August 2021
A few weeks ago I ran Birdy’s Backyard Ultra ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/1426023810880131 , ) the sister event to Herdy’s Frontyard Ultra ( https://herdysfrontyard.com.au/ ) where I ran 47 laps for an Australian record. I went into the event with no clear plan really , just wanted to have fun with my mates and boy did it deliver.! The event is just outside Darken in Western Australia, a 3-4 hour drive from Perth, around Lake Towerrining. The weeks before had been wet and windy but for the weekend we were blessed with perfect conditions, how does Shaun Kaesler , the Ultra Series WA owner, ( https://ultraserieswa.com.au/ ) do it ! (For background on the Backyard Ultra movement check out this website https://backyardultra.com/ )
The team arrived Thursday and being a boys weekend away we were straight onto the nearest pub which, after consulting google, we found to be in Darken, a mere 25 kilometers away and they served pizza, perfect! If you ever find yourself driving through Darken I recommend you keep driving, I’ll leave it at that. The boys taking on Birdy’s this year consisted of Rob, Adam, Bart’s , Mark and Dav, all in the photos below bar Bart’s who had to leave work later and went straight to the camp grounds.
We awoke Friday to perfect conditions, no wind, not too cold and with the promise of warmer conditions to come. It was going to be a great weekend. Last year started perfect but got very windy on Saturday (Jon so nearly lost his tent!, so funny!) and was incredibly cold on Friday night. This weekend would be better, weather wise but unfortunately not under foot as we were about to find out. Due to flooding the course had to be changed from last year and this would come back and bite us later in the day and over the event. Shaun had to take out a good one kilometre of quality running trail and replaced it with a swamp that got worse every lap, fun to run but the terrain took it out of your legs an also ate away at your rest time, lap on lap. More on this later.
So the lads awoke and started taking selfies, what else is there to do before a last man standing event ? That’s the thing with these events because it really is more social than mental at the start, everybody is full of the joys of spring, no real pressure. This does change as the race wears on but for the moment enjoy the start and the first few laps, they are all about just enjoying running around laps with like minded runners having a blast. As you can see from the images below there ain’t no suffering going down or the nervous energy you feel before a marathon or normal ultra, just lots of happy smiling runners. We even stopped for a selfie on the first lap, where else can you do that when racing , priceless. Ultimately of course we had to start to put in the hard yards given the harder course, making rest time limited.
So what was the goal going into Birdy’s ? At Herdy’s I’d managed 47 laps but that was in March when I was fitter than a butchers dog due to a three month window of serious Delirious training. ( https://deliriouswest200miler.com.au/ ) Due to the cancellation of the 200 miler I used all my fitness racing Herdy’s. Since then I had ran a 24 hour race ( 5 weeks after Herdy’s) and a 100km trail race (2 weeks the 24 hour race) after which had emptied the batteries. Too many races and not enough recovery or training had left me depleted, so to speak. I knew I wasn’t fit enough for another top 2 finish at Birdy’s but was hoping to beat my 24 hours I ran last year. (Truth be told I could have gone on last year but no1 Wife insisted I came home Saturday for baby sitting duties with my kids!) All the boys had their own goals and for the most part they achieved them or there about. (all bar Bart’s but we’ll leave that to another day.)
As with all backyard ultras the first few laps are ridiculously easy , you can find yourself finishing in 35 minutes and then sitting around for 25 minutes before returning to the start line. Birdy’s though was harder this year. Due to flooding a good part of the old course was about a foot underwater, this meant a course change which involved taking out a good one kilometre of good runable trail and replacing it with swamp trails. There was also a 500m section of wet meadow and mud and I mean wet meadow and mud ! This of course got worse with 200 runners trampling through it on the hour, every hour. Luckily I had packed four changes of trail shoes and 8-10 pair of socks, which I would need.
Another obstacle was the bridge which had grown from the previous year as the gap had become larger due to the flooding issues. We were told by Shaun only three people at a time , we all obviously ignored this or changed the scope to ‘three people at a time on any one part of the bridge’, which meant a free for all.!!!
