Michael Wardian wins Quarantine Backyard Ultra, running for 63 hours and a total of 422 kilometres
- Runners had to start a 6.7km route every hour until there was just one athlete still going, all live on a Zoom call
Michael Wardian won the Quarantine Backyard Ultra by running 422km, in 63 hours, on Tuesday. Runners had to start a 6.7km loop every hour, until there was just one runner still going.
The race was based on Big’s Backyard Ultra, in Tennessee. There are numerous qualifying Backyard Ultras around the world for a select few to compete in Tennessee, but during the Quarantine version all the runners were on different courses communicating via a Zoom link. Some ran out of their front doors and back again, others were on treadmills, while some ran laps indoors.
Wardian ran laps in Virginia, and for the last 15 hours was competing against just one other runner. Radek Brunner was running his 6.7km on a treadmill in the Czech Republic. Brunner failed to start the 63rd loop on the hour buzzer and so American Wardian was awarded the victory after he completed the final lap.
“Radek Brunner failed to leave the corral when the bell rang. This is what makes the backyard format so heart wrenching,” Personal Peak, a running coach company that hosted the online Quarantine Backyard Ultra, wrote on Facebook.
“The bell doesn’t care. The bell just rings. It is we who care. It is we who do not wish it to end. But it never ends well. It may only end gracefully.”
