Last Soul Ultra race guide

How it works

Last Soul follows the standard backyard format created at Big's Backyard Ultra. Each loop, called a yard, is 6.706 km and must be finished inside 60 minutes. Everyone starts together from the same corral on the hour. Miss the bell and you are out, with no grace period and no appeal. The winner is the runner who completes a loop that nobody else completes. If nobody does, there is no winner.

Each runner gets a marked 3 by 3 metre base camp and can register four crew, with up to three on site at a time. Crew can do anything in camp, but any help on the loop means disqualification. The organiser provides water but no electricity or catering, and a headlamp must be worn in twilight and darkness.

• Read our Big's Backyard Ultra guide

How far is that?

Type a number of yards to see the distance and time on the course.

The 2026 race

Season two started at 2 p.m. on Friday 14 August 2026, with 169 entered and 160 starting, 42 of them women. Half the field had gone by yard 17. After 24 hours 57 runners were left, and after 48 hours 13.

Mark Dowdle and Ayyoub "Ello" El Osrouti ran together beyond yard 90, past the previous best backyard in Germany. El Osrouti did not start yard 94, and Dowdle completed it alone on the Tuesday morning: 94 yards, about 630 km or 392 miles, in roughly 94 hours. The organiser says Dowdle beat his own previous best by nearly 90 miles.

Caroline Maria Bolte won the women's race with 52 yards in her first backyard ultra, a German women's record. Hubert Karl ran 45 yards at 68, and Mike Egan, a former US Marine racing in a wheelchair, completed 30.

• Full 2026 results

Source: official race website, checked 19 October 2026.

The first race in 2025

The first Last Soul Ultra started on 3 October 2025 in Bornheim with 93 runners, 20 of them women. Kim Gottwald, the race founder, won after 67 yards and about 449 km, and Kathrin Reichelt was first woman with 20. André Schürrle ran 12.

The ending was debated. The official table credits both Gottwald and El Osrouti with 67 yards, while several reports say El Osrouti stopped during the 67th, which under the race's own rule matters. After the race Gottwald said he had taken 8,000 mg of ibuprofen, which the German site backyardultra.de criticised as far above safe limits. The race is the subject of a six-part documentary series on Joyn.

The 2027 World Series

For 2027 Last Soul becomes a Backyard Ultra World Series: qualifiers in the USA in February, the UK in April and Australia in June, then a final in Germany in August that you can only reach by qualifying. Venues are announced once confirmed.

Each qualifier has 200 places, 100 chosen by the organiser and 100 by draw. You can request a place through the entry page or apply for a wildcard with an Instagram story tagged #LSU27. The top 15 overall and the top five women from each qualifier go through to the final. The 2026 race counts as one of the four qualifying races, so its top finishers are already in.

• World Series details and entry

How to get a place

Send one entry request per person, under your real name, for an open event. If you are selected you receive a personal code and must pay within the confirmation window, or the place goes to someone else. It is only secure once the final confirmation email arrives. The organiser had not published a refund or transfer policy when we checked.

Results from Last Soul count elsewhere too. Big's Backyard Ultra lists the race on its site, and its 2027 Individual World Championship at-large list includes Dowdle, El Osrouti and two other 2026 Last Soul finishers.

How to watch

The race streams on Kim Gottwald's YouTube and Twitch channels in German, with an English stream on the rappid. YouTube channel in 2026. The German 2026 stream ran for about 100 hours and had more than 7 million views by October, and the English stream more than 1 million. The organiser reports a peak of over 135,000 viewers watching at once, a figure we could not check independently.

• The 2026 German stream on YouTube

Preparing for a backyard

In 2026 Dowdle averaged 51 minutes 42 seconds per lap, leaving about eight minutes each hour to eat, sort his feet and rest. Practise exactly that: steady, relaxed loops, a fast camp routine and short sleeps. Avoid relying on painkillers: anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen can raise the risk of kidney problems during very long races, so talk to a doctor before you plan to use them.

• Backyard ultra calculator on Multiday Running
• Backyard strategy on Multiday Running

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