A backyard ultra is a last-person-standing race: every competitor starts a 4.167-mile loop, called a yard, at the top of each hour and must finish it inside that hour to stay in, until one runner completes a yard nobody else completes. Big Tex Backyard is an official affiliate race organised independently by Trail Racing Over Texas, not by the championship organisation, and runs from 7:00 a.m. on Saturday 7 November 2026 at Stephen F. Austin State Park in San Felipe, Texas.
It is one of the few affiliates with a dedicated rucking division. Last Rucker Standing is new for 2026 and runs a shorter loop on the same hourly schedule, with ruck weight set at 20 pounds for entrants under 150 pounds of bodyweight and 30 pounds for those over. Both Last Runner Standing and Last Rucker Standing are $149.40 including fees, rising after 18 October. A free Lil Tex Kids K for ages 1 to 14 runs Saturday from noon to 12:30 p.m., with registration opening 1 October.
Registration is open on RunSignup and the field cap is 300. Pacers are not allowed, as the backyard format requires; crew are limited to the start and finish areas between yards, with no aid of any kind once a competitor is on course, and one or two crew may stay overnight in the grass support area. Twenty-four yards earns a 100-mile buckle and the winner receives a dollar per mile run. RunSignup states this is a Bronze Ticket race on the road to the 2027 Silver Ticket races; the organizer’s own site describes that status as applied for rather than confirmed, so treat it as unconfirmed. Note that the official affiliate list still carries a stale October date for this race — 7 November is the date published by both the race director and RunSignup.
A backyard ultra is a last-person-standing race in which every competitor starts a loop — a yard — at the top of each hour and must complete it inside that hour to stay in the race. The official rules fix the yard at 4 miles 880 feet, or 4.167 miles, so 24 yards equals exactly 100 miles. All remaining runners must be inside a starting corral at the bell, with warnings at three, two and one minute; there are no late starts, no personal aid during a yard, and no leaving the course mid-yard except for restroom breaks. There is no fixed finish. The race ends when one runner completes a yard that nobody else completes, and that runner is the only official finisher — every other entrant, including the runner who lasted second longest, is recorded as a DNF, and if nobody completes an extra yard alone there is no winner at all. The format was created by Gary ‘Lazarus Lake’ Cantrell, co-founder of the Barkley Marathons, who has run the original race on his own land at Bell Buckle, Tennessee since 2011. Races elsewhere become official affiliate, or satellite, backyard ultras by applying to the organisation and running the standard yard distance, corral and hourly-bell rules; affiliation places a race on the official list and plugs it into the qualifying ladder that feeds the championship. Each affiliate race is organised independently by its own local race director, who sets the entry fee, handles registration and runs the event. Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra at Bell Buckle sits at the top of that ladder and alternates by year between an individual World Championship and a World Team Championship, in which each nation fields a team and every yard completed by a team member scores a point for that country.
