Fat Dog Backyard Ultra

Hi mojofamily fans!! It's been a while since I've posted... 

It's now Spring break of 2024 and we've just had a great week visiting family in San Diego. We flew in and out of Seattle. So Thursday was a bigger travel day, flying and then organizing some gear, charging our EV, and getting to a hotel North of Seattle. Today (Friday) we also had a day of picking up some items, getting across the border, checking in for the race, and doing a big grocery shop, and figuring out a dinner in our basic motel before the race starts Sat morning at 8am.

I want to do my best to explain how a backyard ultra works... not that I'm any expert! I've never been to this kind of race. But since I'll be posting Jason updates here and there I thought some folks might want to know how it works. 

At 8am, approximately 70 athletes will toe the start line and a whistle will blow. The runners will complete a 6.7km/4.2 mile flat concrete figure 8 loop around the fairgrounds. If that takes 40 minutes, then a participant would have 20 min to come into the crew tent area and take care of whatever they need: eat, drink, change, rest, bathroom, whatever... then at 9am the whistle blows and they go out for another loop. 

Sounds ok, right? You don't have to run fast. Many recreational runners can run that distance easily in less than an hour. You can't quite walk it, but you can walk/jog it if you are ok doing a slower lap.

So after 3 or 4 or 5 hours... the distance starts to accumulate. Some people might do this format with the goal of going for 8 laps or 'yards" and getting over 50km done - perhaps someone's first ulta! And then they might stop... their personal goal complete. Others will keep going to 100km, and others will keep going for 24 hours which would be 100miles.

That, of course, means running all night and again all day. Maybe you can get 5 min to sleep here or there? Can you keep focused? Can you keep eating and drinking and take care of your feet and your body? 

The goal of this race... keep going until nobody else keeps going. Last year, the world record was set at 108 laps. Two people ran 107 laps. That over 713km / 445 miles and 4.5 days of pretty much no sleep and doing the same lap again and again and again and again. Then one person didn't start the 108th lap and finally the person who completed the 108th lap was declared this winner.

So how far will Jason go? The furthest he has run to date is 125 miles (Fat Dog 2023).... So we will be there cheering him on and keeping him taken care of so that he can keep running lap after lap, hour after hour... for as long as he can keep going...

That is a backyard ultra. ... Buckle Up... Here we go!

Here's the live tracker: https://ultrasignup.com/live/live.htm?dtid=55504#search