Race Director Diaries | 004 | The District BYU

Cowboys, chaos and 33 yards in the Lakes

We had been looking forward to this one for a long time. The country theme, the location, a whole weekend together in the Lakes. On paper, it had everything.

What we hadn’t told many people was how close we had come to having nowhere to hold it.

Around two months before race day, our original venue, about five miles away, cancelled on us. We were told they had received a better offer for a hunt during hunting season. Cue a fairly stressful period behind the scenes.

Then we found Into the Woods.

Lucy and Grant welcomed us in, and somehow a situation that had caused us a lot of worry landed us somewhere even better. A stage for Friday night’s music, huts, fire pits, space for food vendors, camping and parking, and a 4.167-mile loop through an absolutely beautiful setting. It felt made for what we wanted to create.

The District had found its home. And yes, we’ll be back there in 2027.

We arrived early on Friday to get everything ready. We were already a man down, with Logan, my fellow HSR co-founder, unable to join us because of work. That’s the reality behind all this: we have full-time jobs, and Heart & Soul Racing is our passion project. We fit it around everything else, usually with slightly less sleep than is sensible.

The course was marked, Starlink was up, and the site was coming together. For a little while, everything was going suspiciously well.

Athletes and crews started arriving from around 2pm to claim the best camping spots, and by the evening the place had properly come alive. Josie provided the country music, the bar was open, the fires were going and everyone was settling in.

That Friday evening was one of my favourite parts of the whole weekend. Often, before a race, people disappear into their own gazebos to organise kit and quietly question their life choices. Here, we had somewhere to come together. People were chatting, meeting new friends and talking about what they hoped to achieve the next morning.

It already felt like a community before anyone had run a yard.

We probably stayed up enjoying it a bit longer than we should have. Then the weather made sure we weren’t getting much sleep anyway.

Before Friday night, the course had been firm, runnable and in really good condition. Then came the downpour.

Gazebos took a battering, several didn’t survive, and we were out helping people as the weather rolled through. By morning, parts of the route were flooded. Just what you want a few hours before your first race at a new venue.

We made the final adjustments and switched to our B course. If you didn’t notice much of that happening, we’ll take it as a compliment. There was plenty going on behind the scenes, but by the briefing we were ready.

At 10am on Saturday, The District Backyard Ultra began.

After all that rain, Saturday gave us glorious sunshine. The site looked incredible, the country music was playing and the atmosphere was relaxed. It had a different feel from LSD, but that same sense of everyone wanting everyone else to do well.

There were runners hoping to go further than they ever had before, runners with a particular milestone in mind, and runners who were clearly prepared to settle in for a very long weekend.

Danielle was back after taking the assist at LSD, where injury had ended her race and Ryan had taken the win. We knew what she was capable of. Looking around the field, though, she certainly wasn’t going to have an easy time of it.

For the first ten hours, we still had a strong number of runners heading out. Every hour brought another start, another return and another chance for someone to realise they could manage one more.

Lucy, our very own host, had told me she would be delighted with four or five yards. That was about her absolute maximum, apparently.

She did ten.

She’ll tell you she’s “not even a runner”, she’s a triathlete. I’m not sure that excuse works after ten yards, Lucy. We’ve already put the challenge out there for next year: 24.

Amy Morley completed an incredible 20 yards at her first backyard ultra. What a way to discover the format.

Then there was Jack, who got the jeans out again. We put on Pink Pony Club, he got into the spirit of things, and somehow he produced the fastest lap of the entire event: 34 minutes. In jeans. After a can of Guinness and a chicken chow mein.

I don’t know what page of the training manual that’s on, but apparently we’ve all missed it.

Of course, there were difficult moments too.

Louise took a wrong turn on her sixth lap and came back understandably upset. It was heartbreaking to see how much it meant to her. But what she did afterwards says everything about this community.

She stayed for the rest of the event. She cheered Danielle and the other remaining runners, supported people right through to the finish, and even helped us pack away.

Louise, a massive thank you. Your own race had finished, but you still gave so much to everyone else’s.

