- Trail Runner Australia
- Posts
- A quick heart update and a look ahead to Big's Backyard Ultra
A quick heart update and a look ahead to Big's Backyard Ultra
I'm running again, albeit slowly, and I'm looking forward to seeing the best backyard ultra runners in the world at the de facto world champs later this month.
Stuart Watt
October 10, 2025
In partnership with
Thankful to be running again…
Good news. Despite my atrial fibrillation (AF) dramas and ridiculously low resting heart rate, I’ve been able to start running again. Admittedly, it’s been slow. But slow running is better that no running at all.
(If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, it’s probably easiest to have a quick read of my piece from last week, but in a nutshell I had a procedure called an ablation on my heart three weeks ago that aimed to fix my AF but left me unable to run more than about 60m without suffering a fit of gasping.)
I’ve managed three runs in the past week - Parkrun on Saturday, a 6.7k loop on Monday and an 8k out and back on Tuesday.
Progress. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
Of those, the Parkrun felt the best. I ran it in just over 30 minutes and it was a textbook progression run with each kilometre faster than the previous one. I was able to accelerate around slower people and reached the finish feeling like I could have run on no problems.
The second run was a bit more difficult - but I put that down to the hills near my place. It’s almost impossible to find a flat route in my part of Brisbane. But the 8k was a struggle. I got 400m in and had to stop for 45 seconds of gasping before I got enough breath into me to carry on.
I’ve no idea what all this means for my appointment with the New York Marathon, which is now only three weeks plus a weekend away. But I’ll keep trying to gently up the distance and track what happens.
I have a tele-health appointment with my cardiologist on 14 October so by then I should have plenty of running data for him to peruse. One thing that is worrying me slightly is that my resting heart-rate remains very low. At one point today it was 32, but I’ve been averaging 38. Low, whichever way you look at it!
Stop Fraud Before It Starts
Are you winning but sales but losing revenue? Post-purchase fraud "digital shoplifting" slips past traditional tools and drains your revenue through false disputes, policy abuse, and wasted shipping.
Chargeflow Prevent closes that gap. Our AI-powered platform blocks fraud before fulfillment, cuts disputes by up to 90%, and saves your team wasted costs.
Best of the best backyarders
Good thing I’m not one of the best backyard ultra runners in the world, because we are just a couple of weeks away from what’s regarded as the world championships for that ultra running format, Big’s Backyard in Tennessee, USA.
If this is a format you’re not familiar with, you can read about how it works in this piece I wrote earlier in the year. Then you’ll have to also read this piece about how the backyard ultra world record was broken at the evocatively named “Dead Cow Gully” event in south-east Queensland.
But if you don’t have time for that, in summary a backyard ultra is a last-person standing format. When the race starts, all runners have an hour to complete a 6.7k loop - known as a yard. At the start of the second hour, the same thing applies … and so on until only one person gets around the course. Simple!
The world record, set by Australian Phil Gore at Dead Cow Gully, is 119 yards. Think about that for a moment - for 119 hours straight, he completed a 6.7k loop. That’s one hour shy of five days, and a total of more than 797 kilometres.
Gore will be at Big’s, as will Sam Harvey, the Kiwi who pushed him to that world record before being unable to complete his 119th yard.
Big’s, or to give the event its full name, Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra, is the birthplace of the backyard format. It was the brainchild of Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell, who was also the architect of the Barkley Marathons, possibly the most unique ultra event in the world.
Seeking impartial news? Meet 1440.
Every day, 3.5 million readers turn to 1440 for their factual news. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you a complete summary of politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a brief 5-minute email. Enjoy an impartial news experience.
Big’s is named after Cantrell’s dog and it’s a backyard ultra because it takes place, literally, in the backyard of his property in Tennessee. It was first run in 2011 and won with 18 yards.
Nowadays it’s invitation only. Fifty of the 76 places are reserved for national champions, the balance go to the runners around the world who have recorded the best results.
Five Australians will be there - Gore, Jonathan Ash, Ryan Crawford, James Blanton and Dan Camac. That’s a pretty good representation, given there will only be nine Americans. Harvey will be there for the Kiwis, along with Simon McLean.
