A Backyard Ultra is Happening, Does Anybody Care?

There’s a lot happening in the world of Backyard Ultras, but the main noise seems to be certain influencers whining about not getting the recognition they deserve. This posturing is such a turn off for me, that I don’t even want to post about anything else that’s happening on the side of the sport. And I am certainly not going to link to it. But a couple of things are happening and are worth mentioning.

Laz’s Big’s Backyard Ultra is happening in a few days in Tennessee and Germany’s Last Soul Ultra’s sponsor rappid. is sponsoring the livestream of the event. rappid. is the clothing brand by Kim Gottwald of (Texas’ Go One More fame), who’s behind all this. The Brand is currently not selling to the US and when browsing their web shop every single product seems to be out of stock.

And speaking of Kim, there’s now a new “Backyard Ultra World Series“, which seems to be a qualifying series for Germany’s ‘Final’ – the Lost Soul Ultra in August 2027. How this all fits in with Big’s which has its own qualifying circuit and bills itself as the World Team Championship, I don’t fully understand yet. Maybe Lost Soul is for individuals and Big’s is for teams?

I’ve said before that Backyard Ultras pose a fascinating format – one that would be a interesting fit for the Olympic Games, and clearly the attention the livestreams of these events get on YouTube is something worth noting. But it me it’s an odd fraction of our sport. It can barely be considered trail and there’s no adventure or sense of place in running endless loops. Maybe in a few years this version of the sport establishes itself. It certainly lives in our larger eco system of running and endurance sport and therefore is part of “what we’re doing here”, but it also seems so far away from the mountains, physically and philosophically that it’s hard for me to take it serious. Even when I interviewed some folks from that world I had a hard time being convinced that this is something I should be signing up for.

Does this version of the sport pose a threat to the “heart of trail running”?

This version of the sport is very self-contained and attracts a specific breed of people. Keeping these folks entertained on a loop somewhere in a field isn’t a bad thing. Let them go one more. Maybe if sponsors are walking away from races like Western States or UTMB and put their attention toward the Backyard Ultras will elite feel the tension of where to focus their attention, but – and maybe I am being naive here – I don’t see this happening anytime soon.