A collection of race reports and other writings of and about ultrarunning, trail running, and other running related topics with a strong focus on the East Coast. The "Beast Coast" has a strong trail running community and some amazing events; this blog aims to showcase some of that.
I finished February with 267 miles for an average of 9.2 miles a day! This was the last full month of training before my first race of the year, and also my first 48 hour race ever. It feels like my training has gone flawlessly and I am feeling so ready to see how far beyond 200 miles I can run in a 48 hour period at the Virginia Adventures Dogwood Ultramarathons. Only three weeks until…
2 nights with no sleep
> 200 miles on foot
a race that will span two sunrises and two sunsets
shoveling in aid station foods and a ridiculous number of gels
Just under 283 miles for me last month which is my highest mileage for January ever! Hopefully that is a sign of bigger performances to come this year. With the race schedule I have planned for the year (a 48 hour race and 3 backyard ultras), I’m going to need to run some long distances to hit my goals! Let’s go!
“Wish upon a star, and then act properly, in accordance with that aim.”
It's that time of year again. Time to assess last year's goals and set new goals to work towards in 2024. I figure the best way to do this is to just go down my list of goals from last year.
I made my attempt and came up short of my PR I ran there in 2021. I struggled with some digestive issues, inclement weather, and a lack of motivation, but I still managed to hit 100 miles which was good enough for first place. So although I failed to hit my personal goal, I still went home pretty content with my run.
2. Run Capital Backyard Ultra and be sure to secure my spot at Big's this year. Status: Success
This was my best performance of the year in my opinion. I felt great for pretty much all 75 hours. Then I won an award for a shortened version of my race report that I entered into a writing contest!
6. Run the individual backyard world championship at Big's Backyard in October. Status: Success… kind of.
Well, I did run Big's Backyard for the individual backyard world championships last October, so in that sense I was successful in that goal. However, just like last year, I felt like I didn’t have the race that I hoped for.
2023 was a mix of success, partial success, a little failure, and a decent amount of failing to attempt. I’m pretty sure I was over reaching when I put together last year’s list of goals. Between professional responsibilities and a super busy family life, there’s only so much time to get away for races. I may still have some lofty running goals for 2024, but there will certainly not be as many. So with that, here are my running goals for 2024 (in chronological order)!
1. Run a 48 hour race - Running a longer timed race is something I’ve thought about a lot since running Capital Backyard last year. I put a lot of that blame for this goal on Victoria Brown who I met and ran lots of miles with there. Victoria is quite an accomplished multi day ultrarunner and triathlete. After chatting with her quite a bit about multi day events, I’m way more interested in them and curious of what I might be able to accomplish. So that is my goal at the 48 hour Dogwood Ultramarathon in Green Bay, VA: to find out how far I can run in a 48 hour period. It’s new to me because although I have run for longer than 48 hours at backyard races on multiple occasions, I have never run for that length of time without the pace restrictions that come with a backyard ultra. I of course have some distance goals in mind (a bottom tier goal of 200 miles, and a top tier goal of hitting 240 miles), but I also have other reasons to be excited for this event. That reason is the fact that my family is planning to join me for this race, something that hasn’t happened since I ran the Backyard Squatch in 2021. And to add to my excitement, my two older boys are planning to pace me for some of my laps during the race and one of them has the goal of running his first half marathon distance while pacing me! I am really pumped to start my running season off with a race experience that I am so excited about!
2. Run Capital Backyard Ultra - I ran Capital last year to make sure that if my spot at Big's was at risk, I’d have a chance to fight for it.This year is partially the same motivation. Although as of now, I feel like my best performance of 75 yards during this two year qualifying period makes my at-large spot pretty safe. The rest of the motivation to go back and run Capital for a third consecutive year is simply that it is an amazing event. Sarah Smith, race director, does an amazing job organizing the event and making sure all of the runners are so well cared for to have their best performance possible. I have greatly enjoyed my long days of running there and all the people I’ve met there. Besides the running and the impressive food spread, I’d say the people are right up there with my top reasons for wanting to go back again. Last year, only my second year there, felt like a reunion. I don’t think I’ve felt that accepted in such a short amount of time anywhere else in my life.
