Backyard Ultra Marathons are a little different than your typical marathons. Unlike a normal marathon where the person who clocks the shortest time is deemed the winner, posting the longest time could result in a win.
The Backyard Ultra Marathon requires athletes to run over 4.1 miles each hour. If you fail to make it back to the start line after completing a 4.1-mile loop, that runner is disqualified from the race.
Earlier this week, a pair of runners in Belgium became the first Backyard Ultra Marathoners to run more than 100 loops. That meant for four days, Merijn Geerts and Ivo Steyaert ran over 4.1 miles for 101 consecutive hours. The duo decided to call it quits after just barely making it back to the starting line at the end of their 101st hour of running.
“Amid the avalanche of negative stories we hear today, there is this,” said the founder of the championship Lazarus Lake. “Two men worked together to reach the pinnacle of their sport, and then walked away from personal victory at the expense of the other. They had already achieved all there was to achieve on this day.”
The duo was part of a 10-person international team. The team from Belgium finished second as the United States came in No. 1. American Piotr Chadovich had the most laps among Americans with 76.
All told, Geerts and Steyaert ran 420 miles between Saturday and Tuesday. By comparison, a standard marathon is 26.2 miles.