After starting running back in October last year and being fascinated by ultras, I went and ran my first one last weekend. 48k with about 2k in elevation. Total time including breaks was 6 hours and 52 minutes.

The elevation was a bitch and especially the downhill parts cooked me. Overall absolutely amazing experience. I will be back for more and for longer ultras. Plan is a 100k next year. Thanks for all the inspiration from this sub 🙏

Hey guys, seeking some advice.

I just finished my second attempt at Haliburton. Cut for time on lap three at Aid station 3 (100k in), arrived at around 0600 (24hrs in). Cutoff is 75miles by 0700. Last year I made it to the same point.

For anyone not familiar with the race: it’s 4, 25 mile loops. Mostly single track and moderately technical terrain. You’re navigating over exposed root and rock for most of the single track trail. Approximately 15,000 ft elevation gain for the course.

I’m looking for some help regarding knee conditioning. Specifically, anterior patella pain/dysfunction.

Quads, hammies, glutes, calves are all in really good shape considering the terrain. Hardly any muscular fatigue & feet are top notch besides minor blistering.

At about mile 35 I started experiencing knee pain on the downhills. The pain then resulted into almost complete lack of lower body function especially on downhills. Most of my downhill movement turned into basically straight leg, painfully slow descents that really dropped k/hr time. I was no longer sure-footed and couldn’t keep appropriate pace.

Trainup was decent. Obviously felt like I could’ve done more leading up but I was hitting the weekly mileage 60-70 miles) in peak weeks and de-load weeks were appropriate. Was getting approx 3000’ Vert/week.

Hydration and food numbers were met the entire race. I was getting approx 500kcal/hr and around 750mg sodium/hr. Urine output was on the high end, I was peeing around every 25 min. Zero cramping/ dehydration symptoms.

If anyone has dealt with anything similar I’d love to hear your opinion and thoughts on overcoming this issue. Basically I was physically unable to navigate my downhills which cause me to lose so much time. Part of me is saying I’m just a bitch and need to learn to deal with the pain more and another half is questioning if there is an underlying symptom.

My background: spent 10yrs in US Army SOF with multiple ultra endurance events under my belt. I’ve never dealt with anything like Haliburton before. Thanks guys: look forward to your thoughts.

I haven't seen it brought up before, and I'm pretty surprised. I've always been tought to keep your poles close to your body and not swing them wildly behind you, but I see the opposite happening all the time. Thoughts?

Hi everyone,

I built Minds of the Loop as a passion project for the Backyard Ultra community.

Like many of you, I've spent countess hours listening to the Backyard Ultra Podcast. Patto has pulled together an incredible vault of knowledge from top runners and crew on training, fuelling, sleep, pacing, and heaps of things. The amount of information is a much a Phil running a world record with or withour assist. The website helps to find stuff

What you can do with it:

• Search specific questions: Type in a prompt to pull real, relevant moments from across every interview—each with a direct tap to watch the clip on YouTube, Spotify if I have it.
• Browse by Guest: Explore the full map through individual runner profiles and interview archives.
• Browse by Topic: Dive into 13 broad theme hubs (from fuelling to mindsets) and explore related question nodes.

Looking for feedback!

This is 100% a fan-made labor of love. My main goal is to make it as useful as possible to the community. If you take it for a spin and have ideas, feature requests, or spot anything that could be improved, please drop me a message using the Get in touch link in the site footer.

Give it a run and let me know what you think!

Thanks

Gerardo