3. Run Bob's Big Timber Backyard Ultra - Why would I plan to run another backyard this year? Like I said earlier, I think my at-large for a spot on Team USA at Big’s is pretty safe this year, so the fact that Bob’s Big Timber is a silver ticket event isn’t a major motivating factor for me. The real reason is all because of a stupid belt buckle. I heard from Levi Yoder, or maybe I read it on Facebook, that the race director of Bob’s Big Timber had special 200 mile buckles designed and made for anyone who breaks 200 miles at his backyard race. Well, so far that has not happened there. It was the day after my race ended at Big’s last year (maybe a bit during the race too, tough to recall exactly) that I was chatting with Levi about this. He had said he intended to go 200 there last year, but no one else running the event was able to continue with him that long. I mentioned that I had considered signing up for it last year and he said I should so we could break the 200 mile threshold. I agreed that if we were both there the race director would very likely get to hand out at least two of those buckles. So that’s why it’s all about a silly belt buckle. I’m being a bit sarcastic there. It is about more than the buckle. I’ve greatly enjoyed all the trail miles I’ve run with Levi, so why not run another backyard with him? Not to mention, I look forward to meeting and running with lots of new folks at a different race to add some variety to my running schedule.
4. Run with Team USA again at the 2024 Backyard Team World Championships - If you read either of my race reports on my two experiences (2022 and 2023) at Big’s Backyard, I think I’ve been pretty forthright and honest about how I feel about my performances there. The bottom line is that I feel like I still have not achieved what I am capable of at Big’s and I still have my best performance at Big’s in the making. I have no excuses for the last two years there. I believe I came up short of what I am capable of there and have come home disappointed both years. This year, my goal is the same as last year: to do my best with no excuses.
I’ve run Big’s Backyard for the last two years and both years I put in more training and preparation than I had for any other race. And both years the course sent me home feeling defeated after serving me up with a heaping pile of humble pie. Coming up short of your goals and facing failure can be tough and is usually not a pleasant experience, but it can also be a learning experience that helps us grow and improve in our pursuit. With a few weeks between me and my second DNF at Big’s, I feel like I’ve handled this one emotionally better than the first and I am certain I have learned from this one.
This year’s edition of Big’s Backyard was the Individual World Championship competition, so slightly different from last year’s World Team Competition. The backyard international championship competitions are currently conducted annually alternating between an individual competition (on odd years) held on the original backyard course in Bell Buckle, TN and national team competitions (on even years) run remotely as a satellite competition at the home course of each team. The standard backyard rules apply for both types of competition, but there are some intricate differences between the two types of competitions.
Let me back up a quick second to give a brief description of the “standard backyard” race format for anyone reading who may not be familiar. Basically, it is a race of attrition without a set distance. The race continues until only one runner remains. Hence, these races are also referred to as “last person standing” races. So how are runners eliminated? By not completing a 4.167 mile lap every hour on the hour. Every hour all runners start a lap and must finish before the end of the hour. If they finish early, they must wait until the start of the next hour to start their next lap. With that caveat, this race prevents any runner from building a lead. The cycle of on the hour lap starts continues indefinitely until all but one runner has opted to not continue running or has timed out. The last runner remaining must run one complete lap more than all other runners within the hour time limit before being named the winner.
Since this was my first time competing in the Backyard Individual World Championship, it felt much different than last year and felt like a pretty big deal to me. I had some really high hopes for my performance and my lowest goal in my set of cascading goals was to improve my PR of 62 yards for the course. Unfortunately, I failed to reach my lowest goal and my remaining goals only went up from there, far out of my reach.
