In a 100-miler, the course decides how hard your day is. In a backyard, you do.

4.167 miles. Every hour. On the hour. Until everyone else stops.

There’s no finish line, no final aid station, no “only 10 miles to go.” You don’t run towards anything. You just keep turning up.

This year I’ve had both ends of it. Three times I reached 25 yards and stopped, and three times I woke up the next morning feeling fine. Then I won Yellow Belly and went on to win Solace with 29 yards, a new PB. Sitting in the background of all of it was my first ever DNF at UTS.

Same legs every time. The difference was what was going on in my head.

A Mind Game Dressed as a Running Race

Every other ultra makes quitting hard or even awkward. You have to find a marshal, get a lift back to the finish or the nearest checkpoint, hand in your tracker and bib number.

In a backyard, quitting is the easiest thing in the world. The whistle goes and you just don’t get up. You get a free, guilt-free chance to exit every hour, and your brain will offer it to you every single hour.

At the Solace BYU, 111 runners started the race. By midnight, 43 were left. By sunrise, seven. Very few of those people ran out of legs. I can guarantee the repetition and the boredom break most people long before their bodies do.

Before the Whistle

1. Decide before you’re tired.

Set your rules while you’re still rational. I was born in the 80’s, I’m old school, so mine are written down. Start every yard, keep my heart rate in check, eat and drink, get back on the line. Pretty straight forward and simple.

And above all. Never quit in the chair. If I want to stop, I have to start the next yard and decide out on the loop. Nine times out of ten, by halfway round I’ve forgotten I wanted to stop.

Decisions made sitting down at 3am are rarely good ones.

2. Name your wall.

My golden rule is to never go into a backyard with a target. But after stopping at 25 three times, I knew exactly where my wall was. So, for the Solace BYU I broke my rule and gave myself a motto:

“25 Yards! Don’t be shit.”

Not poetry. But a wall you’ve named is a wall you’ve planned for. It stops being an ambush and becomes just another yard you’ve already decided to run.

3. Remove every decision you can.

Your brain has a limited supply of good decisions, and a backyard ultra drains those decisions fast. Lay out your food, drink and kit within reach of your chair. Every second spent hunting for something is a second you’re not resting.

The same goes for your base camp. I upgraded my shelter for Solace BYU, hated it the moment it was up, so drove home to swap it for my trusted one. Nothing new on race day applies to everything! Not just your shoes.

Inside the Hour

4. Shrink the race.

The fastest way to break yourself is to do the maths. Hours left, miles left, sleep missed. Stop counting the race and count the loop.

I go one step further and chunk yards into blocks of five, each ending with a full reset. Fresh socks, a shoe swap, clean clothes, and proper food. Pizza, a pie, nothing glamorous. Every block feels like a new race.

Don’t run 25 yards. Run five yards, five times.

Focus on the process and the outcome is inevitable. The backyard is the only race where that’s literally the format.

5. Be the grey man.

Ego is expensive early in this format. Nobody wins a backyard in the first ten hours, but plenty of people lose it there. Start in the middle or at the back. Walk more than you think you need to. Learn the course. Stay unnoticed and unbothered. Blend into the background.

6. The chair is your friend and your enemy.

The gap between laps is where races are lost. Have a routine and run it like a pit stop. Eat, drink, sort your feet, and get up with time to spare. Sit too long and the chair starts negotiating with you.

7. Lows are weather, not climate.

Every low point feels permanent at the time. It almost never is. One yard later you feel human again, and two yards later you’re cracking jokes with people.

The wall at 25 was the same. At Solace BYU, all seven of us that started, finished yard 25, and somewhere on that loop something shifted in my head. On yard 26 the tiredness just seemed to switch off. Yard 29 was actually my fastest of the whole race. 42 minutes, at 29 hours in!

Once you’re through the wall, you find out how much of the quit in you or tiredness was the wall all along.

The End Game

8. Don’t race people. Until you have to.

For most of a backyard, the other runners are your teammates. You chat, you share the highs and the lows, you help each other out of chairs.

Then the field gets small, and the race changes. It stops being about running and becomes about who looks like they are near to the end in the corral. Never show the hurt. Walk in like you’ve got another 20 yards in you, even if you’re not sure you’ve got one. That’s how Yellow Belly BYU was won.

9. Know the rules inside out.

I’ve witnessed multiple runners get disqualified from BYU events this year alone. 10 yards, 29 yards and even 52 yards. Nobody’s judgement is sharp that many hours into a race.

That’s the point. Learn the rules properly and brief your crew before the start, because you won’t be thinking clearly when it matters.

10. Make the DNF a decision, not a reaction.

In a backyard, everyone officially DNFs except one person. The word stops being scary when it’s the expected outcome for almost the whole field.

UTS was my first DNF, and I chose not to rush back. Not avoidance, but self-awareness. Stopping can be the right call. But my three stops at 25 yards weren’t decisions or for medical or physical reasons. They were reactions to a voice in my head, and I proved it every morning after when my legs felt fine.

Stop because you’ve decided to, never because the chair talked you into it.

The Bit Nobody Tells You

The mental side of backyard ultras isn’t about being tough. It’s about being boring. Same routine. Same pace. Same loop. Again and again, until everyone around you gets bored before you do.

I’ve quit in the chair; I’ve won in the chair. I still don’t know where my next wall is or where my limit truly lies. But I’m sure I’ll test myself and try and find out.

Focus on the process and the outcome is inevitable.

Want the full story of how yard 25 finally fell? Read my Solace race recap here.