MUMBAI 2024
1 February 2025
A finished edition. Everything below is the record as the ledger kept it.
← THE MUMBAI CHAPTERLAST ONE STANDING
Manoj Sundaram
21 YARDS
Ankit Sharma
20 YARDS
The last to fall. Their final loop is what sent the winner out alone — an honour here, not a runner-up placing.
THE FORMAT, IN MUMBAI
6.706 KM · 60 MIN · last runner standing.
Mumbai has already taught us something useful.
Having a venue is not the same as having the right venue.
The previous chapter was held at a farm on the outskirts of Mumbai. The race happened, but the setting did not create the chapter we or the community wanted. So we are starting again.
There are easier ways to solve this. Find enough land. Measure 6.706 kilometres. Put up a corral. Ring a bell.
That would produce a backyard ultra.
It would not necessarily produce Mumbai.
The next venue has to do both. It needs a loop worth repeating through daylight and darkness, room for runners and crews, safe access, medical reach, permissions, parking and enough resilience to function for as long as the last runners decide to continue.
But it also needs identity.
A backyard runner becomes intimately familiar with very little geography. The same road. The same turn. The same tree. The same approach back to the corral. After enough hours, those ordinary things become the entire world.
We want Mumbai to have the right world before we invite runners into it.
So there is no invented terrain description here.
No convenient adjectives.
We will find the ground first.
Then we will let the race tell us what it is.
FROM THE MUMBAI CHAPTER
THE MUMBAI JOURNAL
Writing about this chapter, and about the backyard in general.
OTHER CHAPTERS
MUMBAI is one of six. Same loop, same bell, different ground — see the rest of the season.
QUESTIONS, ANSWERED
The backyard, the bell, the DNF — the things every first-timer wants to know before they toe the line.
What is a backyard ultra?
A 6.706 km loop, run every hour on the hour, until one runner remains. No finish line, no fixed distance. The last runner standing is the only finisher — everyone else records a DNF.
Do I need to be an ultrarunner to enter?
No. Backyard 4 is designed as a first ultra. If you can run 6.7 km in an hour, four times, you're in the game.
Where does the 2026–27 season run?
Six chapters: Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Same loop distance, same rules, same clock in every city.
How do I register?
Through the chapter page for each city. Registration opens city by city — the community hears the dates first.
What is the Indian backyard record?
52 yards — 52 loops, 52 hours, roughly 348 km — set by Sunil Sharma in October 2024. Ashwini Ganapathi holds the women's mark at 28 yards, set at our Bengaluru chapter.
What happens if I DNF?
You take home the exact number of the loop where you stopped, and a DNF memento. In a backyard, that's not failure — it's the receipt of a real attempt.
Can I walk?
Yes. Walking is strategy, not weakness. Many strong backyard runners walk parts of every loop.
THE BELL, BEFORE ANYONE ELSE
Dates, entry openings and the Mumbai race report — sent when there is something real to say, and not otherwise.
Nothing is lost. All is learnt.