BigFoot Backyard Ultra — Pune

Pune’s second running wrote the cleanest illustration of the rule you’ll find. Two Pulkits ran shoulder to shoulder deep into the night — Pulkit Jain and Pulkit Verma, all but inseparable, matching splits loop after loop.

Verma completed his 24th and then did not start the 25th. That is all it takes. Jain walked out alone, finished the 25th, and the race was over — winner 25, assist 24, the mandatory one-yard gap. No sprint, no photo finish; a backyard ends the instant the second-last runner cannot answer the bell.

Twenty started in Pune; the two who ran as one decided it between them.