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 Eric Fritz of Fringe Events rather than by the championship organisation.
It starts at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday 10 October 2026 in Huntsville, Alabama. The organizer states the course is designed to match the championship loop at Bell Buckle as closely as possible in format, elevation and surface, with separate day and night loops, and markets the race to runners looking to qualify for Big Dog’s — though its formal ticket tier in the qualifying ladder is not published. A buckle is awarded at 24 hours and 100 miles.
Entry is $115 through RunSignup. At 50 entrants this is the smallest field of any US affiliate race on the calendar, and only five spots remained as of early September; registration closes at 6:30 a.m. on race day. No age minimum, crew or pacer policy is published, though the format’s global rules apply.
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.
