Free. You can start with nothing.
The backyard itself. One 4.167-mile yard every hour, on the hour, with an hour to finish each yard and be back in the starting corral. The race is over when one runner finishes a yard alone. Capped at 100 runners. Climbing is about 375 feet per yard through pastures and woods. Each runner's winning count is yards completed. Anyone who runs 24 yards, 100 miles or further gets a buckle in the mail.
Per yard, the race says around 375 feet of elevation gain through pastures and woods (the bigsbackyardultra.com listing says 350 feet for the day loop). 60% of the course runs through pastures on a five-foot path cut through the grass, marked by guide ropes and arrows. 40% covers four segments of forest single track with twists, turns, roots and rocks. No pavement once you drive into the starting pasture. Average February 13 temperature: low 36, high 60 (as the race words it).
Georgia's only affiliated backyard ultra, run on a working cattle farm in Thomaston. Everyone starts together in a pasture corral and runs a 4.167-mile yard every hour, on the hour, until one runner is left. It is a social format: the hour is easy enough to run, walk and talk, and the focus is distance and fun more than speed. A one-yard option lets you sample the day with a single lap.
One person has been out there with a camera or a microphone.
These are other people's work and we link straight to them. Watching costs nothing and needs no account. More of them: every race we hold, on film.
Nobody sees it until we have read it. No account, no sign-in.
This changes nothing on the page on its own. Somebody checks it against the race first.
Somebody watches it before it goes anywhere near this page. What we are after is footage of this course, on the ground. If it would be just as true of any other race, it is not this.
We want the address of the file the race publishes, not the file. We download it from there so the page can say where the line came from.
We read every one of these and we write back. Every fact here carries the source it came from, and the way a wrong one gets fixed is a person checking it against what you tell us.
Cutoffs move, races get postponed, lotteries open and close. We read the race's own sources and record where every fact came from. Put your email in and we will send you what changed, and where we read it.
No account, and nothing to cancel.
What happens to your email. Nothing else. I do not sell it, and I will not send you anything except this race changing. One click gets you out.
I keep this catalog because the information is scattered and hard to trust. Telling you when it moves is the same job.