Day 1: The first day on the trails felt good overall and actually went by pretty quickly. The first 11 hours on the trail felt relatively easy compared to how difficult I remembered the trail being from last year. I spent much of the day meeting and chatting with some of the best backyard runners from all over the world. The rest of the day was spent catching up with the American runners that I ran with as a part of Team USA last year. Some of them I had run with only a few months earlier at Capital Backyard Ultra, but others I had not seen since last year at Big’s. With all of the socializing and just refamiliarizing myself with the trail and my time check points, the first day of trail yards was over before I knew it. It seemed minor at the time, but I was having some intestinal issues and making more stops at the porta potties than I probably should have. I figured it was just nerves and would get better as the race progressed, but in hindsight it may have been more akin to the “pebble in the shoe” analogy where it seems like a minor inconvenience until it leads to a painful blister that really can’t be fixed.
Night 1: The first night on the road brought back many memories. The sky was clear and filled with stars. The temperature was comfortable for which I was very thankful as it was the extreme drop in temperature and strong winds that I credited with a heavy dose of the blame as to why I quit when I did last year. The road yards really felt like a continuation of the first day. As every runner’s pace changed a bit from trail to road, I found myself still meeting new runners throughout the night which helped pass the time and ward off sleepiness. I never felt too sleepy the first night and as the sun rose on the last road yard, I felt refreshed and excited to go back to the trails.
Still early on day 3, I think.
Day 2: My legs felt good to start the second day of trail running and I didn’t feel too sleep deprived for having run through most of the night. I was still feeling good at this point of the race. I think it was at some point during the second day that I tried to address the intestinal issues I was still having. I took some anti diarrhea medicine to help treat it. I also stopped taking the gels I had been eating hourly and cut off the coconut water I had been drinking between yards. The thought was that I may have been taking in too much sugar or the coconut water was acting as a laxative. I’ve used coconut water at plenty of other backyards and never had these issues, but I had brought a different brand for this race. Ultimately, I don’t know what the cause was, but we were trying to resolve the problem as quickly as possible which meant getting rid of the two readily apparent possible causes. As day two continued, fatigue began to set in and the overall difficulty of completing each yard seemed to be mounting with every yard. I continued grinding and looking forward to the switch back to the road even though I knew it would bring with it the challenge of a second night of sleep deprived running. For those last few day yards on the trail I couldn’t stop thinking about how the trail felt more difficult this year on the second day than it did last year and what an extreme change I had in my perception of difficulty in just 24 hours. My perception of the trail difficulty had made a full reversal: from much easier than I remembered to tougher than I remembered.
Night 2: It was during the second night that the thoughts of how I was not going to have the race I had envisioned began to materialize more completely, seem more real, and become much more difficult to suppress. I was feeling more sleepy than the first night but not getting much sleep in the few minutes I closed my eyes between each yard. I didn’t feel like I was working super hard, but still I was only coming in with about 7 to 8 minutes to spare. On top of it, I was still having some gastrointestinal issues, so much so that after one of the middle of the night yards I had to make a quick impromptu underwear change (please don’t ask for details, it was bad, but could have been far worse). The second night presented far more challenges than I expected going into this race. Thankfully, I was able to overcome them and survive to see another sunrise thanks in big part to the persistence of my crew and the other runners. My crew man, Marty, did all he could to keep me focused, fed,motivated, and on task even when my attitude in the crew area was pretty crappy. The other runners I ran with during the second night helped keep me motivated to continue pushing at a decent pace as well as keeping me engaged in some conversation to avoid falling asleep while running. The three runners that stand out for me that I ran with when I most needed someone to run with were Jivee Tolentino (who I chatted with for the first time during the second night), Thembinkosi Sojola, and Jason Bigonia. I can’t express how valuable it was to me to share those miles with them in the wee hours of the morning as I was desperately looking forward to the sunrise.
Morning of Day 3, when I was overdressed and still had my headlamp on.
