Backyard ultra season is on us again. My inbox this month is full of the same two questions from runners heading into their first yard: how fast should each loop actually be, and how do I keep my feet in one piece past the 12-hour mark? Both questions have the same answer at the core -- discipline in the boring, early hours. That is what separates the runners who are still smiling on loop 20 from the ones limping to their chair with hotspots at loop 8.
I have run enough long stuff across European trails and shared enough kilometres with runners preparing for Big's Backyard qualifiers, Muddy Yard, and the smaller weekend formats popping up in every second forest, to know this: backyard ultras end the legs last. They end the head first, and the feet second. If you take care of the feet, the head has a lot more room to argue with you.
Here is the playbook I would hand a runner asking me today.
The Format, In Case You Need The Refresher
One loop. Usually 6.706 km (4.167 miles), which multiplies out to 100 miles in 24 hours. You have exactly one hour to complete the loop and be back in the start corral for the next one. Bell rings, you go again. Last runner standing wins. Everyone else DNFs.
The trap is obvious once you sit with it. You have to be back inside 60 minutes, but if you finish in 45 minutes, you have 15 minutes to eat, change, tape, drink, use a toilet, and sit down. If you finish in 55 minutes, you have five minutes and no room for anything to go wrong. Multiply that decision across 20 loops and you understand why pacing is not just about legs.
Pacing The Yard: The First 10 Loops Are The Whole Race
Almost every backyard DNF I have watched or coached through has the same fingerprint on it. The runner ran the first ten loops too hot.
Target Loop Time
For most runners on a rolling to moderately technical loop, I coach a target of 50 to 52 minutes in the first ten hours. That gives you 8 to 10 minutes of transition. Any faster than 48 minutes and you are burning matches you will need at 2am. Any slower than 55 and your transitions become a panic.
Flat road loop? You can push toward 48 minutes without much penalty, because running economy on tarmac is higher and transitions are quicker (less mud, less kit change). Technical mountain loop? 55 minutes is fine, but your transitions have to be brutal and clean.
The metric I actually watch is not pace. It is heart rate. First ten loops should sit in Zone 1 to low Zone 2 -- conversational, boring, almost embarrassingly slow on the climbs. If your HR is drifting up loop to loop while your pace stays constant, you are already cooking. That is called cardiac drift and it is the earliest warning sign that you have gone out too hard.
The Walk-The-Uphills Rule From Loop 1
I know. It feels ridiculous to walk on loop 1 when you feel fresh and everyone around you is jogging. Walk anyway. Any incline where your HR would spike more than 10 bpm above baseline, you power hike. This is the same principle I wrote about in my 100K pacing article -- protecting the aerobic system early is what buys you the second half.
The 5-Minute Mini-Transition (What Actually Happens In That Chair)
Your chair is not a chair. It is a workstation. Set it up before the race starts and never let anyone move anything.
Here is the transition I run and teach:
Minute 0 (crossing the mat): Take a big drink of water while walking to your station. Do not stop moving until you reach the chair.
Minute 1: Sit. Shoes off if you are rotating. Socks off if it is a sock rotation loop (more on this below). Eat something dense and easy -- half a rice ball, a boiled potato with salt, a banana with nut butter. Not gels. Gels are for on-course.
Minute 2: Feet. Quick visual scan. Any red patch, any glossy shine, any little bubble of skin -- deal with it now, not next loop.
Minute 3: Fresh socks (or the same socks flipped inside-out if you are on a rotation cycle), shoes back on. Refill bottles or flasks.
Minute 4: Stand up. Walk 20 steps to test the feet feel right. Sip warm broth or tea. Pee if needed.
Minute 5: Move to the corral. Chat to another runner for the last two minutes. The chat is not social -- it is a mental reset.
If you can do that under five minutes, you have a 45-minute loop of buffer. That is the whole game.
