William Hayward swaps Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra for 298km four trails in four days to avoid Covid-19 quarantine

William Hayward skips Tennessee trip for Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra because of 21-day quarantine on return

The 53-year-old runs all four of Hong Kong’s major trails in four days instead, and raises HK$15,000 for local refugee charity

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William Hayward run all four of major trails in Hong Kong in four days in lieu of Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra. Photo: Vic So

Published: 10:21am, 20 Oct 2021Updated: 10:14pm, 20 Oct 2021

Running 298 kilometres with 14,500 metres of total elevation over four consecutive days might sound anything but casual for most people. But William Hayward is not most people.

When the 53-year-old finished running Hong Kong’s four major trails on Monday, he said he “enjoyed” the challenge and had “a great time”.

Hayward was supposed to be running Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in Tennessee last weekend. But when the Hong Kong government tightened entry rules for travellers returning from countries in the Covid-19 high-risk category (including the US) and increased hotel quarantine to 21 days, he decided it was not worth it.

Big Dog’s is one of the most gruelling concepts in running, with competitors having one hour to finish a 6.7km loop. They have to be on the start line ready to go at the start of the next hour. They keep completing loops until there is just one runner left. Hayward finished second by completing 59 loops in 2019, and therefore had an invitation to compete this year.

“I decided I better do something else that weekend or I’d just sit around and mope,” Hayward said. The obvious answer was recreating his own Backyard Ultra, doing laps of Bowen Road, but “nothing could be worse”.

William Hayward enjoys the ‘casual’ nature of recreating the 4in4. Photo: So Ho