Last year, American ultrarunner Maggie Guterl made headlines when she won Big’s Backyard Ultra, a ‘last man standing’-style event run by Lazarus Lake (organiser of the infamous Barkley Marathons) which sees runners cover a 4.16-mile loop on repeat. Each lap must be completed within an hour and starts again on the hour and after that, it’s a battle to see which competitor outlasts the rest. Last year, Maggie completed 60 laps to cover a mind-boggling 250-miles and win it outright – the first woman to do so.

Maggie has also competed for Team USA at the IAU 24-Hour World Championships, she’s won the Brazos Bend 100-miler outright, come second at the Georgia Death Race and 8th at Western States, amongst other things. However, in this email Q&A, we take a deeper dive into last year’s Backyard Ultra win.

I also chatted with Maggie over the phone earlier this week for separate feature, coming soon…