Foot Care For Long Ultras: The Decision Tree
Feet fail in backyard ultras for three reasons: moisture, friction, and pressure. Every foot care choice you make is trying to reduce one of those three. Here is what I actually reach for.
Lube, Tape, or Powder?
Runners waste hours arguing about this. The honest answer is you probably need all three, in different places, on different days.
Lube (anti-chafe balm or petroleum jelly) goes on toes, between toes, on the ball of the foot, and on the heel counter -- before the race, before you put socks on. It reduces friction. If it is raining or you are running through wet grass, lube will wash out around loop 6 and you need to re-apply.
Tape (I like kinesio-style or specific blister tape) goes on known hotspots that you already have data on from long training runs. Do not experiment on race day. Common spots: the back of the heel, the outside of the little toe, the ball of the foot under the second metatarsal. Apply before the race. If a new hotspot develops mid-race, tape it as soon as you feel the shine.
Powder (foot powder or cornstarch) is for the second half, when the humidity from your foot inside the shoe is building up. Between loops 10 and 14, take the shoes off completely, dry the feet with a small towel, dust with powder, put on completely dry socks. This one transition -- if timed right -- can save you three loops of misery later.
The Sock Rotation
If you are only going to remember one thing from this whole article, remember this: rotate your socks every 3 to 4 hours, and any time the socks feel damp. Damp socks are the single biggest cause of blisters in long ultras.
I lay out my socks in numbered pairs on the transition table. Pair 1 is on my feet at the start. Pair 2 goes on at loop 4. Pair 3 at loop 8. And so on. I keep the used pair drying on the back of the chair -- if the weather is dry, they can come back into rotation later.
For overnight loops (roughly loop 12 to loop 20 depending on your start time), I switch to merino wool or alpaca socks. The temperature drops, the feet get cold, and cold feet lose sensation, which means you stop noticing hotspots. Wool keeps the feet warm even when slightly damp, and it manages moisture better than synthetics on long durations. I use the HYKLE Alpaca type of socks for this exact reason -- warmth without sweat build-up. David wrote about his experience with them after his hip replacement, that they were warm and fit well, and that mirrors what I feel on cold overnight loops.
Compression Around The Calf -- Why It Changes How The Foot Feels On Hour 20
This one surprises runners who have never tried it. Wearing knee-high compression socks or sleeves during a backyard ultra does not just help the calf. It changes how the foot feels.
Here is the mechanism, in physiotherapist language you can actually use: after 15+ hours of running, venous return from the lower leg gets sluggish. Blood pools around the ankle. The foot swells inside the shoe. Swollen feet mean more pressure against the shoe upper, more friction, more numbness, and more blisters. Graduated compression up the calf keeps that venous return moving, which keeps foot swelling down, which keeps the shoe fitting the way it did on loop 1.
I run in HYKLE Compression Socks for long-format races and I have my callanetics students who also run ultras doing the same. It is not magic. It is just fluid dynamics doing what it should.
When To Switch Shoes
Two rules I follow religiously:
Rule 1: Have at least two pairs at the start line, ideally three. One pair for dry loops, one pair a half-size larger for the swelling phase (usually kicks in around loop 8 to 10), and one pair as a wet-weather backup with more aggressive tread.
Rule 2: Switch shoes when the feet tell you, not on a schedule. The signals are: a hotspot that was not there before, a pressure point on the top of the foot (that is swelling), or a sensation that the shoe suddenly feels "narrow." That last one is the giveaway that swelling has started.
The half-size-larger pair often stays in the box until loop 12 or 14. When you finally put them on, the relief is enormous. Runners describe it as "getting new feet."
For the very late loops, when everything hurts and you are essentially power hiking loops in the dark, some runners switch to a wider, more forgiving shoe. This is where a barefoot-style shoe with a roomy toe box can actually be a comfort -- not for running fast, but for the toes finally having space to spread. I know a runner who finished a 22-loop backyard by putting on his HYKLE Barefoot Shoes for the last four loops and hiking them out. That is not a strategy I would prescribe blindly, but if you have trained in them and your feet are wrecked, the extra toe space can be exactly what you need.
