A few weeks ago I ran Birdy’s Backyard Ultra ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/1426023810880131 , )  the sister event to Herdy’s Frontyard Ultra ( https://herdysfrontyard.com.au/  ) where I ran 47 laps for an Australian record. I went into the event with no clear plan really , just wanted to have fun with my mates and boy did it deliver.! The event is just outside Darken in Western Australia, a 3-4 hour drive from Perth, around Lake Towerrining. The weeks before had been wet and windy but for the weekend we were blessed with perfect conditions, how does Shaun Kaesler , the Ultra Series WA owner, ( https://ultraserieswa.com.au/ ) do it ! (For background on the Backyard Ultra movement check out this website https://backyardultra.com/ )

The team arrived Thursday and being a boys weekend away we were straight onto the nearest pub which,  after consulting google, we found to be in Darken, a mere 25 kilometers away and they served pizza, perfect!  If you ever find yourself driving through Darken I recommend you keep driving, I’ll leave it at that. The boys taking on Birdy’s this year consisted of Rob, Adam, Bart’s , Mark and Dav, all in the photos below bar Bart’s who had to leave work later and went straight to the camp grounds.

We awoke Friday to perfect conditions, no wind, not too cold and with the promise of warmer conditions to come. It was going to be a great weekend.  Last year started perfect but got very windy on Saturday (Jon so nearly lost his tent!, so funny!) and was incredibly cold on Friday night. This weekend would be better, weather wise but unfortunately not under foot as we were about to find out.  Due to flooding the course had to be changed from last year and this would come back and bite us later in the day and over the event. Shaun had to take out a good one kilometre of quality running trail and replaced it with a swamp that got worse every lap, fun to run but the terrain took it out of your legs an also ate away at your rest time, lap on lap. More on this later.

So the lads awoke and started taking selfies, what else is there to do before a last man standing event ? That’s the thing with these events because it really is more social than mental at the start,  everybody is full of the joys of spring, no real pressure. This does change as the race wears on but for the moment enjoy the start and the first few laps, they are all about just enjoying running around laps with like minded runners having a blast. As you can see from the images below there ain’t no suffering going down or the nervous energy you feel before a marathon or normal ultra, just lots of happy smiling runners.  We even stopped for a selfie on the first lap, where else can you do that when racing , priceless. Ultimately of course we had to start to put in the hard yards given the harder course, making rest time limited.

So what was the goal going into Birdy’s ? At Herdy’s I’d managed 47 laps but that was in March when I was fitter than a butchers dog due to a three month window of serious Delirious training. ( https://deliriouswest200miler.com.au/ ) Due to the cancellation of the 200 miler I used all my fitness racing Herdy’s. Since then I had ran a 24 hour race  ( 5 weeks after Herdy’s) and a 100km trail race (2 weeks the 24 hour race) after which had emptied the batteries. Too many races and not enough recovery or training had left me depleted, so to speak. I knew I wasn’t fit enough for another top 2 finish at Birdy’s but was hoping to beat my 24 hours I ran last year. (Truth be told I could have gone on last year but no1 Wife insisted I came home Saturday for baby sitting duties with my kids!)  All the boys had their own goals and for the most part they achieved them or there about.  (all bar Bart’s but we’ll leave that to another day.)

As with all backyard ultras the first few laps are ridiculously easy , you can find yourself finishing in 35 minutes and then sitting around for 25 minutes before returning to the start line. Birdy’s though was harder this year. Due to flooding a good part of the old course was about a foot underwater, this meant a course change which involved taking out a good one kilometre of good runable trail and replacing it with swamp trails. There was also a 500m section of wet meadow and mud and I mean wet meadow and mud ! This of course got worse with 200 runners trampling through it on the hour, every hour. Luckily I had packed four changes of trail shoes and 8-10 pair of socks, which I would need.

Another obstacle was the bridge which had grown from the previous year as the gap had become larger due to the flooding issues. We were told by Shaun only three people at a time , we all obviously ignored this or changed the scope to ‘three people at a time on any one part of the bridge’, which meant a free for all.!!!

Images below show the bridge in all’s it glory as well as some of the running terrain which truth be told look better than it actually was. My mate Ben , the lead runner in the image top right  below, loved the mud and considers himself a ‘trail pig‘ , I’m a ‘concrete show pony’ and tip toed around like a girl. (I’m not sure I can say that these days but you get the picture, sorry girls !)

