The Mindset and Character Behind Backyard Ultras
A look at the Ouray Backyard Ultra and the incredible woman who co-directs it
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Could you keep going, not knowing?
I drove an hour Saturday to the town of Ouray not only to run a trail up its box canyon, but also to spend some time observing and considering an ultra taking place in the town’s hot springs park. That event was a “backyard ultra” format, a maddening repeat-lap challenge as mental as physical that intrigues but also repels me.
Maybe you’ve heard of Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in Tennessee, which established the format in 2011. It’s deceptively simple: runners repeat a 4.167-mile lap called a “yard” at any time or pace they want. They just have to finish the lap and start the next one at the top of the hour to stay in the contest. Some runners take 45 minutes or less for a lap and thus have at least 15 minutes to rest and eat before joining the other runners in the starting corral and beginning the next one. Others go more slowly, walking parts of it, and take almost the whole hour. If you do the lap at a 14:17 minute/mile pace, you’ll have about 30 seconds left before the next lap starts. The event’s route can be a loop or an out-and-back. If you complete 24 yards, you’ve covered 100 miles.
This video shows the participants in the Sky Pilots Ouray Backyard Ultra starting a new lap at the top of an hour midday Saturday, before the field dwindled from attrition to just two:
Who wins? The last person standing—or technically, the last person to complete a lap, after the runner-up quits. That means the event eventually turns into a dual between two committed souls, and when one finally quits mid-lap or fails to start the next lap, the winning runner finishes one more lap, and then it’s over. (Read here for the nitty gritty on the rules.)
So, think about it: If you want to win this thing, you have no idea of how long you’ll ultimately go. You could be out there for days, you just don’t know, which is the element that undoes me. And if you have a personal goal of, say, 200 miles or 48 laps, you can only reach that goal if someone else buddies up with you and gets to at least 47 laps. Your competitor is also your supporter because you’re depending on each other and pushing each other to keep going, and to keep the event going.
Last October, over four-and-a-half days, Harvey Lewis set a new world record of 108 laps, or 450 miles. He got there thanks to the assist of runner-up Ihor Verys, who went for 107 laps and 445.8 miles.
Gary Cantrell, the mastermind behind the Barkley Marathons, came up with the format and writes on his Backyard website: “The roots of the Backyard Ultra go back to the desire to put on a fun event with limited space and resources, literally in my own back yard. The race format caught on, and the number of Backyard Ultras has roughly doubled every year since.” According to this 2023 article in iRunFar.com, some 400 races in this backyard-ultra format now take place in 78 countries.
The Ouray one is hosted by Ginny LaForme and Eric Robinson of Sky Pilots Endurance Navigators, which describes itself as a nonprofit club for enthusiasts of orienteering, mountaineering, and endurance challenges, based in Western Colorado and specializing in unusual event formats (see below for more on Ginny).
Ouray’s Backyard Ultra is in its fourth year, and this year, 49 runners started. Most started it with no intention of being the last person standing, but rather with an idea to go a certain number of hours or laps that felt right for them.
I get that, and that’s likely how I’d approach it too, e.g., “I’ll try to stick with it for 12 hours and 50 miles” or something like that. I need to know an endpoint. I don’t think I could do an endurance event without having the finish in mind. Knowing the finish—the time or miles remaining until the end—enables me to budget energy and aim to pace appropriately. It also helps me stretch myself toward the end, thinking, “I can push through fatigue because I know I’ll be done soon.”
That’s why the prospect of an unknown number of laps to win it would drive me mad, and I don’t have what it takes to be “last person standing.” The defending world champ and others looking to win the top title this year will line up at the championship event knowing they may have to go five or more days to ultimately win, with only minutes of sleep in short naps before the next lap starts on the hour. I can’t fathom doing that and coping with the uncertainty, wondering if and when the other runner will crack, can you?
But even with a personal goal—say, stretching myself to 30 laps to get to 125 miles—rather than an intention to win, I don’t think I’d like the forced stop and restart on the hour. I prefer continuous timed ultras, like the 24-hour I’m doing in November, during which you run as much or as little as you want, and pause and restart whenever you want. The person who wins covers the most distance within the time limit. Having done 24-hour timed ultras twice before, getting to 115 miles each time, I like getting into a groove and pausing to rest only if and when it feels right.
