Austria Backyard Ultra – Ternberg TRAIL: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The Austria Backyard Ultra in Ternberg follows the classic backyard rulebook: a gun fires every hour, and whoever fails to finish the loop before the next start (or chooses not to line up) is out. The winner is the last person still completing a full loop. Seven loops are more than a marathon, fifteen are 100 kilometres; the format is open-ended.

The loop itself is Austria's first trail variant of the format: 6.706 kilometres (the classic 4.16667 miles) through the terrain above Ternberg, with around 350 metres of climbing per lap, a lot for a backyard format. The climbing concentrates in the first half: straight after the start a good kilometre at ten percent, then from kilometre 1.6 a longer ascent of 2.4 kilometres at nine percent with sections up to 20 percent. The second half falls mostly back to the start-finish area.

Racing begins in mid-May and runs day and night; the loop stays the same, the light and the legs do not. Exactly that repetition is the format's appeal: the course becomes a metronome, and the opponent lives in your own head.

Pacing Strategy

In the backyard format there is no race pace, only a loop budget: you have 60 minutes per lap, and every minute you finish early is rest time, but every too-fast loop costs substance that will be missing in loop 15. The art is a lap pace that feels almost embarrassingly easy.

On this trail loop with 350 metres of climbing that means concretely: the two climbs of the first half are hiked from the very beginning, not run, even in loop one, when running would still feel effortless. A proven pattern is 45-to-50-minute loops: enough buffer for eating, changing and sitting without descending into frantic transitions.

The breaks are the second discipline: fixed routines in that order (eat, drink, feet, clothing), everything laid out at your chair, nothing left to chance. At night the same loop gets slower; from dusk, budget five extra minutes per lap and have the headlamp ready before you need it.

The format's greatest trap is mental arithmetic: whoever starts calculating at loop five how many remain, loses. There is only ever one loop, the next one.

Training plan for Austria Backyard Ultra – Ternberg TRAIL: 12-week build

In a backyard ultra the duration is open, from eight hours to well past 24. Accordingly you train not for a distance but for repeatability: many hours at very low intensity, interrupted by short breaks.

The most important building block is repeat sessions in race format: for three to six hours, start a 6.5-kilometre loop every hour, sitting and eating consistently in between. That trains body and routines at once, including the art of starting to run again after a break. The 350 metres of climbing per loop additionally demand hiking economy on gradients around ten percent: easy uphill hiking belongs in every long session.

The weekly structure stays classic: one long, slow run (three to five hours, ideally on your repeat loop), two easy runs, strength and foot work. Intensity plays almost no role; the race happens deep in the aerobic zone.

At least as important is logistics: fuelling you tolerate over twelve hours (real food beats gels in a backyard), spare clothing, chair setup, headlamps, and a crew or at least a precisely packed station. And practise night running on trails; from mid-May the nights are short, but every practised night hour counts.