Back to the race. The first 8 laps from 10am to dusk at 6pm were just plain fun albeit we all noticed the time resting was significantly less than the previous year due to the course change and the swamp ! Once the head torches went on the real race begins, surviving the night and the temperatures that come with it. I’ve always said the hardest part of any last man standing event is getting through the night and ultimately the 2am to dawn period, this is where your body is screaming for sleep and turns up fatigue to try and persuade you to stop.  This year it was even harder as it seemed you would sit down and then instantly hear the song for the 5 minute warning, no time to catch your thoughts or get enough food and drink inside you. Over the course of the evening this became a real mental challenge as well as a physical one with the freezing conditions.  All the boys left me before dawn but each of them had achieved their goal or close enough to justify the adventure. Well done lads.

Ultimately if you can get through the night as soon as dawn hits you’re good for another 4-6 hours minimum. As you can see from the images above it’s still cold but the temperature soon started to warm up after we ran 24 laps and hit the 100 miles.  Top right in the image above is the 100 mile runners, a few more than last year but given the extra starters not as many as we thought. I’m putting this down to the harder course and thus less time to prepare for the next lap, and it was cold !

So why are backyard ultra’s so much fun, easy really it’s about restarting the race on the hour every hour so you are continually meeting your friends and running with them , rather than just a quick meet and greet on the start line and then many hours later a high five at the end. An added bonus is you aren’t pushing yourself in the red zone continually so you also have some fuel in the tank which makes the whole process more enjoyable. How many runners smile, swap jokes, take selfies and banter while competing ? Very few, normally you are continually watching the clock and in the zone so to speak, no time for high jinks or selfies. A backyard ultra , to start with , is just the best time to spend with your mates. It really is that simple. Of course when you start to hit the big numbers later in the event and your friends start to drop off it becomes more of a personal journey but the only person you then compete with is yourself. Unless you win you will DNF but it is you who decides when that will be, no one else. The race itself is thus two fold, initially a long fun run with your mates before the real journey begins and you find your limits, if you so choose. I do go on about these events but with over twenty years competing in events of all distances nothing comes close to these, I just wish they were around my whole career !

Another concept Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell  has is the Race For the Ages which also appeals. In this race you have as many hours to run as your age and you work backwards from the finish. So for me Id have 54 hours to run and thus would start 54 hours before the end, a 40 year old runner would start 14 hours after me again finishing 40 hours later. This handicap system makes the race interesting for all and is normally won by fit 60+ year old  runners because not how quicker a 40 year old may be the extra 20 hours is too much to overcome. (Here’s a good post about a 74 year old winner in the states https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a28926593/a-race-for-the-ages-bob-becker/ )

Right, back to the race. The night running was difficult and cold with the head torches not helping on the uneven ground and swamp areas where you had to work hard to keep your footing and avoid diving headfirst into the surrounding water. This compounded the problem with rest between laps as your lap times blew out because if you maintained your daylight pace you’d ‘come a ‘cropper’.  The 11 hours of darkness, combined with the various milestone during the evening,  made the drop our rate accelerate and by daylight we were down to less than 20 runners from the starting 200.  I encouraged as many runners a possible with promises of a different race when the sun pokes its head about the horizon but the darkness tests your resolve and after 3am your body is screaming for sleep and rest. Maybe sitting down in the early morning is counter productive because it is so easy to stay sitting when you hear the call to the start.  The cold didn’t help of course and made the initial kilometre a challenge albeit with my thermal , running jacket and full length skins I soon warmed up and the second half of the loop was never a problem.

Hitting 24 hours is a big deal at a backyard ultra event, it’s 100 miles , a miler as we call them.  Last year I saved my best laps for the laps 20 to 24 as my goal was 24 hours before returning home to babysit my many daughters. My lap times were low thirty minutes and I felt fresh as a daisy as I finished lap 24 second behind Michael Hooker.  This year it was a different story and lap 24 was a slog as I stumbled in near the back of the field close to 50 minutes.  The image below shows me and Justin finishing together , in perfect simentary, last year and finishing alone this year at the back of the pack, albeit still smiling.  As I have mentioned previously I’m putting this down to the harder course sapping my legs and also a fitness base that has never fully recovered from some serious beatings taken earlier in the year. Whatever the reason it was a relief to hit 24 hours knowing I was on course for a course PB at a minimum, lap on lap.

