the Big Dog Backyard Ultra consists of running a single 4-mile loop, once every hour, on the hour, until there is no one else left in the race. there is no predetermined distance, there is no limit. last man standing, wins. however long it takes.
enjoy.
Interesting. Does it matter how fast you run the loop, or is all that matters is that you toe the line every hour?
i love weird races like this
So you could literally walk and still win? Weird.
Sounds fun
LoneStarXC wrote:
So you could literally walk and still win? Weird.
Maybe figuratively you could, but not literally.
LoneStarXC wrote:
So you could literally walk and still win? Weird.
Oh, like that one time you walked for 59 hours?
Figuratively wrote: Maybe figuratively you could, but not literally.
this is an interesting point to consider.
good quality race walkers can cover 10km in around 40 minutes (UK record is 39:36) so 4 miles in around 28 minutes.
which means that in this instance, you could "literally" walk and win.
you would have to be going some to keep that up for two days, though, so it is admittedly unlikley, but nonetheless possible.
cheers.
I love this concept. I know there six day races where the winners do 600+ miles so this race will inevitably get longer. I wonder if runners try to take brief naps between laps during the evening? If you could take a 15 minute nap every hour I'd think that would help a lot
I would stop enjoying it after maybe 4 hours
I would physically be incapable of continuing after 8 or 9 (blisters would slaughter me if I was not used to going slow for so long), maybe 11 or 12 if I got to change socks and shoes every hour
October 17th 2020, mark your calendars ?....
What a cool idea! The real limiting factor is that you could only ever really sleep for like 15 mins at a time, maybe 20 mins if you fall asleep almost immediately and get up 5 mins before getting going again.
So how often can someone last on sleeping 15-20 mins an hour? I have no idea - if you did it for the full 24 hours, you would have gotten 6-8 hours, but it would definitely not be good quality and you wouldn't have ever touched the REM phase.
Then, on top of that, you've got to complete the run... man, this is tough to call. I'm guessing this would be incredibly difficult to maintain belong 48 hours, but I would bet the race would be over long before then.
I remember a great thread from years ago by Ian Edwards, who ran 2 miles around his neighbourhood, every hour, for 24 hours. He struggled even with half the distance, and with the psychological boost of having a defined end point to shoot for - but then, he wasn't an unltramarathoner.
You could actually get about an hour of sleep in, run it in 25-30 minutes and sleep the last half hour and then the first half hour of the next one, then finish the loop before the next hour was over. And then repeat.
That is a good point. In that case, there's definitely scope for lasting a little longer - although having to run 8.3 miles (with maybe a couple of mins or rest) after 40 minutes of sleep, after over a day or running 4.15 miles again and again with very limited sleep, still sounds enormously difficult - 8.3 miles is a pretty long way!
No, you need to start the loop on the hour. If you're not at the line ready to go then you're a DNF.
HM guy wrote:
I remember a great thread from years ago by Ian Edwards, who ran 2 miles around his neighbourhood, every hour, for 24 hours. He struggled even with half the distance, and with the psychological boost of having a defined end point to shoot for - but then, he wasn't an unltramarathoner.
That was a great thread. Not Eddylee quality, but what is.
LUF.. wrote:
I love this concept. I know there six day races where the winners do 600+ miles so this race will inevitably get longer. I wonder if runners try to take brief naps between laps during the evening? If you could take a 15 minute nap every hour I'd think that would help a lot
I don't think any human being could poosibly nap for 15 mins every lap.