Last Soul Ultra 2026

Mark Dowdle won the 2026 Last Soul Ultra with 94 yards, about 630 km, completing the final yard alone on Tuesday morning after Ayyoub El Osrouti stopped at 93. No backyard ultra on German soil had gone past 90 yards before, and the two of them passed that mark together on the fourth night. El Osrouti, who goes by Ello, was the runner-up at the first edition too, stepping off at 67 yards last October with an Achilles injury; his 93 is the second-best backyard performance by a German runner, behind only Hendrik Boury's 100 at the 2025 world championship. Norman Mascher-Aspensjö was the last man standing beside them, out after 80 yards.

Dowdle came in as the reigning Go One More champion, and much of this field was at that race. Bare Performance Nutrition holds it on Nick Bare's ranch in Texas, and in April he won it with 73 yards, ahead of Harvey Lewis and Kim Gottwald, who founded the Last Soul Ultra, on 58 apiece. Lewis was out here after 46 yards; the American won Big Dog's Backyard Ultra in 2021 and set a backyard world record of 108 yards in 2023.

Mike Egan covered 30 yards in a wheelchair, 201 km, further than he managed in Texas. The American is a Marine veteran and bilateral amputee who lost both legs in Afghanistan in 2012, and last November he set a Guinness world record for the greatest distance covered in 24 hours by wheelchair, 152.37 miles around a track in San Antonio. His Go One More went viral in April, when the rain turned that course to mud, his chair stopped rolling, and he got out and pulled himself and the chair to the line.

Caroline Maria Bolte was the last woman standing, stopping after 52 yards and 348 km, a German women's backyard record in the first backyard ultra she had entered, and Andrew Glaze was out at 20. Hendrik Boury, the German record holder, reached 68 yards before going out on Monday morning, and Martin Stiller stopped at 66, Norman Junker at 56, Dennis Musche at 54 and Adrian Gröschner at 53.