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. This is an official affiliate race organised independently by Sam and Tiffany Arnold of Squaw Creek Adventures rather than by the championship organisation.
It starts at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday 26 September 2026 and runs into Sunday, from the beach shelter house at Lake Ahquabi State Park in Indianola, Iowa. The course is mostly dirt with some gravel and 187 feet of gain per loop; the loop record is 15, set by Mark Nygaard in 2025. Note the organizer’s own page annotates the date as tentative.
Entry opened at $115 and runs on a three-step ladder, currently showing $134.54 including taxes and fees; the exact mid and final tier figures are not published. A $25 t-shirt add-on was available to anyone registering before 1 September. The field is capped at 75 and is sold out, with a waiting list open until 25 September. No pacers are allowed and no personal aids such as trekking poles may be used on course; the crew area is at the beach shelter, and spectators, crew and eliminated runners are not allowed on the course. No age minimum is published.
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.
