Phil Gore is running for seven days. Alone.

Backyard ultra world champ Phil Gore has started an extraordinary attempt in Western Australia: 168 laps, 168 hours and, if everything goes to plan, 1,127km.

Phil Gore knows his way around a backyard ultra.

The West Australian currently holds the backyard ultra world record after completing 119 yards at Dead Cow Gully in Queensland last year. He also happens to be the reigning Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra World Champion.

But his latest challenge takes the familiar backyard format somewhere new.

At 8am on Sunday 23 August, Gore started Project 168 at Alfred Skeet Reserve in Forrestdale, WA. The plan is brutally simple: run a 6.71km lap every hour, on the hour, for 168 consecutive hours.

Seven days.

If he makes it through to 8am next Sunday, August 30, Gore will have covered 1,127km — or exactly 700 miles.

And he’s doing it solo.

Beyond the backyard

In a conventional backyard ultra, runners complete a 6.71km yard every hour until only one remains. Once the second-last runner stops, the remaining runner completes one final yard and the race is over.

It creates a strange situation for the winner: they can be the strongest runner in the field without ever discovering how much further they could have gone.

Gore knows that feeling particularly well.

He has won 14 of the 16 backyard ultras he has entered, including his 119-yard world record at Dead Cow Gully in June 2025 and the 2025 Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra World Championship, where he lasted 114 hours.

Project 168 removes the competition entirely.

“This isn’t just about seeing how far I can push myself,” Gore said before the attempt. “It’s about creating a new benchmark for endurance athletes.”

Because there is no second runner, 168 yards would not constitute an official backyard ultra world record. But if Gore reaches his target, he will have gone 49 hours — and around 329km — beyond his existing record.

Seven days, very little sleep

Running more than 160km a day is only part of the problem.

Every lap has to begin on the hour, leaving whatever remains of that 60-minute window for eating, drinking, changing clothes, treating problems and, somehow, sleeping.

Gore plans to use faster overnight laps of around 35 to 40 minutes to create opportunities for roughly 15-minute micro-naps, before getting back up to do it all again.

It’s an approach that won’t surprise long-time TRM readers. When we spoke to Gore after his then-world-record 102-yard performance at Dead Cow Gully in 2023, he told us just how meticulously he plans his backyards, with a spreadsheet mapping out every hour.

“My spreadsheet has everything broken down into every single hour,” he told TRM at the time, including pace, food and whether he planned to sleep.

Project 168 takes that planning into completely different territory.

For seven days, there is no other runner to beat. No last person standing. Just Gore, the clock and another 6.71km waiting at the top of every hour.

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More details on Phil’s challenge, head to his website.

Check out some awesome backyard ultras at ultraseries.com.au