How To Train for a Backyard Ultra
No finish line or mountainous terrain - just you and the loop. Here's how you train for the mental grind, the flat monotony, and the art of the hourly reset.
“How should I train for a Backyard Ultra?” is a question I hear way too often, even from experienced ultra runners. For some reason, the last man standing format and its lack of a defined finish line seems to confuse a lot of athletes - How much should I run? How much equipment should I bring? Can I still run mountains?
In a way, I kind of get why there is so much confusion around this event format. If I look back at my first Backyard Ultra, I too was also very confused about how to train for this event. Five races and a 48 hour personal best later, I learnt that training for a Backyard Ultra requires a slightly different outlook - one which prioritises mental training and discipline over raw physical fitness.
Therefore, this post won’t provide you with a mileage plan. Instead, I’ll break down the unique demands of Backyard Ultras and provide interventions which you can implement in your training in order to be ready for the demands of this event. (If you’re here just for the physical prep, jump to that section here, but trust me, the other factors are far more important.)
How Backyard Ultras Differ from Traditional Races
At its core, a Backyard Ultra is an endurance event where runners cover long distances over many hours or even days, until they decide that they’ve had enough. That power to choose is what changes everything - until they decide that they’ve had enough. Traditional ultras have finish lines, Backyard Ultras have choices.
This fundamental difference results in three unique challenges:
Choose your finish line: The clock never stops, you decide to stop. With a fixed 6.7km loop repeated hourly until only one runner remains, this format shifts the battle from physical limits to mental endurance. There's no course to "survive," just a question of how long you keep choosing to continue.
Flat, repetitive terrain: Gone are the mountain climbs and varied landscapes of traditional ultras. Most backyard courses trade elevation for unrelenting flat ground, mile after identical mile of unchanging terrain. Your training needs to change to cater for flat running and monotony, not for elevation.
Tight time windows: All aid stations and crew support happens at the start/finish area, and the hourly departure rule means that inter-loop breaks become a race against the clock. You'll need to be very good at making the most out of your time if you want to set yourself up for success.
Let's examine how to train for each of these distinctive demands.
Training the Mind
“Running an ultra is 90 percent mental, and the other 10 percent - that’s mental too!”
Hal Koerner’s quote from his book “Hal Koerner’s Field Guide to Ultrarunning” might sound hyperbolic…until you run a Backyard Ultra. Over time, I've learned that for this event type, your physical capabilities are almost irrelevant - it's your mind that will decide when you're done.
Here's how to prepare your mind.
Define Your Quitting Contract
The absence of a defined distance changes everything. In a traditional ultra, you can calculate exactly how much suffering remains. In a Backyard Ultra, uncertainty becomes your greatest adversary. This is why you need to establish clear quitting criteria before race day.
Start by finding your "why" - not just surface-level goals, but the fundamental reason you're willing to endure days of discomfort. Why is this important to you? Why do you want to put yourself through this pain? Why not just pack up and leave?
Once you feel like you found your why, use visualisation to put yourself in the worst possible race day scenario - it’s cold, it’s raining, your rain jacket ripped, your legs hurt, you’re chafing, you’re puking, your crew had to go home…would you quit then? If the answer is no, then keep making the situation worse. Keep going until you reach almost absurd situations, like a bone sticking out of your body or a family emergency. At what point would you allow yourself to stop?
Find your limits and make a contract with yourself that you will only quit if the defined criteria is met. The key is to make this decision ahead of time, not when you're sleep-deprived at 3 AM.
Embrace the Monotony
There's a peculiar cruelty to how Backyard Ultras break runners. One of the most common reason people drop out is just sheer boredom. That flat, repetitive loop that seemed manageable for 4 hours becomes psychological torture later on in the race.
Train for this by deliberately seeking out the most mind-numbing training routes available. Flat out-and-backs on empty roads. Long runs with no music, podcasts or company. The goal is less to enjoy your runs but to condition your mind to accept monotony as part of the challenge.
The Dark Night Rises
Nightfall is where Backyard Ultras separate the prepared from the hopeful. What was merely boring becomes unbearable when combined with cold, fatigue, and isolation. I've seen the night make runners quit not because they couldn't continue physically, but because they'd exhausted their mental reserves.
That's why you should include at least one overnight training run in your build-up. I personally tend to start this run on the midnight between Friday and Saturday after a full workday and lasting till the morning. It's miserable, maybe also a bit unconventional, but it allows you to experience the feeling of running through a night after a full day. Treat these runs as interventions which train your mind, not your body, so don’t focus too much on the physical gains derived from this run.
