At This Ultramarathon, There's No Finish Line

Can self-torture make these people happy? "Big Dog," aka Lazarus Lake, aka Gary Cantrell, is their ringmaster. Is he happy? Thanks for this, Ed.

The conceit of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra is simple: Runners have an hour to complete a 4.167-mile loop at the race organizer's home. Then they do it again, and again, and again—breaking for food and rest only in the spare time before they start the next loop. Hundreds of miles and a whole lot of pain later, the last competitor still running wins.

"You'll wonder how someone can inflict so much pain without a weapon," says the sixtysomething man who goes by Lazarus Lake. He is leaning against a metal barrier on his property in Bell Buckle, Tenn., wearing a red beanie embroidered with GEEZER. He has a bushy white beard, a pot belly and square-rimmed glasses. He looks like a lumberjack Santa.

It is 6:35 a.m. on an October Saturday. In a small clearing, just off an access road, Lake spray-paints a starting corral around a pack of six dozen men and women in tank tops and short shorts. We are just minutes from the start of the seventh running of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra, the multiday race that Lake thought of when he was a high schooler 50-odd years ago, thinking of ways to test the body's limits.

Ultrarunning—racing distances longer than a marathon—has grown rapidly in popularity over the last decade; there are now more than 150 100-mile races in North America, according to Ultrarunning Magazine. The sport inflicts a range of horrors on its athletes: gnarled toenails, battered joints, respiratory distress.

But the distinctive format of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra is especially diabolical. Runners must complete a 4.167-mile loop every hour. After finishing one hour's loop they can rest, eat and use the Port-a-Potties until the next hour's starts. Fail to complete a loop before time elapses, you're out. Complete one but fail to appear on time in the starting corral for the next one, you're out. During daylight hours the runners follow a leafy dirt trail in Lake's backyard. After dark the race moves to a road course, for safety's sake, then back to the backyard come morning. The race goes on—hour after hour, through daylight, darkness, sun and rain—for as long as there are still runners, plural, who can complete the loops. There is no finite distance to conquer. In other words: Run till you drop. The race has no finish line, is always tied, and is always sudden death. Of the 72 runners who have entered the event, only one will be credited with finishing. The rest, DNFs. The winner receives a small gold coin, inscribed I SURVIVED. Everyone else gets a silver one with I GAVE MY ALL IN BIG'S BACKYARD... (continues)