But, as the saying goes, “don’t knock it ’til you try it.” I see the appeal of the backyard ultra—the sociability of the group, along with the special appeal of repeat loops (as detailed in this post Getting Loopy, which includes a list of repeat-lap races I recommend).
And, even though I support male/female gender categories in competitive running, because I believe that ultimately supports female athletes’ competition and recognition, I do admire how genders compete together in backyard ultras. Men’s physiological advantages (mainly speed and strength) fade in relevance in this format, which is so tactical and mental, and requires the ability to perform with sleep deprivation, that women can and do win. Maggie Guterl won the 2019 championship with 60 laps (250 miles), and the following year, Courtney Dauwalter won with 68 (283 miles).
This year at the Sky Pilots Ouray Backyard Ultra, the runner-up, Megan Eckart of Santa Fe, made it to 48 laps (200 miles). Christian Arguello of Boulder—who held the previous course record with 145.9 miles—finished one more lap to win with 204.167 miles. The third-place finisher dropped at 112 miles, which means Megan and Christian dueled—or rather, partnered—for nearly 24 more hours.
What about you, would you like to test yourself in this format? Why/why not? Please share your views in the comments below.
Not your typical grandmother
On Saturday, I finally met and chatted with a legendary woman I’ve long known about and followed from afar, Ginny LaForme, who co-directs the Ouray Backyard Ultra with her husband Eric. She might cringe at the word “legendary,” however, because she’s humble, and she and Eric put on their Sky Pilots Endurance Navigators events on the fringe of the sport. They seem to have no desire to go mainstream or gain attention.
Ginny, who’s almost 74, was a trail-blazing mountain runner in the 1990s and early 2000s. She took up running in her forties when her two daughters—who now have kids, making Ginny a grandmother—were in high school and she lived in Santa Fe. There, she connected with the men at the core of founding and developing the Hardrock 100: Blake Wood, John Capis, and Charlie Thorn. Ginny attempted Hardrock six times and finished it three in 1998, ‘99, and 2003.
Perhaps her most impressive claim to fame, however, is being the first woman to attempt the storied Nolan’s 14 line of summiting 14 14’ers in Colorado’s Sawatch range under 60 hours, on a self-navigated route, no pacers allowed. The Nolan’s challenge is fairly well known and better established now, with the advantage of GPS tracking and route lines that are easier to spot and follow from repeated use. When Ginny attempted it in 2001, however, it was completely under the radar. In the prior two years, only a handful of men had made attempts, none of them completing all 14. Maps with GPS tracking on smart phones or watches didn’t exist, so she relied completely on paper topo maps and her own wits.
On Ginny’s first attempt, she made it over 11 summits. The following year, 2002, she tried it with two other women, Betsy Kalmeyer and Rickie Redland. She made it over 12 summits, as did Betsy behind her, and Rickie made it nine. No women completed it until 2015, when Anna Frost and Missy Gosney did Nolan’s together and made it over the 14 summits within the 60-hour limit.
How did Ginny become so fearless? It has to do with her outdoorsy upbringing. “When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was go out and explore in the woods behind my house. Then, when we moved to Ecuador when I was 11, I talked my parents into buying me a mountain pony and spent all my time on my horse exploring.”
Perhaps it also has to do with being a woman in a male-dominated field. She was a woodworker and custom cabinet maker while living in the East Bay Area of Northern California before she and Eric retired and moved to Ouray in 2018.
Athletically, though a latecomer to running, she developed strength and skills in Olympic-style weightlifting in her forties, competing at the national level before giving it up for the sake of running. She also became a climber and peak-bagger.
My friend Suzanna Bon (herself an accomplished mountain runner who finished strong in the Tors de Geants, as profiled here) recalls meeting up with Ginny and Eric in the late summer of 2018 to scout some areas around the Hardrock course. They found themselves on a highly technical and steep area, and “I just froze, I was way in over my head,” Suzanna recalls. While Eric stayed with her, Ginny went ahead on the mountainside to pick a line for them to follow. “She was about 68 at the time, and I remember thinking, she is so phenomenally bad-ass,” says Suzanna.