Training the Body
Trail runners tend to chase mountain adventures - the steeper the climb and the more remote the trail, the better. Yet, Backyard Ultras demand the opposite: repeated flat and monotonous loops with no climbs.
In a typical 100-mile mountain race, most runners spend less than half their time actually running, using climbs as natural cues to shift to hiking. But in a Backyard Ultra, you'll be running upwards of 80% of every lap, with no climbs to give your body a break.
The adaptation is straightforward but it requires some discipline: seek out flat routes to mimic race conditions. Practice running at your "all-day" pace where your breathing stays calm and your form never breaks. Remember, Backyard Ultras aren't won on who can cover the distance the fastest, but on who is hard headed enough to continue running even when their mind and body is telling them not to.
I want to provide one word of caution though. I know a lot of trail runners who loath running on flat terrain. While I don’t think that you can get away without flat running entirely, it is still important to enjoy your training. Make sure you maintain a healthy balance between what you need to do and what you like to do. A good plan done consistently is better than a perfect plan executed badly.
Mastering the Hourly Pit Stop
A successful Backyard Ultra requires runners to nail their end-of-loop pit stop. When you look at it in detail, this mandatory stop is a massive benefit for athletes since they are never too far away from help or support. Additionally, most Backyard Ultras provide quite a large space for runners so athletes are able to bring a wide variety of gear, nutrition options and recovery devices.
However, when done wrong, the inter-loop routine can lead to the athlete’s downfall. Early in the race, the minutes between loops feel very comfortable, but over time, they start feeling significantly tighter forcing you to be focused even during your rest time. Over time, mistakes will compound and they may force you to quit prematurely, so it is important that you dial in your hourly pit stop such that this time does not become the cause of your downfall.
One good tip which I learnt is to use the last few minutes of your running loop to define the priority of the to-do list for the next pit stop. These tasks may include refueling, changing gear and addressing chafing or blisters amongst others. Communicate this priority to your crew and execute the tasks calmly. If you don’t manage to get through everything don’t panic - you’ve got the important ones out of the way so you should be good for the next loop.
Organising for Fatigue
One step to making sure that you manage to get through your to-do list is to ensure that your rest area is well organised. For starters, I suggest having all your items placed in transparent containers with clear labels outlining the contents of each container. Additionally, make sure you properly pack anything that you are not using anymore and that you throw out any rubbish. Every item should have a home, because when you’re sleep-deprived, you’ll forget where you left your gloves three loops ago.
During training I simulate race conditions by running hourly loops on a predetermined route, forcing myself to change gear and refuel within the allotted time. These sessions are not about fitness, but rather about ensuring that I have gone through the experience of getting ready for the next lap while time crunched.
The Art of Microsleeping
One of the most common questions around Backyard Ultras is when and how runners sleep. The answer is quite simple - runners sleep in the few minutes they have in between loops. Of course there isn’t time to get a proper sleep in, but a few minutes of sleep between laps makes a big difference when accumulated over multiple laps.
There's no magic trick here. You must learn to fall asleep within moments of lying down, and while not everyone can master this, it's the only way to accumulate meaningful rest.
From my experience, sleep really starts becoming a problem for most people after 32 hours or so, so if you plan to run for less than that, you might get away with no sleep. If you plan to use caffeine, then make sure to practice using it during training. If you plan to run beyond 48 hours, I would suggest getting as much sleep as early as possible, including the first night. Once again there is no way how to train for this beyond actually trying to microsleep during training.
Weekly Mileage and Longest Long Run
Finally, let’s address the two elephants in the room - “What should my weekly mileage be?” and “What should the distance of my longest long run be?” The answer is very simple - the same it would have been for a traditional ultra.
If you want something to anchor your training around, base your training off of a 100km or a 100 mile training plan with one main difference - track your activity by using hours rather than mileage. While the training load of a Backyard Ultra event is very similar to that of any other race, the lack of hills and mountains means that using mileage as a proxy for training load is not ideal. Therefore, I would suggest using time as a proxy for training load while prioritising flat running.
As I mentioned many times already in this post, rarely have I seen someone drop from a Backyard Ultra because they lacked fitness. When in doubt, err on the side of caution since you’re better off getting to the start line slightly under trained rather than slightly injured.
Putting It All Together
While this guide has focused on training strategies, I’ve also written Backyard Bliss: 6 Tips for an Enjoyable Backyard Ultra Experience which provides you with additional tips. Between these two resources, you should have a complete blueprint which you can use all the way from training to your final loop.
If you still have additional questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below or message me on social media. I’ll check back regularly to help fill any gaps in your Backyard Ultra journey. Now go train that mind, embrace the flat, and master those ten-minute resets. Your loops await you. 😉