Phil Gore runs 152 yards, 633.75 miles, at Project 168
Zach Bitter says the Australian put the backyard ultra world on notice.
Phil Gore completed 152 "yards" at Project 168. Zach Bitter puts that at 633.75 miles.
A backyard ultra works on a loop and a clock. Runners set off on the same loop every hour, on the hour, and anyone who fails to start or finish inside the hour is out. There is no finish line and no finishing time, only the yard count and the last runner standing. So 152 is the entire result, and it means Gore was still going out on the loop after more than six full days of it.
Bitter says the sport is on notice
Bitter, who hosts the Human Performance Outliers Podcast, framed the run as a marker for everyone else chasing the format.
"Phil Gore put the Backyard Ultra World on notice with his incredible Project 168 performance," Bitter posted, alongside the video version of their conversation.
Phil Gore put the Backyard Ultra World on notice with his incredible Project 168 performance.
Gore talked the run through with Bitter on episode 502 of the podcast, titled "Backyard Ultra Records & Recovery". The recovery half of that title is the part backyard runners tend to obsess over. Nobody taper-races six days of hourly loops and walks away fresh, and what a body looks like on the far side of 152 hours of stop-start running is a question with very few people qualified to answer it.
What it actually means
The number is the news here, not the win. A backyard result is a count, so the thing to hold onto is 152 yards and 633.75 miles, and the fact that one of the more data-literate voices in ultrarunning called it a line in the sand for the discipline. If you want the detail on how the run went and what came after, the podcast episode is where Gore gives it himself.
Backyard Ultra Records & Recovery | Phil Gore | Ep. 502
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