Day 3: After the second night, my legs were feeling pretty shot and I was uncertain how they would react when we switched back to the trails. I had the same worry last year, fearing my legs would be dead when they hit the trail again and I would time out on the first trail yard of the third day. With that worry in my head again, I hit the half mile road out and back section at a relatively faster pace to bank some time before the remainder of the day course that is all single track trail with some sections that are a bit on the technical side. It surprised me again this year, just like last year, how good my legs felt getting back on the trail after the second night. Other than being overdressed for the weather (I had failed to change out of my long sleeve shirt and kick off my running pants that I had put on as temperatures got a bit lower during the second night) the first yard of day three on the trails was honestly one of my most enjoyable. As I ran that yard, I started to think that maybe things were starting to turn around for my race. Even though I had to make another emergency roadside bio-break (all the while one of the camera drones hovered above my head) on the last road yard, I thought maybe that was the last of my digestive issues. Maybe day three will finally be the smooth sailing yards that I had expected early in the race.
Post race interview.
The next few yards got a bit more challenging, but I was still completing them with 3-4 minutes to spare. That went on until yard 54. Early during that yard I got a bad feeling in my stomach. I thought I was going to vomit and my race was going to be over as I assumed I would likely time out after I emptied my stomach. Only a few moments later, I realized I wasn’t going to vomit but it was about to come out the other end. After I took care of business, my stomach felt better but I was unsure if I would complete the yard before I timed out. I knew I’d have to work for it so I immediately started pushing the pace. It was a struggle, but I made it in almost a full minute before the three minute whistle. Unfortunately, pushing the pace to make up that lost time took a toll on me physically and stressed me out. Which was basically the story for the remainder of my race. I’d go out easy to start the yard in an effort to try to recover from pushing hard during the second half of the previous yard. It felt like I was in a backyard death spiral for the last four yards of my race and I was panicking. It felt like my race was slipping away and there was no way to save it.
A post race chat with Laz and Sandra.
I had fallen at least a few minutes behind the pace necessary to complete my 57th yard before the halfway point. I’m still not sure how I fell so far off pace so early in that yard, but that’s where I found myself when I caught up with my fellow Team USA member, Levi Yoder. I think we both knew that we were in some trouble at that point, so we both worked together to pick up our pace and push one another. It felt like we pushed really hard for the last two miles of that yard; like red lining and going into a kick to cross the finish line. In reality, we probably barely broke a 10 minute mile if at all. Based on checkpoints we passed as we were hammering, I was estimating we’d complete our yard somewhere between the second and third whistles. We managed to cross the line about one second before the two minute whistle. I’m not sure about where Levi’s mind was at the time, but I was pretty certain my legs would be dead after that push. Levi and I left the corral at a shuffling pace for yard 58, but I think we were still laughing at the time at how ridiculously hard we pushed to complete that last yard. We walked the road out and back debating whether to even go back out on the trail. We agreed to force ourselves to run back through the starting corral on the way to the trailhead. We managed that, but when we got to the start of the trail we both stopped. We had a short discussion about how we would have to hammer the next three miles to complete the yard before the cut off which felt like an impossibility at the time. And so we both pulled the plug right there, turned away from the trail, and walked back to the starting corral.
First time sitting down to relax after the race.
The feeling of mixed emotions hit soon after as everyone in camp started clapping and cheering for us as we walked back. I was still in the midst of laughing at how the last yard ended when the reaction from everyone at camp suddenly reminded me that it was all over and my race was done. Relief, regret, joy, and disappointment all at once. Even now, nearly three weeks later, I still wonder what would have happened had we continued down the trail. Would some spark of life for a fight to survive and continue have ignited and powered my legs to complete one more yard? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I like to think it would have at least been a possibility. That’s often the attraction and aversion of the backyard format, in my experience. Each race leaves you questioning. Did I do enough? Could I have done more? Where did it go wrong? Where can I improve? When can I try again?
About half of 2022 Team USA - Jason Bigonia, Levi Yoder, Dan Yovichin, Rick Kwiatski, Scott Snell, Keith Van, Kevin McCabe, and Piotr Chadovich
Lesson Learned: I want to preface this lesson with a quote from a fellow runner at Big's this year and a member of last year's US Team, Dan Yovichin, - “We’re just ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” I think I got it right, or at least close to right. I recall him saying it last year, but this year it hit me a little differently and applies to the major mistake I made and what I learned from it. I made my big mistake before the race even started, before I left home for Bell Buckle, the seed for it probably germinated and began to take root during my training runs between Capital and Big's. What was my great folly? I failed to prepare myself for the fact that accomplishing extraordinary feats is extremely difficult.
