Les 25 heures qui courent: Clemquicourt's backyard ultra explained, and what to eat to last

Looking for the worst possible event for stubborn mules? Look no further: it's called a backyard ultra, and it's sheer madness. At 3pm sharp on Friday 6 November, somewhere in the Pyrénées-Orientales, a "mini" backyard got under way: Les 25 heures qui courent (The 25 Hours That Run). One hundred starters, among them the winner of the UTMB, the winner of the Diagonale des Fous and France's most-followed YouTuber. But let's start from the beginning.

A bell, a loop, and the last one standing wins

The format was born in 2011 in Tennessee, at the home of Gary Cantrell, known as Lazarus Lake, the inventor of the Barkley. The race is named after his dog, Big. The rules fit on a till receipt: a loop of 6.706km (4.167 miles), a start every hour, and you have to be in the corral when the bell rings. You finish the loop in 50 minutes? You have ten minutes to sit down, drink, eat, then the bell rings and off you go again. You finish in 61 minutes? You're out.

Why 6.706km? Because twenty-four loops make exactly 100 miles, or 161km in 24 hours. The format has no finishing distance and no finish line: it goes on as long as two runners are still racing. The winner is the last one to complete a loop alone. Everyone else, even after a hundred laps, is classified as a DNF. The last runner eliminated receives a title of their own, the "assist", the one who pushed the winner to run one more lap.

The numbers are dizzying. In June 2025, Australia's Phil Gore held on for 119 loops, 797.9km, in nearly five days. On 22 October 2026, at the world championship in Retie, Belgium, Merijn Geerts and Ivo Steyaert ran 124 hours side by side, 831.5km.

One hundred runners, a 25-hour cap and a secret location

Clément Deffrenne, Clemquicourt to his more than 700,000 Instagram followers, kept the principle and changed three things. First, the loop: the specialist press that attended the pre-race briefing reports 5.7km and 150m of climbing, while the official website still shows the regulation loop of 6.706km. Either way, twenty-five loops add up to between 143 and 168km, with more than 3,000m of cumulative climbing.

Then the cap: the race stops after 25 hours, the length of a full Twitch live stream. A true backyard has no end; this one does, on Saturday at around 4pm. What happens if several runners complete the twenty-fifth loop was not made public before the start. Finally, the field: 100 starters, half athletes and content creators, half members of the community who got in through "golden tickets", all subject to the same rules. The exact location remains secret, somewhere in the Pyrénées-Orientales, and every euro raised goes to Rêves, the charity that makes the dreams of seriously ill children come true. The fundraiser stood at 12,420€ an hour before the start.

The UTMB winner versus the YouTuber with 27 million subscribers

The start list mixes two worlds that never meet on a start line. On the elite side: Blandine L'Hirondel (bib 2), winner of the 2026 UTMB and the 2025 Diagonale des Fous; Hugo Deck, winner of the Diagonale des Fous on 16 October, three weeks earlier; Théo Detienne (bib 1), winner of the 2025 90km du Mont-Blanc, tipped as the favourite by u-Trail; Aurélien Sanchez (25), the first French finisher of the Barkley, who says he wants to "be the runner who rests the least"; Stéphanie Gicquel (7), holder of the French 24-hour records. Ludovic Pommeret (3) and Mathieu Blanchard (4) are there too, one with a foot injury, the other operated on in September: Blanchard wrote "1" in the goal box of his official card.

On the creator side, each one displays a numbered goal on their card in the official Bestiaire. Zack Nani (21) is aiming for eight loops. Océane Andréa (65) eleven, for her first backyard. Alban Pellegrin (16), 72 marathons in 72 days in 2025, and Pablo Brimeux (49) are aiming for twenty. Hugo Tout Seul (42) twenty-four. Olivier Maria (47), who runs in sandals, and Joggeuse (78) are aiming for all twenty-five. Tibo InShape (13), 27 million YouTube subscribers, wrote down 69, which says everything about the spirit of the party. Domingo, with a foot injury, has withdrawn.

Twitch, a Race Center and a fundraiser that keeps climbing

Everything goes through Clemquicourt's Twitch channel, live since 1:59pm on Friday and until the last bell. The official website, les25hquicourent.fr, is built like the desktop of an old computer: you open the Race Center, which follows the race loop by loop, the Bestiaire, where every participant has a card, and the Rêves fundraiser climbing in real time. Stadion and u-Trail each run a written live blog.

A reference point: the tenth loop starts at midnight, the twentieth at 10am on Saturday, the twenty-fifth at 3pm. And watch the loop times more than the faces: a runner going from 48 to 56 minutes has lost eight minutes of rest, often the first sign that the stomach or sleep has taken over.

The only ultra that gives the stomach a breather

On a classic ultra, the stomach never rests. Here, it gets ten to fifteen minutes off every hour, and that changes the whole strategy. Gastric emptying stays normal at rest and up to 60% of maximal oxygen uptake; it slows markedly above 70%. And a backyard loop is run at jogging pace. For forty-five minutes, the stomach works almost as it does at the table; during the break, it works exactly as it does at the table.

This window has a price. At night, solid food leaves the stomach 53.6% more slowly than in the morning, according to a 1987 study. The cold hits at the precise moment the body stops: hypothermia first threatens whoever is "injured or exhausted and unable to continue exercising", writes the 2021 American sports medicine consensus, and low blood sugar switches off shivering, the body's first defence against the cold. Finally, a nap of more than twenty minutes costs about 35 minutes of grogginess on waking, time a bell will not give you.

