On Saturday, October 19, 2024, 63 teams of runners in 63 countries simultaneously started the 2024 Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra World Team Championships. Four and a half days and 458.36 miles later, three Belgians — Merijn Geerts, Ivo Steyaert, and Frank Gielen — have set a new backyard ultra record of 110 hours.
The format of the event, created by Gary Cantrell, aka Laz, who is also the creator of the Barkley Marathons, is that runners complete a 4.167-mile loop, or “yard,” every hour upon the hour, until they can run no more. Ordinarily, one by one the runners choose to retire — or they are timed out when they can’t complete a yard in under the hour time limit — until it is a battle between the last two standing. Ultimately, a winner is crowned and the other awarded recognition as their “assist.” According to the rules, “If no runner can complete one more loop than anyone else, there is no winner.”
From left to right, Merijn Geerts, Ivo Steyaert, and Frank Gielen celebrate a new backyard ultra record during the 2024 Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra World Team Championships. Photo: Caroline Dupont
In 2022, Geerts and Steyaert agreed to quit at the same time, thereby sharing the DNF but also sharing a record of a whopping 101 hours. They managed to simultaneously win and lose. Harvey Lewis broke that record in 108 hours in 2023, with Ihor Verys as his assist.
This year, Geerts and Steyaert were joined by Gielen in the pursuit of a team win/DNF, covering a remarkable 458.36 miles. Gielen did so with style — there is a video of him performing an impressive number of push-ups on loop 109. They are all at once each other’s assists and fellow champions.
In the team championships, as opposed to the individual championships, runners are more inclined to work together to run as many loops as they can for their country. There isn’t as much to be gained from psyching each other out to take the individual win. Sharing a win — particularly between three of them — is another level, though. As Cantrell later shared in a Facebook post, “the Belgian team has redefined the race.”
Each country enters 15 runners and the number of “yards” completed by each individual contributes to the country’s overall ranking. After a bit of a tight race, Australia came second with 971 yards and the U.S. came third with 969 yards. At hour 85, both countries only had two runners left and the U.S. was in second place, but Scott Snell of the U.S. finished with 88 yards and Phil Gore of Australia went on to run 96 yards to move Australia into second place.
The podium consists of the same trio of countries as 2022, and in fact, the same quadruple with Japan putting in a repeat performance in fourth position. But the Belgians have proved that it is by working together that extraordinary records can be achieved — which is, sort of, the message of the race itself. Maybe it all comes down to perspective: a backyard ultra is not about grinding each other down until your rival simply can’t do another lap, it’s about inspiring each other to go on.