Ginny doesn’t run much anymore much because both knees are injured and painful, but not due to running. She makes a point of saying, “Most of the things wrong with me are not running injuries.” One knee got injured when she dropped a weight on it during her weightlifting heyday, and another got wrenched when she slipped in a muddy ravine on a peak-bagging excursion. She still jogs short distances on gentle terrain and hikes. “It hurts—every step hurts—but I hike and jog on the places that are less painful.”
Interestingly, while she loves hosting Ouray’s backyard ultra with Eric, she probably wouldn’t run it even if she could. “I hate doing the same thing over and over again,” she says.
What I admire perhaps most about Ginny and her husband is how they stay involved in the sport as a couple, and develop a close-knit community, by organizing truly extreme and offbeat events, some of them fat-ass style (i.e. not officially sanctioned or organized). “It’s totally for fun. We make no money off these events,” she says.
Most involve orienteering, a passion of hers and Eric’s, and are “Barkley-esque” given their close ties with competitors in the infamous Barkley Marathons and with its director Gary Cantrell (aka Laz). For example, in the Bay Area, she and Eric used to organize an annual group challenge on a notable mountain whose name I’m not revealing because she doesn’t want details disclosed. They kept the group size just below the number that would trigger the need for a permit. Ginny created special wooden trinkets, which they hid in the woods, and then they wrote detailed maps and descriptions for the participants to follow as they ran and hiked off trail to find the hidden treasures as fast as they could.
Says Suzanna, who participated in it, “Ginny is deeply kind, patient, and generous, and all that comes across in how she and Eric put on their races. … They’re so thoughtful in their details and think of every angle of how they can support the people in their events, but also make it super challenging.”
Here in the San Juan Mountains, she and Eric organize the mind-boggling Sneffels Round, so challenging that only one person—Ryan Wold of Ouray—has completed it, in nearly 73 hours. I’ll simply copy and paste their description because I can’t think of a better way to put into words how crazy difficult it is, and yet, ironically, their upbeat description makes it sound like not that big of a deal:
“The Sneffels Round (or informally, Sneffelupagus), is a free mountaineering challenge with a 100 hour time limit. Climb a whole bunch of peaks in one go, choosing your own route and selecting from several possible combinations of peaks. There are 39 peaks on the map, but depending on which ‘electives’ you include, you can earn a full finish with as few as 34 or 35 peaks. The peaks include many 13ers and one 14er, Mt. Sneffels. Assuming you select and locate the easiest way, none of the peaks are harder than Class 3. The route I would personally select is about 75 miles with 43,000 feet of vertical gain and is about 70 percent off-trail.”
They also put an interesting twist on the backyard ultra format with their “Lost One Standing” event in the wilderness south of Silverton. It’s complicated (read the details here), but in a nutshell, it involves repeat “laps” as in a backyard ultra, with a three-hour rather than one-hour limit for each lap. It also involves tricky orienteering challenges for each lap designed and mapped by Ginny and Eric. The event keeps going and going until one person is left finishing a final lap.
To me, organizing and supporting a bunch of extreme endurance athletes in the mountains and woods sounds like a dream retirement plan. I am in awe of the gutsiness and generosity of Ginny and Eric. As a woman, Ginny inspires me to stay involved with mountain/ultra/trail running as I age into my seventies, and to support others to try new things and push their limits even after my body hits its limit.
To learn more about their Sky Pilots events and orienteering workshops, see their website and Facebook group. To read more about Ginny and see some special photos, check out this 2018 profile in iRunFar.
Loved this article and I purchased and excited to read the Endurance Artist too - great interview and chat, thank you for always inspiring, Sarah!!
I've done two backyard ultras. (actually winning one of them!) and while I love the loop concept the time pressure is just not as much fun for me as a timed event. I've done 6 and 12 hour races and enjoy them a lot more! Maybe partly because I am a lot slower now so the pressure to finish quicker is even greater.