⏵ Course guide · Virginia backyard ultra
Capital calls itself a "dress rehearsal" for Big's Backyard Ultra, and it runs the same format just outside Washington DC: a 4.167 mile loop on the hour, every hour, until one runner is left standing. Horse trails by day, a paved bike path by night, and a 65-runner field that has already produced national and world records. I will walk you through the loop and the format first, then give you a pacing and fueling plan built for a race that never tells you how far you are going. Free calculators along the way to dial in your own numbers.
These facts come from the official Capital Backyard Ultra site, which itself lists two different dates for the 2027 edition (a banner date and a separate event-details date). The backyard format has no set distance, entry runs through a waitlist, and details can shift year to year, so confirm the current specifics with the official race before you plan anything.
Forget a finish line. At Capital the course is the same 4.167 mile loop run over and over, and which version of that loop you get, day or night, depends entirely on when your hour lands.
Every hour, on the bell, the field starts the 4.167 mile loop together. You have 60 minutes to finish it and be back in the starting corral for the next bell. Run it fast and you bank real rest, food, and foot care time; run it slow and you get almost nothing before turning around and going again. There are no intermediate cutoffs and no overall time limit, because there is no set distance, just the next yard, over and over.
From 7 AM to 7 PM, the course runs on horse trails at Meadowood: about 0.7 miles of flat open field to start, then a mix of dirt and crushed gravel bridle trails for the rest of the loop. Averaging across GPS watches, the day loop gains roughly 300 to 350 feet each time around, gentle by mountain-ultra standards but real when you are running it a dozen or more times.
From 7 PM to 7 AM, runners cross Gunston Rd onto a paved bike path for the night loop, rolling but mostly flat with about 75 feet of gain per lap. The surface change is a relief for tired feet after a day on the bridle trails, but running through at least one full night, often more, brings its own sleep-deprivation math regardless of how gentle the terrain gets.
Capital runs a large on-site pavilion that encloses the aid station and every runner's crew site, so nobody is more than a few seconds from the starting corral. A two-person chef team staffs the aid station and understands multi-day racing, and site selection for camping is assigned by prior backyard results, a nice touch for returning competitors.
Pacing a backyard ultra is not about a goal time, because there is no goal distance. It is about picking a loop pace you can hold for days and protecting your rest between yards.
With gentle terrain on both loops, the temptation is to run fast simply because the course allows it. Resist that. The target is a loop time that leaves you real rest every hour without ever feeling hard, since going faster does not get you a better finish, only a slightly longer sit. Use a grade-adjusted pace to translate that target into an honest effort on the day loop's rolling bridle trails, then hold something similar on the flatter night loop.
Plan in chunks: get through the first full day-to-night transition, then reassess. Use a race-time prediction off your real fitness to sanity-check what holding a given loop pace does to you across a full 24-hour cycle, and reality-check your endurance against the format with an equivalent-effort estimate from a recent long race before you commit to running through a second night.
⏵ Free tools to plan your yards
A backyard ultra can stretch into two, three, or more days, so fueling is not a race-day plan, it is a way of life for as long as you are out there. Capital's chef-staffed aid station and pavilion setup are built for exactly that.
Because the loops are short and the effort is easy relative to a normal ultra, your stomach handles real food better here than in a flat-out race, and you should use that. Aim for a steady stream of carbohydrate every hour, often 150 to 300 calories per yard depending on your size, and lean on the chef-supported aid station's real food alongside gels and drink mix. Eat on schedule from the first lap, long before you feel like you need it, since the real danger is a slow calorie drift you never climb back out of.
Keep sodium and fluid steady lap by lap rather than overdoing any single yard. Sleep is the wild card: some runners nap for a few minutes in the corral on fast laps, others push straight through. Whatever you choose, protect your feet obsessively at every stop, since foot damage, not fitness, ends most backyard efforts before the field naturally thins.
⏵ Build your fueling plan
Get a carb, sodium, fluid, and caffeine plan per hour built for your weight and a multi-day backyard effort with the free ultra fueling calculator. Browse the rest of the free running tools at the tools hub.
⏵ Train for it with Summit Line
Get a training plan built around YOUR fitness and the kind of relentless time-on-feet a backyard ultra demands. Summit Line reads your real training, builds the back-to-back long efforts and durability the format asks for, and rehearses your fueling so the yards become something you execute, not guess at.
It is a last-person-standing race. Every runner completes a 4.167 mile loop, and a new loop starts precisely on the hour, every hour. Finish fast and you bank rest before the next bell; finish slow and you get almost nothing before turning around and going again. There is no set distance and no finish line: the race ends when one runner completes a yard that nobody else finishes, and that runner then runs one final loop alone to make it official. Capital describes itself as a "dress rehearsal" for Big's Backyard Ultra, and much of its staff has direct Big's experience.
From 7 AM to 7 PM, runners cover the day loop on horse trails at Meadowood: roughly 0.7 miles of flat open field, then a mix of dirt and crushed gravel bridle trails, gaining about 300 to 350 feet per loop. From 7 PM to 7 AM, the course switches to a paved bike path on the other side of Gunston Rd, rolling but mostly flat, with about 75 feet of gain per loop. That switch means your legs face a genuinely different loop depending on when your hour lands, and a full day-to-night cycle (and often more) is part of nearly every runner's race.
The terrain itself is moderate, rolling horse trails by day and a mostly flat paved path by night, nothing like a mountain course. The difficulty is entirely the format: running roughly 4 miles over and over, every single hour, with sleep reduced to whatever fits in the leftover minutes after a fast loop. Capital has already produced real results at the sharp end, including a Lithuanian national record of 64 yards and a 75-79 age-group world record in 2026, which tells you how deep a well-prepared field can push here.
The backyard format boils down to three things: be in the starting corral when the bell rings, start with the bell, and complete the loop within the hour. During an active yard, runners cannot leave the course except for restroom use, cannot receive personal aid, cannot use pacers, and cannot use trekking poles or other artificial aids. All aid, crew support, and gear changes happen between yards, never during one. Crews and spectators must stay off the active course entirely, since even innocent contact can trigger a disqualification.
Registration works through a waitlist on Ultrasignup, opening June 1, 2026, with invitations issued on a rolling basis as the 65-runner field allows. Automatic entry goes to runners who have completed a 100-mile race and to previous Capital participants; beginning December 1, 2026, 50-mile finishers may also receive invitations if spots remain. The $225 all-inclusive entry covers a 12x12 crew and tent space, Friday night camping, chef-supported aid and race food, and official race gear.
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<a href="https://runsummitline.com/guides/capital-backyard-ultra">The Capital Backyard Ultra course guide</a><iframe src="https://runsummitline.com/embed/race/capital-backyard-ultra" style="width:100%;max-width:420px;height:180px;border:0;" loading="lazy" title="Capital Backyard Ultra course guide by Summit Line"></iframe>This guide is independent and for planning only. The format, date, course, and entry rules come from public sources and can change year to year, so confirm the current specifics with the official race before you register or run. The fueling and pacing advice is general and not medical advice.
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