Sam had arrived with big ambitions and a knee problem after a recent 100-mile training run. In the end, it was his hip that really troubled him, and seeing him struggle to walk was tough. He was determined to make it back under his own steam and ring that bell.

You could see how much he had put into it, and how much finishing his race on his own terms mattered to him.

As people finished, so many stayed to support those still running. The saunas and ice baths were there for recovery, people gathered around camp, and the cheering carried on. Finishing your own race didn’t mean your weekend was over.

Then darkness arrived.

Into the Woods really does get dark. Look up and you have the stars, the Milky Way and this beautiful sky above you. Look down and you still have to negotiate the trail with tired legs and a headtorch.

The course became a different challenge at night. Those tricky sections needed more concentration, and we saw runners finishing around the 12-yard mark and through milestones around yards 15 and 17. Some had reached exactly what they came for. Others were having to let go of the hope of one more.

And yes, we need to talk about the hill.

There were 325 feet of elevation per yard, with the main climb concentrated in one section. On the first lap, that’s a hill. After enough repetitions, especially with the ground softened by rain, it starts to feel quite personal.

Some people hated it. Others liked having a clear place to walk. We’ll look at whether we can improve that section for next year, but it certainly gave everyone something to talk about.

By Sunday, the race was becoming harder and harder to call.

Marty Fox was incredible. I went into his tent around yard 26 and thought he looked remarkably fresh. He showed me pictures of his daughters and talked about the motivation they gave him. Those little conversations are a privilege. You get a glimpse of what’s keeping someone moving long after a normal night’s sleep has come and gone.

Unfortunately, he had been struggling to keep food and fluids down for hours. After completing 27 yards, he headed out on yard 28 but turned back after just a few metres. He had given everything he could.

Eventually, it came down to Danielle and Darren Jones.

Even watching them return, you couldn’t call it. Danielle would come in first, then Darren, then Danielle again. If you were following the livestream, you’ll know how tense it became. From where we were standing, there was no obvious winner.

Late in the race, Danielle was starting to look tired. Then came a Red Bull and, a yard or so later, a shout that instantly lifted the whole camp:

“I’m back!”

I can’t remember whether it was yard 31 or 32. By then, my own brain wasn’t exactly operating at full capacity. But I remember thinking we might be heading into another night.

The story that came back from the course was that Darren had passed Danielle and told her, “You’re killing me here.”

What an effort from both of them. Neither made it easy for the other.

In the end, Darren Jones took the assist, and Danielle completed yard 33 to win the inaugural District Backyard Ultra.

Darren’s previous distance PB was 103 miles. He completed 32 yards here, more than 133 miles, smashing that by over 30 miles. To push so far beyond anything he had done before and keep Danielle working right to the end was remarkable. What a performance.

From the assist at LSD to the last person standing at The District. An absolutely fantastic performance, and a finish worthy of everything that had gone into the weekend. This one is for the girls and just goes to show that the BYU format is so unique as there were some absolute units in this event. So full credit to Danielle in pushing through and beating all the boys- an inspiration for so many! 

We’re hoping they’ll both be back. For now, they can put their feet up, look at those impressive belt buckles and take in just what they achieved. They’ve certainly earned it.

Across the field, our runners completed a staggering 1,057 yards, with our totals putting that at 7,087 kilometres. At our latest count, around 70% of athletes had achieved their distance goals.

That’s an awful lot of people going home having done something they weren’t sure they could do when they arrived.

Late on Sunday afternoon, it was time to pack everything away. After all the build-up, the storm, the sunshine, the mud, the music and those final tense hours, suddenly we were taking it all down.

A huge thank you to Lucy and Grant for welcoming us into such a special place. To the HSR team and our volunteers for the work, the lost sleep and everything people never see. To the crews, families and supporters who kept showing up, hour after hour. And to the runners who stayed after their own races had finished to help someone else keep going.

Thank you for trusting us with your weekend, for sharing your stories and for cheering on people who had been strangers a day earlier.

We put a course and a start line in place. All of you made this weekend what it was.

The District, you gave us a bit of everything.

We can’t wait to do it all again in 2027. Cowboy style.