Sydney Backyard Ultra

St Ives Showground, 18 April 2026

A very long race on a short course with no finish line

All trail runners all have a different story about why they run. If you ask, most will say their goal is to keep going further and longer than ever before.

What is universal is that finishing one very long race often plants a seed for the next. It’s addictive.

I put the addiction down to what I call The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. These are the conflicting physical and mental demands that draw you back for more.

These were greater in Sydney’s Backyard Ultra than any other run. And yet I'm already Googling race calendars for my next hit.

Notes on the format:

in a Backyard Ultra, every runner completes the same 6.71km loop every hour, on the hour, until just one person remains. They are the winner. Everyone else just registers the number of laps they successfully completed. This year's winner ran for a mind-blowing 75 hours. That's 500km, and earned a place on the Australian National Team. The rest of us gave everything we had.

Sydney’s Backyard Ultra: A race without a finish line needs a mindset without any limits.

The Good: people and performance

Good people

The community of endurance athletes and crew is unlike any other sport. At Sydneys Backyard Ultra the organisers, athletes, crew and volunteers are selfless and supportive. Helping others until the very end.

This good applies as much to family, friends, and training partners who came to crew and spectate in Sydney, as it does to those who watched the live race feed and sent messages online.

I also made friends on the course and by the middle of the night, names I didn't know at 8am felt like teammates, and lonely spectators I didn’t know were willing me on.

Thoughts of those people’s love, support and courage ran with me. It helped me go further than ever before.

Notes on good people and community:

In rugby, soccer, and cricket I've witnessed situations where pressure, passion, and competitiveness in some athletes turn a positive 'play to win' attitude into a negative 'win at all costs' one. Not here. Not in ultras. Not in Sydney’s Backyard.

Good performance

The result was my personal best: 

  • 20 hours non-stop

  • 3 back-to-back marathons

  • 134km in one run

  • Top 20% of all finishers

  • Fifth in my age group

I started at 8am on Saturday and didn't stop until 4am on Sunday. In the hours between midnight and 4am there wasn't one second when I was sitting down.

In a field of 645 runners aged 18 to 69, I finished in the top 20% overall, and placed 5th among athletes my age or older.

I ran for almost three and a half marathons, which is further than my expectation and 34km and one hour further into the night than I've ever run before.

In a competitive, age-diverse field with elite runners, I held my own deep into the first night.

And I did it with Type 1 Diabetes.

Notes on my goals:

My goal was to run further and longer than any of my previous runs. I wanted to enter new territory. And I got there.

Running more than 18 hours and beyond 120km was my main goal, but my crew knew I’d set 24 hours to reach 160km (100 miles) as a stretch target. I almost got there and I’m proud of my performance. What I learned has set me up to go even further next time.

The Bad: painful breaking points

There are painful points in ultras. Except paradoxically it is those breaking points that are the most enjoyable.

In real-time they suck. They slow you down, force you to dig deep, and threaten to end your race entirely. But in retrospect, they're the parts you remember most fondly and make the best stories when asked at dinner.

Ultra runners ‘endure’ joint pain, tiredness, exhaustion, hot feet, calf cramping, stubbed toes, chafing, muscle fatigue. You absorb as much discomfort as you can and sometimes shuffle or limp the next step. If not, you get caught by the clock and eliminated. But what you learn improves your next race.

I've proved this repeatedly. The time I spent running six marathons in six days in the Simpson Desert had extreme and unforgettable breaking points which taught me lessons about my body, my mind, and my diabetes that I carried into the same six-day race format in the mountains of Queenstown in 2019 where I finished stronger.

When they say "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger;” I'd agree. But, only if you take notes.

Notes on learning from bad bits:

In my previous runs, knowing the end point each day, often 42km, 50km, 82km, or 100km, always made me determined to get through breaking points, and the clock has never caught me before. I've always reached the finish line and found that overcoming and learning from the hard bits led to better performance in the races that followed.

Backyards are designed for failure.

Reaching your last breaking point, or at least one, is guaranteed in a Backyard Ultra.

That is what plays with your head in training for one: "how far will I go?", "how long will I run?", "how will I sleep?", "how much will I eat?”

Then, during the race, as you encounter each milestone, you ask yourself: "Is this it, or have I got just one more?"

Every hour is a new decision. The breaking points creep up slowly, continuously, yard by yard. In this race, several came, and then went for me. The first came with dusk at 6pm after I'd been running for 10 hours.

I was prepared for that first one and got through it.

Several more came and went until the mothership arrived at 3.40am. My watch was telling me I’d still got more than half of the lap to complete, in less than half the time available. Me head was telling me to stop.

I battled with that equation and eventually overcame it to accelerate and cross the finish line for my 20th successful lap, with 90 seconds to spare.

Then another one turned up straight away.

True to form, my very last breaking point taught me lessons I'll use next time. It felt bad and glorious at the same time.

I surrendered to it with a smile on my face, a hug from my crew, and a cheer from a lonely spectator [which I captured on video] that is still ringing in my ears.

My last breaking point:

My final breaking point was signalled a few laps before it finally came. Ultimately, I didn’t finish limping to a finish line, instead it finished when I didn’t leave my tent and couldn’t cross the start line for just one more yard. The final breaking point was in fact a comfy-looking swag and an inviting curry and beer.

The reality of running with T1D

I forget the pain quickly after each long race. Good foot care, strength work, and hours of training to test my running and my T1D approach mean that I often have no lasting problems. 

