The sign over the inflatable start/finish line of the 2025 Big’s Backyard Ultra World Championship reads “there is no finish,” but that’s not true. There was a finish, for one runner anyway. It just took 114 hours and 475 miles of running to get there.

For the uninitiated, the backyard ultra is a concept so simple it’s flat-out maniacal. Run a 4.167-mile loop on the hour, every hour, until you can’t go a step more. This format, invented in 2011 by who else other than Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell, mastermind of the Barkley Marathons, has gained enormous popularity over the past decade-plus. So much so, his original race, Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra, or simply “Big’s” now serves as the world championship for a season of backyard ultras around the world.

The world championship alternates as an individual competition on odd years and national team competition on even years. That means many of the 75 runners who toed on the line at 7 a.m. on October 18, 2025, in Cantrell’s literal backyard in Belt Buckle, Tennessee, have spent two years training for this one objective.

After 114 hours of racing—that’s 4 days and 18 hours, and also a jaw-dropping 475 miles—Australian firefighter Phil Gore, 39, finished Big’s Backyard Ultra as the last runner standing. Belgium’s Ivo Steyaert is credited with the assist after lasting 113 laps.

“You stink!” Gore’s wife Gemma cried into his shoulder at the finish before asking, “You done?”

“Forever,” Gore replied.

Gore, who set the backyard ultra world record this June with 119 laps (496 miles) at the Dead Cow Gully Backyard Ultra in Queensland, Australia, used his experience and speed to his advantage. He averaged just 46 minutes per lap (just over 11 minute-per-mile pace), giving him time to eat, power nap, and take care of himself before having to go back out and do it all again at the top of the hour. (In comparison, Steyaert averaged 53:52-minute laps.)

Gore emerged victorious after a hard-fought battle with Steyaert and America’s Jon Noll and Harvey Lewis (a two-time world champ). The Americans dropped after 111 laps (or “yards”), and Steyaert made it two more before becoming physically incapable of carrying on. After one more lap, that made Gore the 2025 Backyard Ultra World Champion.

Sarah Perry Sets Women’s Backyard Ultra World Record

Just four women toed the start line of the 2025 Big’s Backyard Ultra. But they made the most of it. Sarah Perry, 34, from the U.K. set a women’s backyard ultra world record of 95 laps (395.8 miles), surpassing the 84-lap mark set Megan Eckert last year. She finished as the second woman this year with 92 laps.

“It took me two whole days to warm up,” Perry told Outside Run. “My legs felt awful and I seriously questioned what I had done wrong and considered that maybe I had overtrained.”

But Perry, an accomplished fell runner who runs for Inov8, powered through. She trusted the process and just continued to put one foot in front of the next as temperatures yo-yoed from above 80 degrees Fahrenheit during the day to under 40 degrees at night, with sun and rain pelting down intermittently.

“Thankfully I came out of the other side and finally found what can only be described as a flow state,” she said. “There were many lows including IT band pain, torrential rain and sickness. The highlights are endless, I was literally living my dreams and couldn’t believe that I was competing at Big’s, in Laz’s backyard with people that I usually watch from afar.”

On the Ground (Literally) at Big’s Backyard Ultra

Covering a backyard ultra is hell. Covering the world championship, where runners are inclined to runner longer than ever, is lunacy. That means there was just one person for the job: Jacob Zocherman, a Swedish veteran combat photojournalist who has covered armed conflicts and natural disasters across the world ranging from the South Sudan to Yemen, the Central African Republic to Haiti.

For nearly a week, Zocherman subsisted in a tent at the start/finish on Cantrell’s property, hardly sleeping as he captured the harrowing beauty and insanity of this event for the rest of us living pretty back at home.

We asked Zocherman to document the life cycle of this event, and he delivered. Enjoy.

The post What It’s Like to Run for 114 Hours at the 2025 Backyard Ultra World Championship appeared first on RUN | Powered by Outside.

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