Month: May 2026

• Saturday – May 2, 2026
• Texas Outlaw Outlast – One 5K per hour for six hours ~18.6 miles
• Results – TBA (there were some issues with timing early on)
• Total Time – 2:50:44

This race popped up on my Facebook feed last year, most likely due to Facebook knowing absolutely everything about my personal life, whether I like that or not, but it seemed interesting to me, so I signed up, and my son Ben decided to join in the fun.

I really like the backyard ultra-type format, where you run 4.16 miles every hour and see how far you can go.  It’s not about how fast, just how far, and I wondered what it would be like if there was a speed element added to it.  I also often wondered about my pacing in backyard ultra races, particularly whether I might be better off running a little faster than my typical 52 minutes per loop.  This race would provide some answers to those questions.

The Outlast format is one 5K per hour, repeated for six hours.  The runner with the fastest cumulative time is the winner.  There were no age groups for this race, and it bothered me a little knowing that my best 5K effort at 62 years of age would be no match for the North Central College runner winner of this race, who was clicking off 17-minute 5Ks, while doing cool-down jogs in between the loops.  Still, I chose to push myself on each of the six 5K segments and see where I would stand against the rest of the runners.

This was really a race of two halves for me.  The first three loops were pretty good.  My splits were consistent, averaging 8:44 pace per mile.  It was the fourth loop that I could feel some fatigue and a sort of malaise coming on.  After completing that fourth 5K in 29 minutes, I spent some time in the porta-potty with stomach issues.  I got back to the tent and really didn’t feel the best.  I started the fifth loop, doubling up with another long-sleeve top on, and put my gloves back on.  By the time I got about 3/4 mile into it, I was in trouble – I had an urgent bathroom need, but had no place to go.  I stopped running and walked off the course to possibly squat behind a tree, but everyone in the race coming along would have been witnesses to some extremely embarrassing stuff for me.  I opted to not crap in the open in front of everyone, and thought about calling it a day and heading back to the start and drop out of the race.  But I chose to just keep walking, and eventually the need to go subsided.  I somehow made it back to finish that loop, and immediately head to the porta-potty.  A few minutes in there made a difference for me, and I felt 100% better after.  The sixth and final loop of the race went really well, and I pushed myself to a good finish.

Here are my splits:

1. 26:19 – 8:37 pace / I started a little too strong and overheated a little
2. 27:07 – 8:54 pace / Held back a little at the start, but a much better lap
3. 26:10 – 8:35 pace / My best split of the day
4. 29:00 – 9:35 pace / Trouble started to brew
5. 34:22 – 11:22 pace / Almost crapped my pants, decided to walk
6. 28:08 – 9:21 pace / Feeling good again, finished with a strong lap

Overall, I enjoyed the race.  My biggest complaint about the race was the conga line that quickly formed in the opening half-mile. The race was run on a combination of grass, dirt, and mud on mostly single-track, which meant that early on, we were in a conga line for at least 1.5 miles, and getting stuck behind a slower runner was annoying at times.  The third mile was much more open and wide, so if the race was run in the opposite direction, it would have given the field more room to run and spread out before getting to the single-track portion, and possibly eliminating the conga line. 

The race had some issues with timing in the first couple of laps, missing some results for the top ten finishers on those laps.  I guess they will figure it out and let us know, but I was listed as being 35th overall out of around 200 runners in the race.  Not a bad result, but I might move down when the official results come out.

The race did give me some answers to the questions I had at the top of this post.  First, without an age group competition, the need to hammer every lap didn’t really matter unless one was vying for the top spot, or you were interested in seeing how fast your splits could be overall.  I can definitely say that I wouldn’t feel so dang sore today if I had just run each loop at a casual pace.  Which leads to the second question – I would not last very long running a backyard ultra at a fast pace for each yard/loop.  It would end my day very early if I ran a backyarder with the same pace plan I did today’s race.  So, I think I will continue running and walking through my backyard races.

So there you have it, the first race of 2026 is in the books for me.  Back to half-Ironman training for Ironman Rockford 70.3 coming up in June.