would have beaten me easily."
But let's move on to a little bit of history. There is no point in reinventing the wheel, so I refer you to an excellent BBC article:
Big Dog is race organiser Gary Cantrell's pet bulldog, who spends most of his time snoozing under a table at the start-finish line, barely lifting a droopy eyelid as dozens of sleep-deprived runners shuffle past him day and night.
The backyard is Cantrell and wife Sandra's sprawling farm in Bell Buckle, rural Tennessee, where runners complete a loop of the woods every hour during the day, before switching to an out-and-back route on the road at night for safety reasons.https://www.bbc.com/sport/56720358
https://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/culture-people/bigs-backyard-ultra-a-race-with-no-end/
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| Gary Cantrell aka Lazarus Lake |
Big's Backyard Ultra is the original backyard ultra, invented by Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell of Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Participants run a 4.167-mile loop every hour, and are eliminated if they fail to complete a loop in an hour. The path of the loop is on trails during the day and along a road after dark. The distance of each loop is equal to 100 divided by 24, so that a competitor runs 100 miles for a full day of competition. There is no predefined finish. The winner is the competitor who completes a loop that no other competitors complete. If no competitor outlasts every other competitor, there is no winner.[1]
Since Lazarus Lake's initial idea, and the beginning of the first editions, this format has exploded all over the world.
So much so that national and world championships, individual and by team, have began to be organized.
In each country where there are certified events, a Backyard Ultra - World Team Championship can be organized. It will take place simultaneously in all countries on October 15, 2022, on which the nationals of that country compete for the result of the National Team, and also for the National Individual Championship. That is if they were selected for this final.
The 15 best athletes are selected, after having raced in all the events in which they can qualify, in the two most recent years (from August 16, 2020 to August 15, 2022).
These competitors will have been the sole winners of each event and additionaly those who have completed the greatest number of laps, up to a maximum of 15 per country.
Winners of the individual national championship will have a place in the world final, Backyard Ultra - World Individual Championship, which will be held in Tennessee at Big Dog Backyard Ultra on October 15, 2023.
It is the first time that this type of competition is held in Portugal. We will therefore have the first team ever on this year of 2022.
There were only 4 qualifying events, 3 in Portugal and 1 in Spain. Although only 3 events took place in Portugal, any athlete can participate in any event anywhere in the world and count the result.
Those events were as follows:
Trotamontes Backyard Ultra 26/03/2022
Horizontes Backyard Ultra 23/04/2022
Backyard Ultra Ruta de la Piedra 24/06/2022
Feirense Backyard Ultra 14/08/2022
34 voltas garantem vitória a António Martins na primeira edição da Horizontes Backyard Ultra
In schematic form, it would be something like this:
The qualifying tests have already taken place, so we already have a list of the 15 brave individuals that have been selected.
Trotamontes Backyard Ultra did not select any athlete because the winner completed 21 laps, that is, fewer laps than the 15th placed on the list.
Unless someone is unable to participate in the final, they will be the first 15 on this list:
https://backyardultra.com/road-to-bigs/
And it is with enormous and undisguised pride that I can say that one of them is a member of my club, RUN 4 FUN!
Luiz de Ramos qualified after completing two additional laps in addition to the 24 that correspond to the pre-established distance of 100 miles!
In other words, he completed the distance of 174.356 km in 25h55m and was just two laps away from the winner, Hugo Alves, who completed 28 laps.
BRAVO!!!
Huge congratulations Luis!!! We will be with you on the 15th of October! Train well champion!
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