⏵ Course guide · Long Island backyard ultra
The Smithtown Running Club runs one of Long Island's few backyard ultras at Blydenburgh County Park in Hauppauge: a 4.167 mile loop on the hour, every hour, switching between a wooded Day Loop and a road-based Night Loop, until one runner completes a loop nobody else can match. I will walk you through the format and the rules first, then give you a pacing and fueling plan built for a race that never tells you how far you are going, plus free calculators to dial in your own numbers.
These facts come from the official RunSignup event page. The backyard format has no set distance or finish time, and rules or start details can shift year to year, so confirm the current specifics with the official race before you plan anything.
Like every backyard ultra, the course is a fixed 4.167 mile loop run over and over, and the real contest is who can keep doing that the longest, not who covers it fastest.
Everyone starts the 4.167 mile loop together at the bell, and you have 60 minutes to finish it and be back in the corral for the next one. Finish early and you bank the leftover minutes to eat, change, and deal with your feet. Finish with seconds to spare and you get almost nothing before turning around and going again. Twenty-four of these hourly loops adds up to 100 miles in a day, and a strong field can push well past that.
The race runs on a wooded "Day Loop" through Blydenburgh County Park from the 8 AM start until 5 PM, then switches to a "Night Loop," an out-and-back on roads, from 5 PM until 8 AM the next morning. If runners are still going at 8 AM, it flips back to the Day Loop until 5 PM, and back to the Night Loop again if the race runs into a second night. Required safety gear, headlamp with spare batteries, reflective vest, and a flashing or strobe light, is mandatory from 4 PM to 8 AM and gets checked at sign-in, so treat the transition hours around dusk and dawn as their own checkpoints to prepare for.
Once your loop starts you cannot leave the course except to use the bathroom, no personal aid is allowed mid-loop, and no artificial aids of any kind, including trekking poles, are permitted. You must start at the bell with no late starts, and you must be back in the corral, ready to go, before the next bell or you are recorded as a DNF, no exceptions. Because a backyard ultra only has one true finisher, every other participant, including the runner who comes agonizingly close, "the Assist," gets a DNF, with a souvenir magnet and milestone stickers to show how far you actually got.
There is no goal distance to pace toward, so the real skill is picking a loop effort you can repeat for hours without ever feeling hard, and protecting every spare minute of rest.
Aim for a loop time that leaves you real rest every hour without ever pushing into a hard effort, often somewhere around 45 to 55 minutes for the 4.167 mile loop early on, which banks 5 to 15 minutes of corral time. A grade-adjusted pace target helps translate that into an actual effort level on the park terrain, since even gentle rolling ground eats more time than it looks like it should when you are running it dozens of times.
The road-based Night Loop from 5 PM to 8 AM is simpler footing than the Day Loop but comes with its own fatigue: darkness, cold, and the accumulated hours already on your legs. Plan a slightly more conservative pace once the Night Loop starts, and use a race-time prediction off your real fitness to sanity-check what holding a given loop pace across a full day and night actually costs you before you commit to it.
⏵ Free tools to plan your yards
A backyard ultra can run well past a single day, so fueling becomes a rhythm rather than a race-day plan, and the corral doubles as your kitchen and your rest stop.
Because the effort on each loop stays easy by design, your stomach can handle real food far better here than in a flat-out race. Use the common aid station at the start/finish, stocked with the usual ultra fare, to build a steady rotation of carbohydrate and real food rather than waiting until you feel low. December in Hauppauge means cold hours are part of the plan too, so keep warm layers and dry socks staged in your corral setup for a quick change between loops.
The lows in a backyard ultra hit hardest in the overnight Night Loop hours and again in any second-day slump. Do not make a quit decision while you are in a low: get back to the corral, eat something warm, deal with your feet, and commit to just one more loop. The milestones, Beyond a Half Marathon, Beyond a Marathon, Chasing the Sun, Fifty, After Midnight, 24 Hours, give you real checkpoints to aim for along the way instead of staring at an open-ended unknown.
⏵ Build your fueling plan
Get a carb, sodium, fluid, and caffeine plan per hour built for your weight and a cold, multi-hour Long Island 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 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 follows the standard backyard ultra format: every runner has to complete a 4.167 mile loop, and a new loop starts on the hour, every hour, at Blydenburgh County Park in Hauppauge, New York. Finish inside the hour and the leftover minutes are yours to eat, change, or rest before the next one starts. Miss the hour, or are not in the start corral when the bell rings, and you are done. There is no set distance and no finish line, just an open-ended race that continues until only one runner can complete a loop that nobody else finishes.
The race runs on the "Day Loop" from the 8 AM start until 5 PM, then switches to the "Night Loop," an out-and-back on roads, from 5 PM until 8 AM the next morning. If runners are still going at 8 AM, the race switches back to the Day Loop until 5 PM that evening, and back to the Night Loop again if it runs past a second sunset. Required safety gear, a headlamp with spare batteries, a reflective vest, and a flashing or strobe light, is mandatory from 4 PM to 8 AM and gets checked at check-in.
The core rules match the standard backyard format: everyone must start at the bell, with no late starts allowed. Once on course, you cannot leave except to use the bathroom, and no non-competitors, including eliminated runners and pacers, are allowed on the loop. No personal aid is permitted during a loop, and no artificial aids are allowed either, including trekking poles. You must stay to the right on course to leave room for faster runners passing. Finish a loop within the hour, be back in the corral for the next bell, or you are recorded as a DNF, with no exceptions, including for being in the bathroom.
The race tracks named milestones to give participants goals beyond simply outlasting everyone else: Beyond a Half Marathon at 4 laps, Beyond a Marathon at 7 laps, Chasing the Sun at 9 laps (running from 8 AM to 5 PM), Fifty at 12 laps (50 miles), After Midnight at 17 laps, and 24 Hours at 24 laps (100 miles). Each milestone earns a sticker for your DNF magnet souvenir, since every participant except the outright winner receives a DNF at a backyard ultra by design.
It is a standalone, low-commitment way to sample the format: a single 4.167 mile lap of the actual course, held the morning after the main event, Sunday, December 13, from 9:30 to 10:30 AM. It is aimed at runners who are curious about backyard ultras but not ready to commit to the full hourly format, a chance to run the loop, spectate the main event, and decide if you want to enter the real thing the following year.
There must be at least two runners starting to begin the next hour's loop. The winner is the last runner to complete a loop that no one else finishes; everyone else on the course that hour is recorded as a DNF. If the last two runners both fail to complete one more loop than the other, for example both drop at the same hour, there are no finishers at all that year. It is a format where second place and last place are recorded the same way, and only one name goes in the finisher column.
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<a href="https://runsummitline.com/guides/src-backyard-ultra">The SRC Presents: A Backyard Ultra course guide</a><iframe src="https://runsummitline.com/embed/race/src-backyard-ultra" style="width:100%;max-width:420px;height:180px;border:0;" loading="lazy" title="SRC Presents: A Backyard Ultra course guide by Summit Line"></iframe>This guide is independent and for planning only. The format, date, start time, and 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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