The year started, and I was running around Arlington, VA. The first week was about 60 miles, and each week, my mileage increased to be a bit more than the last. Once mid January came around, I was running in the snow. Along the C&O Canal trail at night, I would occasionally be spooked by an independent or small group of skiers.
Once in February, my weekly mileage hit 160. My go-to workouts were running 40 mile tempo runs on the C&O and 1-1.5 hours of doing Exorcist stair repeats.
After a 3 week taper, I was ready for Queeny Backyard Ultra. Here, I shot my shot to qualify for Big’s.
I got to the race venue in St. Louis, MO with my parents and my sister Mary. The weather was quite nice and we walked the course together. My sister and I were excited for our runs in the backyard.
The morning of the race, I met some familiar faces and countless faces I did not know. After race check-in, I was all ready to go!
This was the first backyard that I tried my hands at being vegan, and it seemed to work well.
At hour 36, the race came down to the town favorite Cody Eubanks and me. Neither of us really seemed to be showing any signs of slowing down, and I was confident that the race would last a whole bunch longer.
It was dark out on the third night, and Cody and I attempted to talk to one another. We both struggled to communicate, but we were moving well. I was hallucinating quite a bit, but I still was optimistic about reaching 72+ hours.
About half way through yard 60, I could no longer see Cody’s headlamp behind me. That was the last yard.
I finished Queeny Backyard, and I made it to Big’s!
After the backyard, my dad, our friends, and I ran on a nearby trail near the Appalachian trail. On the way down the mountain from this slow shuffle, I felt a sharp pain in my knee. This knee injury put me out of much running for over 6 weeks.
Once my knee was feeling a bit better, I weighed 160 pounds, 15 pounds more than I did at Queeny. I had struggled with my diet due to being injured and not having a short term goal to shoot for.
I planned to make a supported FKT attempt on the C&O Towpath. This encouraged me to hop on my newly purchased Zwift setup and get some biking in while I recovered from my injured knee.
During some decent training of 100 mile weeks, I found myself face first in the mud on a trail in D.C. I pulled myself up and quickly recognized a familiar feeling of more movement than I wanted in my ribs on the center of my chest.
I could no longer breathe well and my ribs hurt too much to run, so my mileage went down hill once again. Since I cracked my ribs before, I knew it would take 6 weeks to heal. Just in time for the C&O.
My ribs healed literally the day of my attempt. My parents and I set out to the west end of the C&O on the night of July 4th. I started my run, and my dad biked beside me, occasionally passing me food and drink for fuel. Every once in a while, we would meet with my mom and she would cheer us on and resupply.
I struggled.
The temperature was just under 90 degrees (at night), and it was very humid. I just couldn’t digest the food I was consuming, and after many restroom breaks later, my run was coming to an end. In the morning, I had lost all energy at 72 miles (still on record pace).
We celebrated this failure by showering at a hotel, eating some ice cream, and eating at a diner near where we finished.
After this C&O failure, I actually came out of it feeling quite fit. No injuries. I was ready to get going and train for the race of my life.
This training block was bigger than it normally would be (about 3 months total), and I planned on having a longer taper than usual (4 weeks). After many 100-170 mile weeks, I was ready for one more big week. Squeezing in running whenever I could, I ran a 211 mile week 1 month before Big’s.
I went out for an easy run on Monday. I realized I then had plantar fasciitis.
Would it heal before Big’s? I had to stay optimistic. But it started by decreasing my mileage to almost nothing for a week and hopping on the bike again.
A bit over 2 weeks later, and my plantar seemed to be completely healed! No one I talked to about this injury really seemed to believe it was completely healed like I did, but I just had to trust my body.
I put in some “normal” taper weeks before the race, and I felt all ready to go! I also had lost all of my excess weight from April when I was 160 pounds. I entered Big’s at 128 pounds.
Seeing the start line for Big’s, I felt that the venue was just as magical as I dreamed and as I saw on YouTube and photos. That being said, the venue felt a lot smaller than I imagined for some reason. I think videos and photos make the place seem more spacious than it really is.
I had a blast at Big’s, and ended up completing 64 yards. It was substantially shorter than what I hoped to get, but I’m proud of what my team and I accomplished.
After the race and showering at our hotel, I returned to Laz’s race to cheer on the other U.S.A. runners. I was blown away to see my teammates still running after 3 full days and 300 miles of running! I wanted to be out there with them.
I left the race feeling extremely eager to go further and requalify for Big’s, this time for the individual world championship race. I pretty much immediately signed up for the competitive, flat backyard in the U.K.: Suffolk Backyard Ultra. However, it would need to start with getting myself healed.
After Big’s, I felt really quite low energy. More than that, my knee was injured again for the second time of the year.
I spent much of this time after Big’s just kind of relaxing and resting.
A couple weeks later, and I started running somewhat normal mileage again. I needed to get my running normal-ish so I could run in my last race of the year.
For my 3rd run at Hellgate 100K++ in mid December, I decided I was going to just have a good time. I didn’t really put in that much training for it, and I just wanted to reward myself for getting through a big year filled with both running and non-running goals.
Hellgate ended up being a blast. My previous races at Hellgate had issues. During the first one, I got lost when I was in 4th place halfway through the race and bonked when I reunited with the trail. During the second one, I finished quite decently, but I pooped 6 times. On this third race, I finished with no issues and with a time that was the average of my previous runs.
Here was my checklist I made during last year’s report:
✅ Qualify for the USA team for the backyard ultra satellite champs (Did it!)
✅ I don’t know, keep running every day I guess… I’m over 800 days into this fad (Easy peasy)
❌ Go after that Jarmans 24 hour 100 miler again? (Didn’t have the time)
❌ Hellgate PR if I get to race it? (Didn’t put in the training, so I opted to just run it for fun)
❌ Don’t get injured, PLEASE. (I messed up my knee, cracked my ribs, got plantar fasciitis, then messed up my knee again)
Despite not achieving many of those goals, this was a really successful year for me. I achieved a lot of big non-running goals. But, since I don’t think anyone’s here to see those non-running goals, here’s some other running things I accomplished:
Ran over 1000 days in a row (I’m now on day 1174)
Ran over 4,700 miles this year
Ran through and healed myself during 4 injuries
Ran a new weekly training mileage best of 211 miles
Got a new backyard ultra PR 2 times! 60 at Queeny and 64 at Big’s
Ran a new PR of 70 reps of the Exorcist steps in one session.
Here’s my running-related goals for 2025!
C&O supported FKT (around March?)
Qualify for Big’s (at Suffolk Backyard Ultra in June)
Win Big’s 🙃
Keep running every day (I’ll hit 4 years of running every day in October!)
Have fun at Hellgate if I run it
Jarmans 24 hour 100 miler?
DO NOT GET ANY INJURIESSSSSSS
Stating the obvious, winning Big’s is a grossly ambitious goal (considering I’m not even qualified for the race yet), but who cares.
Backyard ultras are still where my heart is, and I don’t see that changing any time soon at all.
Wishing everyone a happy 2025!
-Dave
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