I struggled on from lap 24 and managed to run four more laps before pulling the pin at the start of lap 29 with my mate Charles. We were both just scarping in by this time and although we didn’t time out this was inevitable and with Delirious West in 7 weeks I decided it was time to save the legs for the bigger picture. Truth be told my quads were destroyed, too much tip toeing around the swamp eventually this came back to bite me. Maybe a better nutrition or hydration strategy would have helped, actually any strategy would have helped. Towards the end of the race I certainly wasn’t  eating and drinking enough  between laps , in the end this will come back and kick you in the balls. (so to speak) .

So what is the take away from Birdies Backyard Ultra ? Overall I’d say I’d give myself a B+. I managed to run further than last year but it was  much, much harder. I’m putting this down to the harder course and less recovery time, together with the quads destroying swamp and wet sections of the course. Throughout the event I struggled with fitness and towards the end really worked very hard to finish pre-50 minutes or worse. Could I have ran further ? That’s a tough question that every runner will always ask themselves after running a last man standing event. Most runners probably think they could have and unless you were carried over the line you probably could have, or collapsed over the line similar to Phil in 2019, he left it all and more besides on the course. It is always easy sitting at your computer, weeks later, writing a post to believe you could have gone so much further but really the decision is made on the day and you need to live with that decision. I’m happy enough with a top 10 finish and 28 laps, I came away with so many fond memories and had a good time on the boys weekend away, the actual race was secondary.  Looking forward I have learned more valuable lessons will I will take to Herdy’s Front yard Ultra  ( https://herdysfrontyard.com.au/ ) next year where I search for that elusive one lap I need, albeit I need to run 47 laps to get to that lap!

Finally a massive  congratulations to Phil Gore and Michael Hooker who ran 51/50 laps and set a new Australian Record in the process. These guys had 12 hours on the rest of the field and were only beaten when Plantar Fasciitis got the better of Michael and he had to pull the pin. Until then we were predicting a massive result. Both these boys will compete on the World Stage in the next couple of years , remember their names, legends in the waiting. (as well as Team Gore of course!)

..and one more thankyou to the race director(s), volunteers and everybody who did their bit to make this event so special. The Ultra Series WA is one special bunch of runners, every one of them a true champion. ( https://ultraserieswa.com.au/ ) and I couldn’t finish with out a huge thankyou to my main man Gazza, the most upbeat, attentive crew a runner could ever need, perfect in most ways bar making tea, he really, really sucks at making tea !! Love you big fella. ! ..and one final shout out to the boys and all my friends who made the weekend so very, very special. These weekends are all about remembering what’s it’s like to be 18 years old again, without the drinking but with as much laughing and high jinks, actually probably more laughing and high jinks !! We’re like 18 year old kids with money, dangerous ! I am counting the days until Birdy’s 2022….. we may even give the Darken tavern another chance. (I hope they don’t read this ?)

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First we had the concept of running ultras in small loops, a prime examples is the Lighthorse Ultra ( https://lighthorseultra.com.au/ which is a timed event over 3/6/12 or 24 hours , over a 2.5k loop.  We then fell in love with the Backyard Ultra where the race is a 6.7k loop on the hour every hour, until there is only one runner left standing. ( https://ultraserieswa.com.au/event/birdys-backyard-2/ ) Now the Ultra Series WA,  together with Vlad Ixel and Bix Nutrition,  ( https://www.bixvitamins.com/  ) have started the Great Trail Relay, kicking off in Perth  August 28th ( http://thegreatrelays.com.au )

Vlad Ixel is a trail living legend , as his website will clearly show , https://www.vladixel.com/about-me , it was Vlad who first came up with the concept of a team ultra where teams of 2 or 4 run a 2.5k loop for a distance of 100k. Doing the math it would means 20 laps each for a duo or 10 laps each for a quad team.  These events went gangbusters in Asia and are sure to do the same thing in Australia. There is talk of a road version in January 2022.

What makes this event so special is the comradery of running in a team but also the other teams around you and the whole party atmosphere of the event village. Because you are forced to wait your turn, be that one 2.5k loop in a duo or three in a quad , it gives you time to really soak up the feel of the event, a running carnival.  You can use the time to prepare for your next loop, take on board nutrition or hydration or give other teams around you a ‘gee’ up , the possibilities are endless. The best part is you are not alone on a trail with your thoughts,  not that this is a bad thing but once in a while it’s actually nice to race an ultra with a bit of company, these type of events give you company and then some !

