What Is the Backyard Ultra World Record?

The Short Answer

Merijn Geerts and Ivo Steyaert of Belgium hold the backyard ultra world record with 124 yards. They set it together at the Belgian national race of the 2026 Backyard Ultra World Team Championship in Retie, which started on October 17, 2026. Both completed their 124th yard on October 22 and neither started the 125th, so the race had no winner. A yard is 6.7056 km (4.1667 miles), so the record equals 831.49 km or 516.7 miles. It beat the 119 yards Phil Gore of Australia ran at the Dead Cow Gully Backyard Ultra in June 2025, with Sam Harvey the assist on 118. The women's record is 95 yards, set by Sarah Perry of Great Britain at Big's Backyard Ultra in Tennessee in October 2025. Our news report covers how the record was set, and the backyard ultra guide explains the format.

How the Record Fell at the 2026 World Team Championship

Every national race started at 12:00 UTC on October 17. The pair tied Gore's 119 in the yard from 10:00 to 11:00 UTC on October 22 and broke it in the next, becoming the first to reach 500 miles in a backyard race at 120 yards. They added four more before stopping. Both had come close before: they shared the then-record 101 yards in 2022 and the 110 in 2024 at the same championship, and Steyaert was Gore's assist with 113 at Big's in 2025. Because neither completed a yard the other did not, there is no winner under backyard rules, but the yards count, as they did for the shared 101 and 110.

The record also passed Belgium's listed national record of 115. All the women had stopped earlier, so the women's record could not fall at this championship: Megan Smyth stopped after 82 yards in Bell Buckle and Sarah Perry after 76 at Sherwood Pines.

The team championship has a record-setting history. Each of the four editions since 2020 has raised the overall mark at the Belgian national race: 75 yards in 2020, 101 in 2022, 110 in 2024 and 124 in 2026. Our World Team Championship guide has the team standings and national winners.

How the Record Grew

The record has risen from 18 yards at the first Big's in 2011 to 124. Until 2018 every new mark was set at Big's in Tennessee. Since 2020 it has moved between the team championship, Big's and a handful of independent races with deep fields. The table lists each time the most yards ever completed in a backyard ultra went up.

Three team-championship record steps were shared. In the 2022, 2024 and 2026 team championships the last Belgian runners stopped together, so none of those races had a winner. Under the rules a race with no single last finisher has no winner, but the yards still count: the organizer called the 2022 result a world record, and Lazarus Lake wrote after 2024 that the three Belgians had chosen to finish together rather than race for the win.

Sources differ on a few details. The organizer and Yardlore date each result by the race start; Wikipedia uses the finishing day, which is four to five days later for the deepest races. DUV and Yardlore list the June 2023 race as the Australian Backyard Masters, while news reports call it the Dead Cow Gully Backyard Ultra; both refer to the same course. DUV ranks Johan Steene first in 2014, but he and Jeremy Ebel stopped on the same yard, so there was no winner under backyard rules. The local report from Dead Cow Gully in 2025 says Sam Harvey collapsed "on Loop 118"; the organizer and DUV both credit him with 118 completed yards.

Women's Record Progression

American runners held the women's record from October 2018 until Sarah Perry's 95 in October 2025. Courtney Dauwalter doubled the previous best in one race in 2018, and the mark has risen by 27 yards since 2020.

Before 2018 the women's best was much lower. Yardlore's progression starts with Lisa Bliss's 16 yards at the first Big's in 2011 and reaches 33 yards, by Lisa Amundsson of Sweden, in June 2018. No organizer list of women's records exists; this table follows Yardlore and was checked against the organizer's results and race reports. The 96 yards reported by Vera Chekalina in Russia in June 2026 is not included, for the reason explained below.

National Records

The organizer keeps one record per nation: the most yards completed by any runner of that nationality. The table shows every nation with a record of 95 yards or more on November 6, 2026, including Belgium's 124 from the 2026 World Team Championship.

Eleven nations have a national record of at least 100 yards. Several records came from runners who did not win: Harvey Lewis and Jon Noll share the US record after stopping on the same yard behind Gore and Ivo Steyaert at Big's in 2025.

What Counts as a Record

• Who keeps the list: Big's Backyard Ultra, the organization behind the original race in Tennessee, publishes the official rules, results from affiliated races and the national-record table. Lazarus Lake, who created the format in 2011, rules on disputed results. The IAU record list runs from 50 km to six days and has no backyard category. Yardlore and DUV keep independent results databases; Yardlore states that its records are not officially sanctioned.
• A standard yard: 4 miles 880 feet, which is 6.7056 km or 4.1667 miles. Each yard starts exactly one hour after the last, with no late starts, and must be finished in under an hour to count.
• Backyard rules on the course: no non-competitors may accompany runners, including eliminated runners; no personal aid during a yard; no trekking poles or other artificial aids. The race must be open-ended.
• Completed yards, not wins: the record is the most yards completed. Sarah Perry set the women's record in 10th place, and the 101, 110 and 124 marks were shared.
• A race with competitors: yards must be completed in a rule-compliant race with other competitors. A race can end without a winner when nobody completes an extra yard; a solo hourly effort is not equivalent to that competition.

Results That Do Not Count

Biotropika, Russia, June 2026. At the Biotropika Ultra Trail in the Leningrad Region, Dmitry Klimov was reported with 123 yards, Dmitrii Sheremet with 122 and Ivan Zaborsky with 121, and Vera Chekalina with 96 among the women. In July 2026 Lazarus Lake said the event would not be recognized and none of its results would count, because video showed media, volunteers, organizers and support staff on the loop with runners. The organizer's table still lists Russia's record as Zaborsky's 106 from the 2025 edition of the same race. Yardlore still shows 123 and 96 as records, and TASS reported Klimov's total as 124 laps (831.5 km).

Project 168, Western Australia, August 2026. Phil Gore ran one lap at the top of every hour, alone, as a charity challenge in Forrestdale. He completed 152 laps (1,019.92 km) before missing the cutoff on the 153rd. With no field to outlast it was not a race, and his recognized mark stays at 119.

Why the Record Keeps Rising

Depth. Nobody had completed 100 yards before October 2022. At Big's in 2025 eight runners did; at Dead Cow Gully the same year five did; at Legends in April 2026 four did. By October 2026 eleven nations had a national record of at least 100 yards.

Assists. A backyard ends one yard after the second-to-last runner stops, so a winner's total depends on how long the assist lasts. A record needs two runners who can go that far. Sam Harvey's 118 behind Gore at Dead Cow Gully is itself the fourth-highest total on the organizer's table, after the two 124s and Gore's 119.

The same runners keep meeting. Every overall record since 2020 came from a small group of races: the team championship (2020, 2022, 2024, 2026), Big's (2021, 2023), Dead Cow Gully (2023, 2025), Legends (2025), the invitational Race of the Champions (2022) and Suffolk (2021). Big's and the team championship fill their places through national championships, Silver Tickets and the at-large list; our Big's 2027 qualification page shows how.

Team scoring. In the team championship every completed yard counts toward the national total, and the last teammates do not have to beat each other. The Belgians who set the 2022 and 2024 records stopped together, and in 2026 Geerts and Steyaert ran 124 side by side.

Yards, Miles, Kilometers and Hours

The organizer converts at 6.7056 km per yard. DUV uses 6.706 km, so it lists Gore's 119 as 798.014 km. Use the backyard ultra calculator for other totals, and the backyard ultra race strategy guide for how runners manage the minutes between yards.