Images below show the bridge in all’s it glory as well as some of the running terrain which truth be told look better than it actually was. My mate Ben , the lead runner in the image top right below, loved the mud and considers himself a ‘trail pig‘ , I’m a ‘concrete show pony’ and tip toed around like a girl. (I’m not sure I can say that these days but you get the picture, sorry girls !)
Back to the race. The first 8 laps from 10am to dusk at 6pm were just plain fun albeit we all noticed the time resting was significantly less than the previous year due to the course change and the swamp ! Once the head torches went on the real race begins, surviving the night and the temperatures that come with it. I’ve always said the hardest part of any last man standing event is getting through the night and ultimately the 2am to dawn period, this is where your body is screaming for sleep and turns up fatigue to try and persuade you to stop. This year it was even harder as it seemed you would sit down and then instantly hear the song for the 5 minute warning, no time to catch your thoughts or get enough food and drink inside you. Over the course of the evening this became a real mental challenge as well as a physical one with the freezing conditions. All the boys left me before dawn but each of them had achieved their goal or close enough to justify the adventure. Well done lads.
Ultimately if you can get through the night as soon as dawn hits you’re good for another 4-6 hours minimum. As you can see from the images above it’s still cold but the temperature soon started to warm up after we ran 24 laps and hit the 100 miles. Top right in the image above is the 100 mile runners, a few more than last year but given the extra starters not as many as we thought. I’m putting this down to the harder course and thus less time to prepare for the next lap, and it was cold !
So why are backyard ultra’s so much fun, easy really it’s about restarting the race on the hour every hour so you are continually meeting your friends and running with them , rather than just a quick meet and greet on the start line and then many hours later a high five at the end. An added bonus is you aren’t pushing yourself in the red zone continually so you also have some fuel in the tank which makes the whole process more enjoyable. How many runners smile, swap jokes, take selfies and banter while competing ? Very few, normally you are continually watching the clock and in the zone so to speak, no time for high jinks or selfies. A backyard ultra , to start with , is just the best time to spend with your mates. It really is that simple. Of course when you start to hit the big numbers later in the event and your friends start to drop off it becomes more of a personal journey but the only person you then compete with is yourself. Unless you win you will DNF but it is you who decides when that will be, no one else. The race itself is thus two fold, initially a long fun run with your mates before the real journey begins and you find your limits, if you so choose. I do go on about these events but with over twenty years competing in events of all distances nothing comes close to these, I just wish they were around my whole career !
Another concept Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell has is the Race For the Ages which also appeals. In this race you have as many hours to run as your age and you work backwards from the finish. So for me Id have 54 hours to run and thus would start 54 hours before the end, a 40 year old runner would start 14 hours after me again finishing 40 hours later. This handicap system makes the race interesting for all and is normally won by fit 60+ year old runners because not how quicker a 40 year old may be the extra 20 hours is too much to overcome. (Here’s a good post about a 74 year old winner in the states https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a28926593/a-race-for-the-ages-bob-becker/ )
Right, back to the race. The night running was difficult and cold with the head torches not helping on the uneven ground and swamp areas where you had to work hard to keep your footing and avoid diving headfirst into the surrounding water. This compounded the problem with rest between laps as your lap times blew out because if you maintained your daylight pace you’d ‘come a ‘cropper’. The 11 hours of darkness, combined with the various milestone during the evening, made the drop our rate accelerate and by daylight we were down to less than 20 runners from the starting 200. I encouraged as many runners a possible with promises of a different race when the sun pokes its head about the horizon but the darkness tests your resolve and after 3am your body is screaming for sleep and rest. Maybe sitting down in the early morning is counter productive because it is so easy to stay sitting when you hear the call to the start. The cold didn’t help of course and made the initial kilometre a challenge albeit with my thermal , running jacket and full length skins I soon warmed up and the second half of the loop was never a problem.