As the title suggests if a point to point Ultra is a 5 day test, a backyard ultra would be a one day test and this Trail Relay is the 20/20 of Ultra running.  Something going on all the time and if you blink you’ll miss something.  Let’s face it the last time you ran a relay was probably at school and how much fun was it !  For this event each team will have a baton with a timing chip in it allowing you to see where you are in the field and this encouraging some healthy competition throughout the event, not just at the front of the pack.  This is where you will be able to see exactly who you’re racing.

From the website :-

You’ll also find this image on the website for the event which shows you can also have a nap if you so prefer inbetween racing allbeit in the image above I was about to leap up and continue racing at Herdy’s , honest ?

I have already entered a team of four and as it’s two weeks after the Birdy’s Backyard Ultra I have named our team the Broken Birdy’s as we’re all running Birdy’s and will probably not be a fit state to race it. This could be your chance to give me and the boys a good toweling, what more incentive do you want to race?  All joking aside this event will take off and if you are going to enter make an effort and do it now. It’s the weekend of the Perth City to Surf which unfortunately has been cancelled. The loop is in the beautiful Jorgensen Park in Kalamunda which is the starting point for the bib track , so I’m sure the loop will be testing.

I’ve been racing for over 20 years and I can honestly say these looped events are without doubt the most fun I have ever had. I’ve ran 45 marathons and many, many  ultras but looped ultras/races are the best by a county mile. Personally for me the backyard ultra concept is my favourite but this event will be even more fun I reckon, being part of a team and also the whole atmosphere of  hundreds of like minded people doing what we love together, while being able to eat good tukka and sup on quality coffee, sounds like heaven to me !

I can’t leave without yet again thanking Shaun, Axel and the team at USWA  for putting this event on, these guys are the makers of dreams and have created unique events that allow us,  as runners, to really see what we can become if you have someone that totally believes in you.  We are truly blessed.  ( https://ultraserieswa.com.au/ )

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Two good friends of mine, Bart’s and Rob,  have started a little adventure company where they will take you on tours of Rottnest Island and , eventually, Collie. The first tour kicks off two weeks before the Rottnest Marathon,  so is perfect for those runners who need to acquaint themselves with the Island before the big day in June.  For a small fee of $450pp you get accommodation, food and as much running as you can handle, as well as Pilates and other entertainment over the course of the weekend.  You’ll need to cover the cost of transportation to the Island which will probably be by the Rottnest Ferry.  There is only 18 places available as it’s all about taking a small group and just having fun together, too many people and you’ll lose that intimacy.

I’ve attached the itinerary from the website below. ( https://www.runawayweekends.com.au/ ) , lots of running, eating and drinking coffee by the sounds of it, a perfect weekend as far as I’m concerned. Bart’s and Rob will be excellent hosts and as you can see from the photo below I have personally spent a lot of time with these two reprobates and loved every minute of it.  You couldn’t find two better hosts for a weekend away. The boys were on Rottnest over the Easter break,  sourcing out trails,  and they come back very excited , so it bodes well for some scenic runs. There are some seriously beautiful trails on Rottnest and to really enjoy then it is best to get a guide as without one you’ll end up wondering about lost or just miss the good trails completely, hence the tour.

They have been very busy and as well as creating the idea for the weekend they have also created a website and a Facebook page, I would presume they had some help !  Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/runawayweekends   You need to fill out the contact form on the website with your details and the boys will be in touch personally , I told you it was intimate.

Finally I’ve attached the flyer that is available on the Facebook page , gives you an idea of what to expect.  If you are serious about the Rottnest Marathon in June this year or just want a great weekend away with likeminded people this is the tour for you.

Please note I am not in any way a part of this venture and am writing this post in the hope of a free coffee from Bart’s but after knowing him for well over 10 years I think the possibility of this happening is slim to no chance ! The one caveat , finally, about the coffee is beware of Bart’s and his Dome loyalty card, he is well known in our running circles for loving his Dome coffee and even more loving his free Dome coffee. If he does persuade the group to stop for a coffee at Dome I guarantee he’ll be the first to the counter , loyalty card in hand and you’ll all be buying coffee while the staff stamp his card, priceless.

One more caveat before I finish, this weekend is not about pushing yourself to your limits or locking yourself in the pain box so you can return a better person. No, this tour is about like minded runners doing what they love,  in a relaxed atmosphere,  while immersing themselves in the beauty of the surrounding and finding new friends, creating memories and just generally having a runaway weekend.

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