A post race brew and chat with Jennifer Russo.
I went into this race overconfident. Then when it got hard, it was shocking. I had been telling myself while preparing that I could definitely make it to the third night and then it would start getting tough. All the while, diminishing the facts that running through two consecutive nights with minimal sleep is tough, covering 200 continuous miles on foot is challenging regardless of the pace, and maintaining normal bodily functions while adhering to the backyard race format time requirements can present additional challenges. So when things got tough and I started struggling more than I expected to during that third day, I wasn't prepared. I panicked. Which I believe made matters even worse, mentally and physically, as I felt like I had lost control. The feeling of panic was at least partially caused by my overconfidence and the unexpected shock of how much I was struggling earlier than I had planned. This concept of a misalignment of actual and expected demands in relation to our capabilities is a topic Steve Magness discusses at length in his book Do Hard Things. I read the book in part to prepare for Big's, so there was no excuse for me to make this mistake other than it is an easy trap to fall into. Magness explains how this blunder often plays out when a goal begins to feel impossible to achieve, stating that we’re more likely to “abandon our pursuit” because why try and continue to suffer if it will just end in failure anyway? Rather than me relaying the information, here’s a short quote from the book:
“When we are overconfident, we set ourselves up for failure. This isn’t idle conjecture: researchers have found this phenomenon in everything from competing in sports to deciding whether to stay in a relationship or quit your job. It’s easy to feel confident in the beginning but when we come face-to-face with the reality that we might fall short of our goal, we experience what psychologists call an action crisis.”
Since I read the book, I should have learned this lesson already, but sometimes it takes experience to learn a lesson. At least I hope that this experience has taught me this lesson well enough so that I remember it and do not repeat it at future backyard races.
Scott Snell 9 November 2023
Cheering on the remaining runners was almost as much fun as running a backyard.
I racked up 385 miles last month with the majority of them during the Big’s Backyard Individual World Championships. The end of the race was a little bittersweet for me as I had hoped to stay in the race quite a bit longer than I did. At the same time, my final yard was one of the most intense pushes to complete a yard that I have ever made at a backyard. It was all the more enjoyable as I was working with Levi Yoder, teammate from the 2022 USA Backyard Team, for the last two miles or so of the yard and we made it in with just over two minutes to spare. Overall, the experience was great with the highlights being meeting so many talented backyard runners from around the world and being able to run with the majority of the 2022 USA Backyard Team again! What a great group that I look forward to running with again! Which leads me to my 2024 plans, or lack thereof. As of now, nothing is certain but going back to Big's for a second team competition year is certainly on my list of possibilities. Especially if my 75 yard performance at Capital this year holds up and is good enough for an at large spot on the team. For the rest of the year, well I'm still trying to figure that out.
On a bit of whim that popped in my head while running I decided to create a poll to gauge the backyard community’s thoughts on how they expect and how they would hope to see the 2023 Individual World Championship play out this year at Big’s Backyard. I shared the link to the poll in multiple Facebook groups, on several 𝕏 posts, and on the r/backyardultra subreddit. The poll asked six questions:
Will a new course record be set this year at Big's Backyard?
Will a new world record be set this year at Big's Backyard?
How many yards will Big's Backyard go this year?
Who do you want to see win?
Who do you think will provide the assist?
Who do you think will be the last one standing?
This poll was strictly for fun, and it has been quite fun to check in as the responses are received. As promised, here is a summary of the results. The full data set of results are available on this Google Sheet.
*In the interest of full disclosure, I submitted a response which is included in the results. *
Will a new course record be set this year at Big's?
The overwhelming majority of respondents believe that a new course record will be set this year at Big’s. In fact, 90.5% of all responses were “Yes.” I didn’t look at the survey results on a regular schedule, but every time I did check the “Yes” responses hovered right around 90%.
