In short:

Phil Gore covered 6.7km every hour after he started running on Saturday morning.

His 119 loops broke the previous world record, held by Belgian Łukasz Wróbel, by three loops.

What’s next?

Gore said he was sure his record would not stand for long and joked that his next race would be shorter.

Australian endurance athlete Phil Gore has broken the world record for the Backyard Ultra marathon after running almost 800 kilometres in five days on a southern Queensland cattle farm.

The West Australian ran 119 laps of the 6.7-kilometre course at the Dead Cow Gully Backyard Masters event outside Nanango, 180km north-west of Brisbane.

“It’s amazing,” Gore said after crossing the line in the early hours of Thursday morning.

“The bar keeps getting raised higher and higher and I’m glad that I’m still able to keep up with it.

“But I’m sure it’ll be beaten again within a year.”

Gore ran 797.3km to break the previous world record of 116 loops, which was held by Belgian Łukasz Wróbel.

Runner-up Sam Harvey said his Achilles tendon “blew up” during the event. (ABC Southern Qld: Peter Gunders)

Gravity no friend to runner-up

Billed as a race with no finish line, the Backyard Ultra format has no predefined length or time but requires runners to complete a 6.7km loop every hour.

The competition is over when only one runner remains to complete a loop.

A field of 263 runners set off at 7am on Saturday and the final two competitors were still running before daybreak early on Thursday.

Sam Harvey from New Zealand was the final runner to drop out of the race, at the start of the 118th loop, which set a New Zealand national record for the Backyard Ultra distance.

“I wanted to get to sun-up … and 500 miles, but gravity wasn’t my friend,” Harvey said, adding that his Achilles tendon “blew up” on Tuesday night.

“Instead of running nice fast loops and coming in and going to sleep for 10 to 15 minutes, I’ve been out all night and hadn’t had any sleep.”

Phil Gore leading the pack during his record-breaking win. (ABC Southern Qld: Peter Gunders)

Women set national records

During the event two female national records were broken.

Australia’s Holly Ranson ran 61 loops (408km) and New Zealand’s Jane McAlpine ran 53 loops (355km).

Race director and fourth-generation cattle farmer Tim Walsh said the event, which attracted runners from Japan, Belgium, Spain and the United States, was now a fixture on the international running calendar.

After running for five days straight, Gore joked that his next race would be shorter.

“I might do a 24-hour instead,” he laughed.

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