Gore will undoubtedly go into the event as the favourite. He completed his 119th yard at Dead Cow looking so fresh it was like he’d just been for a warm-up jog. He’s had a slightly disrupted preparation, suffering a bout of bursitis in his knee in mid-August.
Phil Gore’s three-month training block leading into Big’s. He also managed almost 22,000 metres of elevation gain in that time.
But on Instagram he’s reported that the rest this forced on him has done him good and he bounced back to record a peak 170k week before heading into his taper. If there is someone who can go with him, there’s no telling how far he could run this time around.
Worth noting that of the 76 starters at Big’s, eight qualified via Dead Cow, underlining what a strong field the event attracts. The keen-eyed among you will have noted one of the runs I’ve managed in the past week was 6.7k.
That’s no coincidence - it’s the loop I’ve mapped out so I can start my own backyard ultra training, because I’m aiming to make Dead Cow Gully my “A race” in 2026. That’s assuming I can run at all of course! Already I can’t wait.
Backyard gospel
In June this year, on his Facebook page, Laz gave us all an insight into what inspired the backyard ultra concept. It was so poetic, I’ve quoted it in full below - although I have fixed the grammar and layout.
Be your own hero! All I started out to do was to make a fun race we could have in our backyard with limited space and resources. The rest was serendipity. The idea of a 4 miles every hour race came to me as a high school athlete. But it was 40 years later that I had actually figured out the parameters to bring that idea to fruition.
I just did not know if it would appeal to enough runners for one such event to exist... That turned out to be no problem at all. What germinated from that seed of an idea was a very different kind of running event.
One where everyone was actually on the same team because for one athlete to do well, everyone had to do well. A race with only one winner developed into a race where everyone could win just by running the furthest they had ever gone...
And as it turned out, the format was perfect for people to cover unexpected distances. Athletes started going not just further than they had ever gone, but further than they ever dreamed they could go.
The format spread, and then spread some more. I sort of expected our little home-made race here on the big dog's farm would be eclipsed by the polished events with fancy websites.
But a funny thing happened. The best backyard athletes in the world kept wanting to come here, where it all began, and a de facto world championship developed. Here was a whole new running sport, and the opportunity of a lifetime.
A chance to develop a sport built around the athletes and not the organisers. A chance to set up qualifying where every athlete controlled their own destiny. The biggest problem was that every time we scaled up the process there were more races and more athletes and we had to scale it up again!
The backyard developed its own elite athletes. Not the fastest, not the strongest... but the most durable and the most determined! The broadcast of the championships went from an hourly Facebook post to an outright round the clock broadcast.
From a few tens of people following the Facebook posts to literally millions of people tuning in every hour. And why not? The race is compelling. Sudden death overtime every hour. No-one can ever build up a lead! And anyone can win.
As we move towards the 2025 individual championships, athletes from 50+ nations - the best backyarders in the world - all meeting on one field to determine the last man on earth (man being a misnomer, since a woman could well win and has!).
We have added yet something else new... a weekly program to follow the qualifying and preparations for the championships to highlight the great athletes and great events. To recognise backyarders at every level.
If you want to be a part of a different sort of sport. One that everyone can play. Where we believe that, "Not every athlete has the same ability, but every athlete has the same worth." Be sure to tune in to our YouTube channel.
Find the inspiration to go further than you have ever gone and be your own hero! And who knows, maybe one day you will be lining up in the starting corral here in Big's Backyard. Because in the backyard, everyone has a chance.
It pretty much says it all!
Upcoming Events
There are way too many events for me to list everything that’s happening around the country, but here is a selection of upcoming races (with a bias towards South East Queensland).
Event | Location | Date |
|---|---|---|
Pemberton, WA | 17 October 2025 | |
Blackall, Qld | 18 October 2025 | |
Glenbrook, NSW | 19 October 2025 | |
Apollo Bay, Vic | 25 October 2025 | |
Bright, Vic | 1-4 November 2025 | |
Halls Gap, Vic | 6-9 November 2025 | |
Perth Hills, WA | 8 November 2025 | |
Numinbah, Qld | 9 November 2025 | |
Canberra, ACT | 15-16 November 2025 |
The Running Calendar website is a great source if you want a comprehensive understanding of what’s available around Australia.