Red's BYU 2025 Race Report | Surviving 42 Hours at Red’s Backyard Ultra 2025

The beauty and the curse of a backyard ultra-marathon is that it is a race with no finish line. There is no tape to break, no mountain summit that signals the end of the climbing, and no counting down the kilometers until a cold Cocobella (chocolate flavour of course...). There is only the bell.

In August 2025, I lined up at Red’s Backyard Ultra at Kembla Grange, New South Wales. My goal was simple but terrifyingly ambitious: to push past previous mental boundaries and see exactly how long I could keep answering that hourly bell.

When the dust finally settled, I had logged 42 yards (laps) over 42 continuous hours, accumulating an absolute monster of a distance: 281.6km.

Stepping away after 42 hours on your feet brings a unique kind of clarity. For my blog readers, performance endurance athletes, and fellow trail running enthusiasts, here is the comprehensive, deep-dive race report of how those 42 hours unfolded, the psychological demons of the backyard format, and the critical strategic takeaways you can use to unlock your own running potential.

The Brutal Math of the Backyard Ultra Format

For those new to the backyard ultra-marathon scene, the rules pioneered by Lazarus Lake are simple, elegant, and psychological warfare:

• You must complete a loop of 6.7056km every hour, on the hour.

• If you finish the loop in 45 minutes, you get 15 minutes to rest, eat, and prepare.

• If you are not standing in the starting corral when the next hourly bell rings, your race is over.

• Everyone except the last one standing ends the weekend with a DNF.

At Red’s Backyard Ultra, the course runs through the NSW State Cross Country track at Integral Energy Park. While it’s a relatively flat, non-technical blend of manicured grass and singletrack trail compared to a mountain ultra, the lack of technicality is a trap. On a mountain course, you are forced to change your gait, walk the steep hills, and slide down descents. On a flat backyard course, your biomechanics are identical loop after loop, creating an aggressive, repetitive toll on your joints and muscles. 

1. Yards 1 to 12: The Illusion of Ease

The First 12 Hours.The race starts with high energy and a vibrant community atmosphere. At Red's, loops 3 and 12 are massive community highlights, with local clubs like the Seacliff Coasters flooding the course with energy. In this phase, the pace feels effortlessly slow. You cruise in at 45 to 48 minutes, leaving plenty of time to chat at your personal aid station, change socks, and graze on standard ultra-running nutrition. The danger here is complacency.

2. Yards 13 to 24: Piercing the Night & The Midnight Grind

When night falls, the mental game shifts dramatically. Running by headlamp on a repetitive loop introduces a surreal tunnel vision. Sleep deprivation starts clawing at your brain. A massive psychological milestone here is Loop 22—the traditional Tutu Loop. Putting on a tutu and laughing with the remaining field at 4:00 AM breaks the crushing monotony and injects a vital dose of dopamine right when the body is begging to quit.

3. Yards 25 to 36: The Second Sunrise Breakthrough & Entering the Unknown

Seeing the sun come up for the second time is an incredible emotional high, but it reveals a heavily depleted field. By this point, you have cleared 160km / 100M. Every muscle fiber is screaming from the repetitive ground impact. Success here is entirely about routine: finish the loop, sit down for exactly 5 minutes, force down liquid calories, get back in the corral.

4. Yards 37 to 42: The 280km Pain Cave

This is where ultra-marathon running transforms into pure existential survival. Your pace slows down to a fine margin—coming in with only 5 or 6 minutes to spare before the bell rings again. At Yard 42, after 42 hours of continuous execution and over $281\text{ km}$, my journey concluded. The physical and mental exhaustion was total, but the pride of pushing the human machine that far was unmatched.

Key Takeaways for High-Endurance Trail Runners

Whether you are training for a standard trail marathon, a 100k skyrace, or looking to target your first backyard event, these three strategic pillars are what allowed me to survive 42 hours at Red's.

1. Master the "Time Optimisation" Micro-Rest

The biggest rookie mistake in a backyard ultra is running the loops too fast to secure a longer rest period. If you run a 40-minute loop, you get 20 minutes of rest, but you burned far too much glycogen.

Actionable Takeaway: Aim for a consistent, metronomic pacing strategy that brings you in between 46 to 49 minutes. This gives you an optimal 11 to 14 minutes of downtime. It is enough time to use the bathroom, consume 200-300 calories, and elevate your feet without allowing your muscles to completely lock up and grow cold.

2. The Biomechanical Reset: Active Gear Rotation

Because the Red's Backyard Ultra course is a repetitive, non-technical cross-country loop, friction points develop rapidly in identical areas. Running mechanics don't vary like they do on wild mountain trails.

Actionable Takeaway: Implement a strict gear rotation. I changed my trail running shoes and socks every 6 to 8 hours. Rotating between shoes with varying heel-to-toe drops and stack heights alters the pressure points on your feet and subtly shifts the load across your calves, achilles, and quads, preventing premature overuse injuries.

3. Crew Communication and Cognitive Unloading

By hour 30, your brain is fundamentally broken from sleep deprivation. You lose the ability to calculate math, track your own calorie consumption, or think logically about your hydration metrics.

Actionable Takeaway: Your support crew must take absolute executive control of your race. My crew knew exactly what macro-nutrients I needed at specific hour marks. When you enter the aid station, do not make decisions. Let your crew tell you what to eat, what to drink, and when to stand up. Your only job is to run when the bell rings.

The Ultimate Backyard Truth: Your body is capable of going twice as far as your mind tells you it can. In a standard race, you can see the finish line approaching and draw strength from it. In a backyard ultra, you have to find peace with the fact that the only way out is to wilfully choose to stop, or let the clock beat you.

The 42 yards at Red's completely redefined my baseline for mental toughness and endurance training volume. The lessons learned out there under the lights at Kembla Grange are already being funnelled directly into the next massive performance block.