Words by Andy Waterman
Photos by Jacob Zocherman
At Big’s Backyard Ultra World Championships, performance isn’t measured in miles or minutes, but in "yards". Every hour, runners must line up to run a 4.167-mile loop of Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell’s backyard. Completed yards are all that matter. The process is repeated every hour, on the hour, until only one person remains standing. There is no finish line, only the glory of being the last person standing.
Last month, Mount to Coast athlete Oriol Antolí competed with the world’s best for 103 hours, covering over 690km or 430 miles. It was a huge PR, a Spanish national record, and on the day, good enough to secure seventh in the world. It was a performance of calculated precision and relentless heart. But for Oriol, the number on the results sheet mattered less than the mastery of the moment.
"Actually, I didn't think about position or distance," he says of his mindset going into the race. "I was thinking in the feeling of being satisfied with my performance."
From the court to the trail
Unlike many who stand at the start line of a World Championship, Oriol did not spend his youth running track or cross-country. For years, his athletic life was all about basketball.
"I was training like three or four hours per day, three days a week," Oriol recalls of his youth in Spain. That athletic foundation created the resilience he’d need to excel in ultrarunning, even if he didn’t know where his destiny lay just yet. The transition to running happened almost by accident when he moved to Madrid and needed to stay fit.
He began running the streets, and one day, curiosity took over. He took a single Euro coin – the price of a metro ticket to get home if needed – and made a deal with himself.
"I said, OK, I will run until I cannot run anymore," he remembers. He ran with an old mobile phone in his backpack. When he finally stopped, he checked the distance. "The distance that I covered was 36 K. So I said OK, from 36 to 42 [a marathon], it's not so much."
He ran those 36km in his basketball shoes, but that day he bought his first running shoes, and signed up for a marathon. That was the start of a journey that continues to this day.
The Backyard epiphany
Oriol’s entry into the Backyard format was equally accidental. He only ran his first one because a race organizer told him he needed it as a qualifier for a different 400km event.
"I thought that it wouldn't suit me," he admitted on a recent episode of the Mount to Coast podcast. He planned to run a few laps and quit. But as the hours ticked by, the unique psychology of the format hooked him. "It was like an incredible sensation – it was very social. Then at some point it changed from a social race to something that is more challenging for you."
He discovered that the Backyard is a cycle of destruction and rebirth. "After every Backyard Ultra that I do, since I went over the 50 loops, it seems for me, OK, I will not do this anymore," he says. "But two weeks or three weeks later, I say no, that's what I love. I want to go back."
Engineering the perfect loop
At Mount to Coast, we talk often about the intersection of data and dedication. Oriol embodies this. As an engineer by trade, he applies a methodical approach to the chaos of ultra-endurance.
"I use all my knowledge about engineering on the running," he explains.
For the World Championships, Oriol knew that volume alone wasn't enough. To survive past 100 hours, you don’t just need to run far; you need to run fast enough that you have time to sleep. Working with a coach, he spent two years specifically improving his speed.
"The results are obvious," Oriol reflects on his World Champs performance. "One of the keys is that I am able to go fast for many miles."
His strategy at Big’s was a masterclass in energy management. "My strategy was to be conservative and 'save' my speed for the moments where I needed to control my pace," he says. "For example, at the end of the second night, after almost 250km, I did 35km faster to get some more sleep. The big difference is that I felt I could control the tempo of the race."
Gear for the long haul
For a race that spans days, gear choice is critical. At Big’s, runners alternate between a trail loop during the day and a road loop at night. Oriol utilized the Mount to Coast system to handle the specific demands of each terrain.
He relied on the R1 for the road sections at night and the T1 for the technical trail loops during the day.
"T1 are the ones that I love the most," Oriol says. "They are like a toy for a kid because you can go everywhere... Once you learn how to play with the quick lace... it's amazing.” The ability to adjust the fit on the fly proved vital as his feet swelled and the terrain shifted over four days of continuous movement.
The mystery of the body
Placing seventh in the world and setting a national record is a monumental achievement, but Oriol’s takeaway is deeply internal.
"If I told you I am not happy with the result, it would be a big lie!" he says. "It is a kind of satisfaction that I did what I want to do, and the feeling of being proud of myself and the crew is amazing."
However, the true allure of the sport for Oriol lies in the unknown. "From my experience on long distance running I took many learnings, and the most important one is that you can't imagine how your body is going to respond to more distance than what you did previously. This mystery is one of the things that makes me stick to this discipline."
He describes the feeling of completing such a race as creating a "strong dependency." The suffering fades, but the self-knowledge remains.
"I now know myself better," he says. "I understand how to control my body in a 'polarized' backyard ultra, and I’ve increased my self-esteem by being seventh in the World Championship."
Back(yard) to the future
Rest is fleeting for the obsessed. While Oriol is currently taking a month off serious running to spend more time with his family – he has a wife and two kids – his sights are already looking to the horizon.
He has registered for the Legends Backyard Ultra in Belgium, a course famous for its record-breaking potential. "I need to discover that course," he says. "I need to test myself there."
Oriol’s journey from a basketball court in Spain to the last seven standing in Tennessee is a testament to the power of persistence and unreasonable dedication. It reminds us that often we don't know how far we can go if we simply decide that stopping isn’t an option.
Discover more about Oriol Antolí by tuning into the full podcast.