Hitting 24 hours is a big deal at a backyard ultra event, it’s 100 miles , a miler as we call them. Last year I saved my best laps for the laps 20 to 24 as my goal was 24 hours before returning home to babysit my many daughters. My lap times were low thirty minutes and I felt fresh as a daisy as I finished lap 24 second behind Michael Hooker. This year it was a different story and lap 24 was a slog as I stumbled in near the back of the field close to 50 minutes. The image below shows me and Justin finishing together , in perfect simentary, last year and finishing alone this year at the back of the pack, albeit still smiling. As I have mentioned previously I’m putting this down to the harder course sapping my legs and also a fitness base that has never fully recovered from some serious beatings taken earlier in the year. Whatever the reason it was a relief to hit 24 hours knowing I was on course for a course PB at a minimum, lap on lap.
I struggled on from lap 24 and managed to run four more laps before pulling the pin at the start of lap 29 with my mate Charles. We were both just scarping in by this time and although we didn’t time out this was inevitable and with Delirious West in 7 weeks I decided it was time to save the legs for the bigger picture. Truth be told my quads were destroyed, too much tip toeing around the swamp eventually this came back to bite me. Maybe a better nutrition or hydration strategy would have helped, actually any strategy would have helped. Towards the end of the race I certainly wasn’t eating and drinking enough between laps , in the end this will come back and kick you in the balls. (so to speak) .
So what is the take away from Birdies Backyard Ultra ? Overall I’d say I’d give myself a B+. I managed to run further than last year but it was much, much harder. I’m putting this down to the harder course and less recovery time, together with the quads destroying swamp and wet sections of the course. Throughout the event I struggled with fitness and towards the end really worked very hard to finish pre-50 minutes or worse. Could I have ran further ? That’s a tough question that every runner will always ask themselves after running a last man standing event. Most runners probably think they could have and unless you were carried over the line you probably could have, or collapsed over the line similar to Phil in 2019, he left it all and more besides on the course. It is always easy sitting at your computer, weeks later, writing a post to believe you could have gone so much further but really the decision is made on the day and you need to live with that decision. I’m happy enough with a top 10 finish and 28 laps, I came away with so many fond memories and had a good time on the boys weekend away, the actual race was secondary. Looking forward I have learned more valuable lessons will I will take to Herdy’s Front yard Ultra ( https://herdysfrontyard.com.au/ ) next year where I search for that elusive one lap I need, albeit I need to run 47 laps to get to that lap!
Finally a massive congratulations to Phil Gore and Michael Hooker who ran 51/50 laps and set a new Australian Record in the process. These guys had 12 hours on the rest of the field and were only beaten when Plantar Fasciitis got the better of Michael and he had to pull the pin. Until then we were predicting a massive result. Both these boys will compete on the World Stage in the next couple of years , remember their names, legends in the waiting. (as well as Team Gore of course!)
..and one more thankyou to the race director(s), volunteers and everybody who did their bit to make this event so special. The Ultra Series WA is one special bunch of runners, every one of them a true champion. ( https://ultraserieswa.com.au/ ) and I couldn’t finish with out a huge thankyou to my main man Gazza, the most upbeat, attentive crew a runner could ever need, perfect in most ways bar making tea, he really, really sucks at making tea !! Love you big fella. ! ..and one final shout out to the boys and all my friends who made the weekend so very, very special. These weekends are all about remembering what’s it’s like to be 18 years old again, without the drinking but with as much laughing and high jinks, actually probably more laughing and high jinks !! We’re like 18 year old kids with money, dangerous ! I am counting the days until Birdy’s 2022….. we may even give the Darken tavern another chance. (I hope they don’t read this ?)
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The Choo Choo run has been going for around 10 years, a Simon Coates idea, but its been more of an underground run until last year when Irwin Swinny put out the word and the runners came, in droves. This year was no different and what a turn out. When we arrived at North Dandelup train station it looked like a car park at a mall in Christmas, cars everywhere. I have no idea what the locals thought, I reckon we doubled the population of Dandelup that morning ! (Funnily enough I have no idea why the station is called North Dandelup, trust me there’s no South, West or East Dandalup, it really is a one horse town and probably a pit pony at that !)
