Phil Gore reaches 152 hours in Project 168 Backyard Ultra attempt in Forrestdale

Last week in the Perth suburb of Forrestdale, Australian endurance athlete Phil Gore ran 6.71km every hour for six days and 15 hours as part of his Project 168 Backyard Ultra attempt, stopping after an unofficial 152-hour effort when he failed to finish lap 153 at 4pm on day seven.

The Backyard Ultra format used in Gore’s challenge requires competitors to complete a 6.71km lap every hour, with failure to finish a lap within the hour resulting in elimination and the event ending only when one runner remains. Gore, who set the 119-hour world record at Dead Cow Gully in 2025 and has entered 16 Backyard events, winning 14, said winning conventional Backyard races often prevents him from pushing to his limit. He created Project 168 to test how far he could go beyond the usual finish rule and to provide a benchmark for other athletes: "[It was] a personal challenge for myself to see how far I can go, but also to help set a benchmark that other up-and-coming Backyard athletes can strive to reach," he says.

During the attempt Gore repeatedly had to be wrenched from sleep, given two minutes to put on shoes and a headtorch before the bell signalled the start of the next lap, and he said he slept for no more than 15 minutes at a time. He set up a bed at the Armadale Soccer Club and returned from each roughly 40-minute lap to lie down and try to recover before the next hour. "I do actually sleep pretty well in these events," he says. "The deeper I get into the event, I am getting into those deep sleep stages, and I can lie down for 15 minutes, and it might feel like I’ve been down for two or three hours. My crew will have to wake me up because I would just be passed out … and then that time from getting up out of bed to getting to the start line, that’s the hardest time of the whole event, because all you want to do is just go back to sleep."

Gore completed lap 152 — his slowest lap taking 58 minutes — and then set out on lap 153 two minutes later at 4pm on day seven, but he could not maintain the pace. "I [was] just moving even slower than I was for the lap before," he says. "I got about 25 minutes into the lap and I wasn’t even at 1,800 metres yet. That was when I gave up and realised there’s not a way that I can move at a pace to finish this lap in time … I just stopped and collapsed on the ground and got my crew to scoop me up and put me in the car." He finished just short of his 168-hour target.

Nutrition and brief recovery windows were central to Gore’s plan: he said sleep, toilet breaks, massages and gear changes were squeezed into the roughly 15 minutes left in the hour after each lap. "I’ve been using the speckled snakes and Nerd clusters, jelly cups, custard pouches, simple sugars like that," Gore says, adding he also took in more substantial items. "Then stuff that’s a bit more substantial like Coco Pops with choc milk or meat pies or a microwave meal like a chicken curry with rice. "I don’t normally eat McDonald’s cheeseburgers, but someone brought them down, and I was just like, ‘Oh, that looks amazing.’ And so I had this cheeseburger and it just worked really well."

A live-stream broadcast every detail of the event to a growing audience over the week, and the endeavour raised $285,000 for Telethon to help fund medical research and health services for children in Western Australia. Gore credited a small crew of friends and family with supporting the attempt, and the fundraising haul "further sweetens the personal achievement and helps put the recovery ahead into perspective," according to the account of the event.

The 40-year-old said the effort had taken a heavier toll than previous events. "This one has definitely taken a lot more out of me than previous events," he says. "I’ve been bobbling around on crutches for the last two days. "Yes, that was the limit on the day, but I know what went wrong. I’ve spoken with my doctor and my physio and we have a plan to stop this from happening again in another race."