It started with a loop. Then another. And another.
Four days and 20 hours later—after 116 consecutive hours of running a 6.7 km loop every hour, on the hour—Poland’s Łukasz Wróbel shattered the Backyard Ultra world record, completing 116 “yards” (loops) and covering more than 777 kilometers (483 miles) in the process at the Legends Backyard Ultra in Retie, Belgium.
Wróbel’s historic performance was only possible thanks to a fierce duel with Belgian runner Jan Vandekerckhove, who bowed out after 115 yards. The two had run side-by-side for over two days after the rest of the field had dropped, pushing one another into the realm of the unthinkable.
There is no official finish line in a backyard ultra. There is only the last one standing.
Wait—What Even Is a Backyard Ultra?
If you’re new to this fringe-yet-exploding format in ultrarunning, here’s how it works:
A Backyard Ultra is a last-person-standing event invented by Gary Cantrell, better known as Lazarus Lake, the mastermind behind the infamous Barkley Marathons. In this race, runners must complete a 6.7056 km (4.167-mile) loop every hour on the hour. If you finish a loop in 40 minutes, you get 20 minutes to rest before the next one. If you finish in 59 minutes, you get one minute. Miss the start of the next hour? You’re out.
The cycle continues—hour after hour—until only one runner remains. That person has to complete one more solo loop to be declared the winner. Everyone else gets a DNF.
This structure creates a uniquely cruel blend of ultra-distance endurance, sleep deprivation, mental warfare, and pacing strategy. As ultrarunner and coach Maggie Guterl once described it, “It’s the most democratic form of racing—everyone gets the same chance every hour. It’s just a matter of who can keep going.”
116 Hours of War of Attrition
At Legends Backyard Ultra, Wróbel and Vandekerckhove entered truly uncharted territory. After 60 hours, only a few runners remained. By 100 hours, it was a two-man race.
Both runners averaged around 43 minutes per loop, leaving just under 17 minutes an hour for rest, food, and micro-naps. According to race organizers, 15 runners made it to the 50-hour mark, but began to drop off rapidly thereafter—a testament to how brutally steep the endurance curve becomes.
The course in Retie is considered “runnable,” with flat, mostly dirt trails—optimal for backyard formats. But as anyone who’s done one will tell you, no course is easy after 400 miles with no sleep.
To put Wróbel’s feat in context: his 116-yard run beat the previous individual Backyard Ultra world record of 110 yards set by Belgium’s Merijn Geerts in 2023. Even that was thought to be near the upper limits of human capability.
Belgium: Backyard Ultra’s Quiet Powerhouse
Wróbel may have taken the record home to Poland, but Belgium is the global center of gravity for backyard racing right now.
At the 2024 Backyard Team World Championships, the Belgian trio of Merijn Geerts, Ivo Steyaert, and Frank Gielen collectively pushed the limits, with Geerts hitting the 110-yard mark solo—then a world record. The team title only solidified Belgium’s dominance in this emerging format.
Though Geerts and Gielen weren’t running in Retie this time (they were competing at the 6 Jours de France multi-day race), Steyaert was spotted on course cheering on the runners. The camaraderie in this format is unusual: the winner can’t win without someone pushing them the whole way. In this case, Wróbel owes his record to Vandekerckhove just as much as to his own legs.
By virtue of their showdown, both Wróbel and Vandekerckhove have punched their tickets to the Backyard Ultra World Championship, held every two years at Big’s Backyard Ultra in Bell Buckle, Tennessee—the original event hosted by Lazarus Lake himself.
This October, they’ll join a field of the most stubborn humans on Earth in a format that’s arguably the ultimate test of grit, patience, and psychological endurance.
And while Wróbel holds the record for now, Lazarus Lake has warned before: “Someone always goes one more yard.”