The image above is not the passenger train returning to Perth but an commercial train, probably mining, with about 100 carriages, estimated ! It was starting to get light before the last carriage passed us. In Australia we do big trains ! Great selfie by Mark to capture the image by the way.
This year we aired on side of caution and decided we were all nowhere near our fitness levels of last year so left just past 7am , giving us just over 3 hours for the 33k trail run. In our defence it had been raining for like weeks and the trail was going to be soft underfoot. No record breaking times this year and this seemed to be the case for all runners, it wasn’t a case of racing a train more like running between two train stations comfortably. This will need to be addressed next year with fines for arriving too early at Serpentine, maybe arriving 10 minutes or more before the train will attract some form of forfeit !
We were the last to leave and had a good group consisting of myself, Mark, Cedric, Tom, Mitch and ultra Jon. (I say ultra Jon as this is the bigger, and happier, version of marathon Jon, who is lighter and always grumpy!) The group set off at a good pace and this was to continue for the whole journey.
The start of the journey is a 6-7k uphill climb as you move from the bottom of the scarp to the top. This is mainly on road and being in the country you will be taking your live in your hands as country drivers make Lewis Hamilton look pedestrian. I suspect most of them are returning home from a ‘quiet night‘ , which probably involves drinking their own body weight in spirits ! You need to be very wary and always have an exit plan which would normally be a quick dive into the nearest field ! I was feeling brave so took a photo as the sun rose over the scarp, as always the photo never does the scene justice.
We continued on at a good pace until we had the compulsory photo at around 26k, you’ll see the same shot in all my posts on the Choo Choo runs, we are stickler’s for tradition. (or just boring as my many Daughters would say?) Funny story at this point, in the first few years of the Choo Choo Simon Coates use to leave water here but one year we turned up and it had been stolen ! What are the odds, on a Sunday morning, someone driving by and spotting bottles of water hidden in the undergrowth and then taking them ? ! Only in the country…
After the compulsory water stop (if there is any water?) it’s probably the best running part of the route before the drop off the scarp which is worth the attendance fee alone. If you have anything left in the legs that drop into Serpentine is a thing of natural beauty. By the time I arrived at the top of the hill I was goosed so stumbled down at just over 4min/k pace, the guys had left me in their wake and were recording low 3min/k’s , at the end of a three hour run ! This more than makes up for the morning climb up the scarp three hours earlier risking life and limb with the Sunday Formula One drivers !
After a slightly hair raising run from the bottom of the scarp to Serpentine via the local main road it was time to regroup for the compulsory Serpentine General Store photo before ambling to the train station. As you can see a lot of very happy runners, refueled on chocolate milk, crisps and just about anything with carbs or sugar. Albeit we had to leave some space for the post tukka get together at North Dandalup Station, it’s tradition.
Next to the train station where we had another traditional photo before boarding the 10:21 train to North Dandalup, late as always by about 10 minutes. Next year I may factor in this 10 minute buffer and really make a big effort at leaving very, very late, albeit I’ll probably drop a car at the station in case I miss the train as there is no way I’m missing the post run food smorgasbord.! It’s basically the previous shot but at a train station rather than outside a deli.
Finally the best photo of the day by a country mile, Transperth had reserved one of the two carriages for out 9-10 minute journey from Serpentine to North Dandalup, how good was that !!! Gold , you couldn’t make that up !! It was the coolest 10 or so minutes of the whole day, imagine that you’re own train carriage with your friend , priceless ! I reckon next year we could be in trouble as I’m not sure they’ll put on another carriage for us runners but you never know unless you join up and see for yourselves. Keep an eye out on facebook and an ear to the ground and be part of the coolest free trail run globally…Choo Choo 2022 ! All aboard….
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