How to Pace
a Backyard Ultra

The question

Backyard ultra pacing comes down to one real question: do you run fast, finish loops early, and bank more recovery time in your tent? Or do you run conservatively, sacrifice that buffer, but preserve more energy for the loops ahead?

Both strategies have logic behind them. More tent time means more sleep, more food, more time to deal with your feet. But a slower loop means more cumulative time on your feet per hour, which compounds quickly when you're 60 loops in and still going.

We pulled lap-by-lap splits for 26 elite runners across six major races to see how the best backyard ultra athletes in the world actually pace.

The ideal pace window

We looked at lap splits for the top five finishers from six races: Big's Backyard Ultra 2023 and 2025, the Legends Backyard Ultra 2025 and 2026, the BPN Go One More 2026, and the Sydney Backyard Ultra 2026. That's 31 athletes and thousands of loops of data.

After removing sleep sprints and anomalous slow laps that skew the numbers, the ideal pace falls between 47:30 and 51:49 per loop. The overall median is 49:02.

If you're finishing loops around 50 minutes with eight or nine minutes to spare, you're not running too slowly. That buffer is the pace working as intended.

Course matters

That aggregate window is a starting point, not a universal target. Drill into individual races and the range shifts significantly, because in backyard ultras, all courses are not created equal.

Legends Backyard Ultra, run on a relatively flat course in Belgium, sees top runners averaging around 44 minutes per loop. Big's Backyard Ultra, the world championship course in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, pushes that past 53 minutes. Same format, same 4.167-mile distance, very different targets.

This matters for training. A 51-minute loop might be perfectly calibrated for Go One More but would put you well off the pace at a Legends field. Know your course before you decide what "fast enough" means.

Each bar shows the Q1 to Q3 pace range across the top-five finishers for that race. The vertical line marks the median. All bars are plotted on a shared scale from 43:00 to 56:00 so courses are directly comparable. Sydney 2026 data loads live from race results.

How the best runners pace

There is no single approach at the front of the field.

Pick any of the runners below and you'll see completely different execution at the top five.

The CS (consistency score) is a measure of how much a runner's loops vary from their own average. Lower means more predictable.

Two types of pacing strategies emerge from the data:

1. Metronomes

Harvey Lewis ran Go One More 2026 with a CS of 3.6%. His loops clustered within about 45 seconds of his median across two days and nights.

Jon Noll at Big's 2025 ran 111 laps at CS 4.2%. The strategy here is: find a pace, lock it in, and hold it.

2. Yo-Yo's

Merijn Geerts ran Big's 2023 to a CS of 14.9%, with loops ranging from 39:26 to over 56:00.

Phil Gore's spread at Big's 2023 was CS 22.3%, with loops as fast as 37 minutes and close to an hour at the other end.

Gore came back two years later and ran 14 more loops at Big's with the same approach.

The same runners, different races

Several athletes appear across multiple races, and what stands out is how little their pace changes between them.

Łukasz Wróbel ran Legends 2025 and Legends 2026 on the same course, one year apart. He finished 116 loops the first time and 114 the second, with medians of 42:52 and 43:24. Thirty-two seconds per loop slower after 12 months. If you have a formula for a specific course, the numbers suggest you should resist the urge to change it.

Harvey Lewis is the most consistent multi-race performer in this group. He ran Big's 2023, Big's 2025, and Go One More 2026, two different courses over two years. His pace adjusts to the terrain but the execution doesn't change. At Big's his median sits around 54:30 on the harder course. At Go One More it drops to 50:57.

Phil Gore ran Big's 2023 at CS 22.3%, came back two years later and ran 14 more loops at CS 24.0%. Same wide approach, more output.

What this means for you

Stop watching other runners. It sounds obvious, but it's the hardest thing to do when someone comes through the arch two minutes ahead of you with a grin on their face. At every race you'll see runners blazing 43-minute loops 12 hours in, feeding off the crowd. They're usually gone before day two.

The best in the sport have figured out that the goal isn't to be fast. It's to last.

Mark Dowdle understands this well. He walks large portions of the loop. He's routinely at the back of the pack. His wife Lucy told us at the Go one More:

"If Mark is in front of you, you should worry. You might not finish the loop on time."

She wasn't kidding.

Some runners do make speed work for them. Phil Gore alternates fast loops with recovery loops, which is what drives his CS score to 24%. But if you set him aside, the best pace strategy seems to be: "Slow and steady wins the race."

What this means for your crew: A 50-minute loop sounds like plenty of buffer. But by the time you walk back from the corral to your tent and get settled, plus the time it takes to prep and walk back out, you're looking at eight or nine minutes of real recovery time per loop.

In that window you need to eat, hydrate, refill your belt, possibly change shoes or socks, squeeze in a toilet break, charge your electronics, maybe a foot bath or a quick freshen-up. That means your crew needs to be able to anticipate your needs and have good systems in place.

This isn't Formula One, but it's not far from it.