So the trap is twofold. By day, you eat too much at the stop because you have time. By night, you stop eating because the stomach shuts down, it's cold and you're asleep on your feet. The International Society of Sports Nutrition's position stand on ultramarathon, published in 2019, reminds us that persistent intakes below 200kcal per hour "are not recommended" and that 30 to 50g of carbohydrate per hour is the realistic target beyond six hours of effort. In a 24-hour race, the amateurs at 40g per hour and above covered more distance than the others, the elites were around 62g, and these figures only hold if the stomach has been trained to take them during long runs.

One loop, one ration: the hour-by-hour plan

Phil Gore, the man of the 119 loops, sums up his method in four figures per lap: 40g of carbohydrate, 5g of protein, 200 to 250kcal and 500mg of sodium. Courtney Dauwalter, winner of Laz's backyard in 2020 with 68 loops, got through three nights by snacking at every stop, mashed potato, pierogi, cold pizza, and sleeping eight to ten minutes per loop. Both say the same thing: the format sets the rhythm, so make use of it. One hour, one ration, written down in advance, because by the fifteenth loop fatigue makes you forget to eat.

Here is the typical ration I would keep for a runner lapping in 45 to 50 minutes, to be adapted to body size and stomach:

• During the loop: one gel with 28g of carbohydrate, taken in two or three goes, with 500ml of lightly salted water. Or a 500ml bottle of energy drink, that is 35g of carbohydrate, 146kcal and 0.75g of salt, roughly 300mg of sodium.
• At the stop: half a fruit purée or half a bar, 11 to 17g more carbohydrate, enough to reach 45 to 50g for the hour and around 220kcal.
• Every three loops: a protein bar at the stop, 10g of protein, to keep up the recommended 5 to 10g per hour over the duration.
• Every three to four loops: a real hot dish instead of the purée, mash, rice, soup, or a homemade savoury purée. That is the rhythm of the hot food station at the Dijon backyard, judged "pretty good timing: you avoid eating too much" by a runner who completed 24 laps there.

Liquid or solid, it all depends on your break. Aurélien Sanchez wants to rest as little as possible: with a five-minute stop, everything goes in liquid form during the loop. Phil Gore runs his night loops in 39 to 42 minutes so he can sleep for fifteen: with a twenty-minute stop, solid food finds its place. In both cases, the rule from the trail guide applies: liquid on the descents, solid on the easy climbs, water after every intake.

Two safeguards. Fat and fibre at the stop slow gastric emptying and set up the nausea of the following loops: Courtney Dauwalter's cold pizza remains a champion's treat, not a model for a first backyard. And gaining weight during the race means you are drinking too much: 450 to 750ml per hour is enough.

The night: hot, salty, ten minutes lying down

From the fifth loop, at 7pm, to the seventeenth, at 7am, the race is run in the dark and in the November cold. Three reflexes at the stop, in this order.

A hot drink first. A drink at 52°C stops shivering in under a minute, for about ten minutes: exactly the length of the break. A salty soup kills two birds with one stone, warmth and sodium, just when sweet things start to pall. The hydration drink, 10kcal and 0.88g of salt per bottle, gets you through the loops when the stomach refuses sugar: you keep the salt and the water, and pick the carbohydrate up again on the next lap.

Caffeine in microdoses, not in one big hit. The 2019 position stand on ultramarathon rules out large doses of 4 to 6mg per kilo and favours repeated doses of around 50mg per hour, reserved for the night. The Lemon ginger guarana gel provides exactly 50mg; one loop in two from the moment your eyes start to sting, never before, and the 100mg Coffee gel is kept for the last three loops. Ten night loops at 50mg would already make 500mg: hence one loop in two. Its effects and limits are detailed in this article.

24 gels for 25 loops

Mixed-flavour box of 24 energy gels

5 Cherry and 5 Apple for the first loops, 4 Salted caramel for the middle, 5 Lemon ginger guarana (50mg of caffeine) for the night, 5 Coffee (100mg) for the finish.

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The ten-minute nap, waking five minutes before the bell. After a short night, the ten-minute nap is the most restorative and the only one without grogginess; the thirty-minute one costs 35 minutes of fog. A trick validated in drowsy drivers: caffeine just before a nap of less than fifteen minutes kicks in as you wake; on a backyard, a caffeinated gel before lying down.

What your next long run takes from this

Few of you will ever start a backyard ultra. But the logic of a ration per unit of time applies everywhere. On the road, the marathoner who takes a gel in three goes is already smoothing out blood sugar the way the backyard runner smooths out loops. In trail running, the stop at the aid station is a mini backyard break: sit down for two minutes, drink something hot, eat something solid, set off again. On the bike, a five-hour ride is divided into hours, one bar or one bottle per hour, and that is the breakdown the diagnostic app works out for you in two minutes. In triathlon, the bike plays the role of the break: that is where you eat for the run that follows.

GET MY NUTRITION DIAGNOSIS →

We never give up because we know why we run, and at Les 25 heures qui courent, one hundred people know it for children they have never met.

On Saturday at around 4pm, the last bell will ring in a secret corner of the Pyrénées-Orientales. One runner will be left, maybe several, and one hundred stomachs that will each have told their own race, one hour at a time.