The Overnight Loop -- Where Most People DNF
Between roughly 2am and 5am, three things happen at the same time: core temperature drops, blood sugar dips, and the mind gets very quiet and very negative. This is the danger zone.
My rules for overnight:
- Layer up before you are cold. Long sleeve, gloves, buff around the neck. Add before loop 12, not after.
- Wool socks on. The switch I mentioned above -- do it before you feel cold feet, not after.
- Warm calories. Broth, warm tea with honey, instant mashed potato. Cold food is unappetising and you will stop eating, which is a death sentence.
- Headlamp with fresh batteries at loop 11. Not loop 13 when it is dark. Set the spare on your transition table before the race.
- Talk to yourself out loud on loop. It sounds mad. It works. The voice in your head at 3am is not your friend. The voice out loud is.
What About The Knees And Lower Back?
At around loop 14 or 15, a lot of runners start feeling the knee -- usually a dull ache on the inside or under the kneecap. This is not a "your knee is destroyed" signal in most cases. It is fatigue in the surrounding musculature (quads, glutes, hip stabilisers) losing the ability to control the joint cleanly.
If you have a known niggle heading into the race, wear a light knee sleeve from loop 1, not from loop 14. Adding it late is too late -- the pattern of pain is already grooved in. I have written a lot about patellofemoral pain and runner's knee exercises that are worth doing in the weeks before the race to shore up the stabilisers.
Same principle for the lower back, especially if you are shuffling in the small hours with a poor gait. A light support belt can save the loops -- I have covered the SI joint corrective work for the training block.
A Sample Loop Split Plan (For A Runner Aiming For 18-20 Loops)
- Loops 1-6: 50-52 minutes on target. Zone 1-2 HR. Small food every loop. Sock check every loop.
- Loops 7-10: 50-53 minutes. First sock rotation at loop 4, second at loop 8. Powder and dry-foot reset at loop 10. Switch to slightly larger shoes if swelling is starting.
- Loops 11-14: 52-55 minutes. Wool socks on. Layers on. Headlamp on. Warm calories every loop.
- Loops 15-18: 55-58 minutes. Power hike more aggressively on climbs. Maintain sock rotation. Keep transitions to 3 minutes -- discipline matters more than ever now.
- Loop 19 onwards: You are in the fight. Nothing I write here matters. It is just you.
The One Anecdote
At an autumn backyard event a couple of years ago I was helping a runner from my callanetics group who was going for her first 12-hour finish. She was strong through loop 8, then made the mistake I have seen a hundred times -- she skipped a sock change because she "felt fine." At loop 10 she took her shoe off and there was a blister the size of a coin under her big toe. She got two more loops out of it, taped, but the gait compensation gave her a screaming outside-knee pain that ended her race at loop 12.
The lesson was not about blisters. It was about the fact that when you feel fine is exactly when the routine matters most. The routine is what saves you when you stop feeling fine. Do the sock change even when you do not need it. Do the foot check even when nothing hurts. That is backyard ultra pacing and foot care in one sentence.
Pack List, In One Block, For The Runners Who Skimmed
Six to eight pairs of socks (mix of thin running, thick wool, alpaca for overnight). Two to three pairs of shoes, one a half-size up. Anti-chafe balm. Blister tape. Foot powder. Small quick-dry towel. Nail clippers (yes, really -- a torn nail at loop 14 is a race-ender). Knee sleeve if you have any history. Compression socks or sleeves from loop 1. Headlamp with spare batteries. Long sleeve, gloves, buff. Warm broth in a thermos. Real food, not just gels. A folding chair you can sit down in without collapsing. A friend or family member who will hand you things and not ask questions in the small hours.
That is it. Show up, run slow on purpose, take care of the feet, and see how many yards you can string together. The clock does not stop -- but with the right pacing and foot care, neither do you.