Will a new world record be set this year at Big's?
Again, the majority of respondents are predicting a new world record will be set at Big’s. It is certainly a bit more balanced than the prediction for the course record with 56.2% responding “Yes” and 43.8% giving a “No” response. The results from this question fluctuated a bit more than the course record question. The first few times I checked results, it was pretty evenly split with close to 50/50 responses. It wasn’t until the last few days of the poll that the responses started leaning more heavily towards a “Yes” majority.
How many yards will Big's go this year?
This question received the most evenly distribute responses of all the questions that had more than two options. Nearly all respondents (96.3%) agree that Big’s will go over 80 yards. The most common response was 81-95 yards which was selected by 20.4% of respondents. The second most common response was 106-110 with 19.7%. I’m not ruling out that Big’s will go over 120 yards, but I was surprised by how many people believe it will. The “greater than 120” response was the third most common tied with 96-100, each selected by 14.6% of respondents.
Who do you want to see win?
Phil Gore, Jennifer Russo, and Harvey Lewis were the three stand out runners for this question receiving 16.1, 11.7, and 10.9% of the total responses. I assume that most runners who responded to this poll selected themselves for this question, I unabashedly admit I did and can understand why. What I don’t understand is why anyone would select “No winner” for this question, but there it is with 1.5% of the responses received.
Who do you think will provide the assist?
Selected by over 60% of respondents, four runners were picked as the strong favorites to provide the assist this year at Big’s: Phil Gore (16.8%), Harvey Lewis (15.3%), Merijn Geerts (14.6%), and Sam Harvey (13.9%).
Who do you think will be the last one standing?
I think it comes as no surprise to anyone that the most picked runner to be the last one standing is the current backyard ultra world record holder, Phil Gore, selected by 29.2% of all respondents. Also not surprisingly, former co-backyard ultra world record holder, Merijn Geerts was picked second most frequently. Geerts was selected by 16.1% of all respondents. A close third, selected by 13.1% of all respondents, was Sam Harvey who provided the assist to Phil Gore this year at Dead Cow Gully Backyard where the current world record was set. Former world record holder, current US record holder, and Big’s Backyard course record holder, Harvey Lewis, was selected by 9.5% of all respondents making him the fourth most selected runner to be the last one standing. A result that I found surprising was that Ivo Steyaert, former co-backyard ultra world record holder with Geerts, was only selected by 3.6% of respondents, barely ranking in the top 5 most frequently selected runners.
“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.” — Michelangelo
I was pretty apprehensive about going into my training plan this September. It is the last full month of training leading up to Big’s Backyard and I had just missed my mileage training goal for August. I wasn’t sure how I would rebound from that missed mark. I felt like if it didn’t go well, I wouldn’t have a chance at Big’s to accomplish anywhere near what I hope to accomplish. Thankfully, with some perseverance and determination, September’s training went better than I ever expected and I bounced right back to where I hoped to be by the end of September. Not only did I hit my mileage goal of averaging at least 11 miles per day, I exceeded it by quite a bit averaging 12.49 miles per day with a total of 374.7 miles! Last year I averaged 10.2 miles per day for September; with the increase in training mileage this year I fully expect to have an improved performance at Big’s. Not only do I have the increased training boosting my confidence as I conclude my training and begin to gradually taper, but I also have the advantage this year of having experienced running through a third night in the backyard format during Capital Backyard Ultra (CBU). Having overcome the mental hurdle that accompanies running through a third night, I feel far more prepared this year than I did last year going into Big’s. Additionally, having been there last year, having a respectable performance, and then bettering my PR with a win at CBU, I finally feel like I’ve overcome the imposter syndrome that I felt last year at Big’s. I finally feel like I’ve earned my spot there. That is a much better mental space to be in when taking on a challenge that you fully expect to push you to your limit, testing you physically and mentally until either you break or succeed. And that is how I intend for Big’s to conclude, with either success or failure.
