After nearly 63 hours, ultrarunner Michael Wardian was crowned the last runner standing at the Quarantine Backyard Ultra. Wardian outlasted Czech runner Radek Brunner for the title—the two ran against each other for 16 hours, waiting for the other to drop.
The backyard race format, an invention of Barkley Marathons creator Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell, requires athletes to run 4.16 miles every hour, starting exactly on the hour and goes until one runner is able to do one more lap than anyone else competing. The two runners approached this virtual race differently—Wardian ran his loops outdoors in his neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, while Brunner ran the entire race on a treadmill he bought the week before the quarantine happening in the Czech Republic.
Both runners outlasted a field of around 2,400 athletes from over 55 countries, including a group of elite runners like 2019 Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc champion Courtney Dauwalter, 2019 Big’s Backyard champion Maggie Guterl, 2014 Badwater champion Harvey Lewis, Last Vol State 500K champion Greg Armstrong, and a cast of others. All runners were connected via Zoom, and they only remained on the feeds until they tapped out.
Only 71 runners were able to complete the first day, including a 13-year-old, Ben Tidwell, also from Virginia. By the end of day two, it was just Wardian and Brunner, who finished on the podium at the last four Spartathlon races, a popular 153-mile ultramarathon in Greece.
This came after third place runner and top female Anna Carlsson, 34, of Sweden, dropped out after lap 46. She ran her entire race on a frozen lake in her home country until a snow storm forced her to drop out of the race.
The final two runners looked strong as they battled all day on two far-apart locations on the globe. It looked likely that they were going to go into a fourth day; however, trouble arose for Brunner at the start of lap 63.
On the Zoom feed, Brunner appeared healthy; however, his treadmill did not start close enough to the start of the lap though he was on the treadmill belt. By official backyard rules, you have to be in the starting corral and start on the hour. Because the belt of the treadmill started late, he was disqualified from the race.
The sudden end created a frenzy on social media, with mixed reactions of support and disapproval of the controversial finish. Nevertheless, organizers stuck with the ruling.
Wardian found out during lap 63 about the DQ and flew to the end, finishing it in 31:05—his fastest of the entire race—to claim the golden toilet paper roll. His final mileage for the race was a little over 262 miles, and he did not sleep for the entirety of the 63-hour event.
The ultrarunner is no stranger to long-distance challenges. One impressive feat is his 10 marathons in 10 days world record. In the last three weeks, Wardian claimed a fastest-known time (FKT) in Washington, D.C. and ran a marathon the weekend before on the same loop he ran all of his loops on for the backyard ultra.
However, the farthest he had run prior to this race was when he captured the FKT on the C&O Canal Trail, which was 300K (186 miles) in September 2018.
From: Runner’s World US
Source: Read Full Article