However, T1D can deliver another kind of bad. And, people living with diabetes will recognise this immediately:

Bad luck, not bad planning

My insulin delivery failed mid-race because my cannula dislodged as I got warmer and sweatier after putting my thermal on for the night leg. And, midnight was my witching hour because that’s when my CGM data failed too. Both were frustrating mis-haps, but thanks to contingency plans I adapted and kept going… for a while.

Managing T1D across 20 hours of running through the night involves multiple blood glucose checking, insulin delivery, constant carbohydrate intake, and note taking of the countless energy drinks and snacks consumed.

After midnight, 100km deep into a race with no finish line, with a tired brain and no tech or data, it was a different challenge entirely.

I’d deployed Plan B: the switch to finger prick glucose tests and insulin injections was working. However, I’d lost confidence and wasn’t processing how much insulin I had on board. When my CGM sensor also failed it really did feel like bad luck.

My mental load was already strained, and what ultimately got me was failing to remember to record on each lap what I was eating and injecting.

This ‘energy in, energy out’ calculation is easier to calibrate when the tech is working, and my T1D plan had stood up really well for 12-14 hours. But it wasn't foolproof.

I’d focused so much on energy exertion, I simply forgot to stick to my plan and eat enough. I hadn’t eaten enough to keep going despite taking a huge bottle of coke with me for the last two laps.

My tank had slowly emptied.

On the reality of exercise and T1D:

For people who don't manage T1D: a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) tracks my blood glucose in real time; an insulin pump delivers me a continuous flow of insulin through cannulas attached to my abdomen. When either fails the real-time data you depend on disappears, and the margin for error during extreme exercise shrinks fast. Blood glucose that rises too high or too low doesn't just affect performance; if it happens in the wrong place, at the wrong time, without a plan, it can be a medical emergency.

But there is an upside.

Resilience. Real-time problem-solving under pressure. Metabolic self-awareness. The ability to stay calm when systems fail. These aren't skills or traits I was born with. They were built year by year, blood test after blood test, injection by injection, learning from mishap after mishap.

I deployed them between 11pm and midnight and, that bottle of Coke and some lollies carried me five more hours and 33.5km past my previous personal best.

That's my Fitter for Having It approach to life. Not toxic positivity. Not pretending it's easy. But an honest reckoning that 40 years of T1D management has actually built strengths that make difficult days bearable, and brutal breaking points glorious to overcome.

I know it’s possible for others too, I’ve met and spoken to Park Run novices, Half Marathon runners, and World Champion basketballers with T1D that all feel the same.

From top left:
1. Finger prick glucose tests. 2. Insulin delivery on the run. 3. Refilling carb powder. 4. Insulin injection when pump failed. 5. T1D notes between yards. 6. Medical supplies at camp. 7. Apple juice boost. 8. Replacing failed cannula. 9. Checking pump delivery. 10. Loss of pump data 12 to 3.30am. 11. Checking pump and CGM readout. 12. Post race T1D report

My Fitter for Having It approach to T1D:

Diagnosed in 1986, when I was 14, I'm 54 now and I've had T1D for 40 years. And I want to be clear about something: this isn't a sad, or negative, story about diabetes holding me back. I’m smashing my goals, and I wouldn’t be in races like this in the first place were it not for having T1D. 

My story is about 'owning' T1D and triumphing at the challenge of fitting it around everything I want to do. It's about the unexpected ways people managing a complex condition for decades build capabilities that some people never have to develop. The tech and brain failures I experienced can happen anytime, anywhere: and they do.

There’s no time to feel down on luck. Just get on and solve it.

The Ugly: Regret

For me the ugliest feeling after any race isn't the blisters, or the T1D device failures. It's the regret.

My dream to go back to 4:00am and my 21st hour, cross the start line, and run on to my stretch targets of sunrise, 24 hours, or even the 200km tee-shirt.

That type of regret is understandable and useless.

I didn't, and I couldn't at the time. I'm honest with myself about that. Instead, I’ll chalk up my experience, review what I learned with my healthcare team, and build myself a new, better and longer training plan to deliver the improvements I'll make next time.

In this way, the Backyard Ultra, as a race with no finish line, is the perfect dealer for my addiction. "Go on! Enter another one," it whispers. "You can go further, and longer."

And I can. 

What next?

Here's what I will do: file the lessons and learn from them. Channel the regret into preparation. Not dwell retrospectively on what I could've, should've, would've done differently.

Instead, I’ll plan specifically for how to adapt and improve by talking to experts and my health care supporters. This helps me with long runs of course, but it also helps me cope with everyday life with T1D better too.

Every day and every run living with Type 1 Diabetes is more informed that the last.

Live. Learn. Respond. Improve.

My next ultra will be a personal best. Faster, further, longer.

Watch me go.

Want more?

If you want to know how I trained, what I ate, how I manage Type 1 Diabetes during ultra-endurance events like this, or how the Fitter for Having It moves apply to your own situation, come to one of my talks, or reach out.

I’d love to hear from you.

Whether you're an athlete managing a chronic condition, someone newly diagnosed and wondering what's still possible, a healthcare professional looking for a different perspective, or a coach working with complex populations — there's a conversation worth having.

Follow me by signing up to the ‘The Move’ newsletter, or watch my Fitter for Having It Conversations with other T1D athletes and experts on YouTube.

Stay strong. Make it happen.