I believe Phil Gore did 119 last year, but that was on a different course. I love following this as well, it’s very addicting once you start!
Four guys out on number 108, including Harvey. I wonder how long these guys are going to last? Phil has looked the strongest to me, but I remember he looked similar in 2023 right up until he didn’t!
Yes they look good until they dont. Kind of like Taylor and Lucy in Kona, running just over 6 minute miles one minute, then wobbling all over the road minutes later. It just may take more than the 111 I had predicted, some stubborn guys still in that top 4..
Well maybe I’ve seen a different set of runners calling it a day or finishing what turned out to be their last yard. I’ve seen no ‘wobbling all over the road’, have you? And mentally all there.These guys are not suffering from heat illness nor, I assume, from lack of nutrition/water.
Listen to Nico the Frenchman or the Japanese K2 who’s just now returned to the the start after 106 yards - remember he only had 15 seconds between finishing the last yard and the bell being rung.
Ha, that’s like saying I didnt see Lovseth or Matthews struggling in their ironman runs, so what was the big deal? Yes there have been wobblers, and they are out of the race now. Of course those left are by and large doing ok, that is why they are still in there racing! These are the best of the best on their best days too. So I expect to not see total blow ups, just a gradual grinding down of body and mind, until they all(but 1) pull the plug..
And just like that Harvey is wobbling back and forth and not looking great. But he did run his best time in awhile, so he pushed it to get more rest I presume, like Phil did also. They say the first laps on the road at sunset are usually pushed to get that bigger rest period.
Phil definitely has a strategy to push the road loops and rest, meanwhile Ivo is coming up on 45 hours since he’s had more than a 10 minute break! Jon has been similar to Ivo with very few long breaks. I can’t fathom being on my feet that long.
So 111 on the screen and still 4 going at it. If you are up in the world, log on at about 45 minutes after each hour for this real life drama. It really feels like someone could get real hurt here, but all these dudes are veterans of this format. A US record has been broken, just a matter of which guy will get it now, the race within the race. And if guys keep going, looks like Phil could be pushed to a new WR too. Still a ways off, but seems like a distinct possibility this late in the game with 4 still charging!!
And now they are three - Phil, Harvey and Ivo.
And now 2, where is Harvey?
And looking at the chats, it looks like Jon will get the US record now, even though Harvey started 112. But because he didnt finish it the record goes to who came in first on the 111 lap..That really sucks for Harvey, hope he is ok..
Throws down a 37min loop to finish it off. What a machine. The times and distances of this race absolutely boggle my mind.
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That’s something to wake up to!!!
I watched this yesterday at lunchtime. Zoë Rom and Brendan “Semi Rad” Leonard talked with Jared Beasley about his biography of Laz, The Endurance Artist
One thing that Zoë brought up was that you have to have a certain special kind of resolve to run 4 miles snd change, then sit down, have something to drink, eat, change socks, etc., then get up and run away from that “comfort” time-after-time-after-time, for DAYS on end
Also, she called out “UTMB has basically become this Gore-Tex Comic-Con and Leadville is almost predominantly YouTubers now” and “everything has become so commercial big and shiny like done over lit Netflix documentary” saying that there’s “sort of a desire for something mysterious and authentic”
ETA: Oh! I forgot to add that they mentioned the route map of Rocky’s run in Rocky II which was in Philadelphia Magazine more than a decade ago, now, but neglected to add that there’s an annual 50K through the city which follows that route, exactly
I stand corrected - Jared himself reached out and said “yeah we did. My friend Gagz told me about doing it. Sounds like a great run”
I love these events but they also scare me. People have the capacity to really hurt themselves and even the longest fixed race distances, be they 100 miles or 200 or 300, act to curb that. I’m concerned that someone’s going to come a real cropper one day and not from something tragic but in the stars like an undiagnosed heart issue, but from sheer exhaustion.
I’m reminded of the 2010 world sauna championship.
That’s why people have a crew to tell them “nope. That’s enough” and pull the plug when they’ve lost reasoning to do it themselves
Ideally, anyway
Courtney Dauwalter running herself blind a few years ago, gave a name for a Death Metal band … “Corneal Edema”
I was glued to this as much as possible. It wore me out just watching. I stayed up on the last night and watched until the end. Pretty compelling stuff.
I have raced this format three times. It is a lot of fun. Just happy, cool people out having a great time.
I was thinking that the fact that there was essentially no mention of this in the forums (thanks for starting this, Monty) is a further argument that the answer to the poll question: should tri, running, cycling, etc be one forum….? should be an emphatic YES!
This is the kind of thing that would bring a lot of discussion on the old forum and now it gets relegated to a page that gets very little traffic and is almost an afterthought. Just my 2 cents.
I explained the Backyard Ultra to D’Wife once
“Don’t you fucking DARE to try that”
My wife, who has been unbelievably supportive of my endurance racing, thinks that the Backyard format is dumb and refuses to support it in any way. She’s a pretty smart person……
I actually started this in the main forum, but Ryan made it move over here into the graveyard of dead threads for some reason. I mean sure you can move it a week or so after the event and we are all done with it, but it disappeared the morning of the finish..
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Just tell her she is dumb…(-; But I get that she doesnt want you to do it, that’s a lot of lawns that dont get mowed, trashes taken out, and spiders not getting killed…
There is a reason this is a super niche sport, only a very few of us can even appreciate the toughness and unique abilities of these competitors. And the format of no one finishes except the last person, well average folks will not comprehend something like that..
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