Ultramarathon runner to head into WA bushfire season straight after an astonishing year pounding the pavement

Nearly 800 kilometres. Five days. And on a handful of hours of sleep: After this, most people would put their feet up or curl up for a long, deep slumber. But not Phil Gore. The Armadale Fire Station career firefighter and ultra-marathoner will spend the summer battling bushfires, after an astonishing year pounding the pavement. He has run more than 7200km. Gore is the reigning Backyard Ultra world-record holder — a brutal last-man-standing endurance race where runners complete a 6.7km loop (also known as a yard) on the hour, every hour. Contestants are eliminated if they cannot finish the loop within the 60-minute time limit. The 39-year-old said he became serious about running after switching professions and joining the Department of Fire and Emergency Services in 2014. “We do two days, two nights and then four days off... that’s why I got into running, because when I came into this job I suddenly realised I had all this spare time on my days off, and I was like, what am I going to fill my days with?” the father-of-four told The West Australian. “I had been a runner in high school, and then was a bit sporadic with it after I left school, but it’s just something I gravitated back (towards) and I was looking for something to keep me fit and fill my time.” In August 2020, Gore came second in his first Backyard Ultra, the Birdy’s event at Lake Towerrinning in the Wheatbelt, after completing an extraordinary 39 laps or 161km. “I was absolutely rooted, my last lap came in with just 1.5 minutes to spare, and when I started lap 40, I took two steps over the start line and just collapsed,” he said. “Even though I’d absolutely destroyed myself, I just really fell in love with the format and decided this is what I want to do. “I was like, ‘I can really nail this strategy, I think I can go a lot further’, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I’ve been improving and trying new things and just refining my plan and strategy to get where I am.” Since then, Gore has completed another 14 Backyard Ultras, including Queensland’s Dead Cow Gully event in June, where he took out the world title running 119 laps, a mind-boggling 797km, in just under five days. Fuelled by burritos, porridge and Coco Pops, Gore completed each lap in an average of 45 minutes, giving him just 15 minutes of rest before tying up his laces and doing it all over again. He said the first two nights of the race were the most punishing because he knew the event was just beginning. “When you’re at day one or two your brain knows it’s very early days, and you’ve still got a long way to go,” he said. “Because your mind is so fresh (at the start) the time can drag out, whereas when you’re a bit more sleep deprived, the laps start to blend into each other and you start to forget what’s happened before, so it’s a lot easier to just focus on the moment. “But once you pass that halfway point — I get into a flow state where everything just seems to be lining up, where your nutrition is going well, your sleep is going well and your laps are going well.” Remarkably, Gore’s final lap was also his fastest, logging 6.7km in just 33 minutes — that’s about 4.55min/km. “I felt like I was getting stronger as the event went on, which doesn’t make sense when you look at how far I’ve run, but my last lap was the fastest,” he said. “You’re never trying to do a lap as fast as you can, but when it’s your last lap and you know you’re not going to have to do another one after that, you just give everything you’ve got.” Of course, running for several days is no easy feat — along with the gruelling physical challenge comes cognitive exhaustion. Runners will black out at times, before returning to consciousness and wondering: “Where am I? What am I doing?” At one point during last month’s race at Big’s Ultra Backyard in Tennessee — where he was officially crowned Backyard Ultra World Champion after taking out the win, running 114 laps, or 764km — Gore said he felt like he’d “just woken up and was running along a road”. “It took me a while to figure it out, I didn’t realise I was in the race, that I was in America and that I actually wanted to be here,” he said. “I was just like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’. I’m running along this road looking at my watch, trying to figure out what the numbers of my watch mean. “Instinct told me to just keep following the road, and I got to the end and saw my crew and asked them to explain to me what was going on.” Incredibly, Gore has become so in tune with his body he can force himself to sleep as little as 10 or 15 minutes during his short rest windows. “I can go down for 15 minutes, and when my crew wakes me up it feels like I’ve been asleep for two or three hours, so I’m actually getting into those deep stages of sleep within just that 15 minute window,” he said. “When my crew wakes me up, I’ve got two or three minutes to get myself together and get to the start line. “That little window is probably the hardest period in the race, because all I want to do is just stay in bed and keep sleeping... but you just get up and once you start running, it’s all fine again.” Gore said he didn’t have any tangible running goals, adding they only served to limit his potential. Instead, he said his only mission was to push his body as hard as he could to see what it was capable of enduring. “I don’t like to set myself goals in these events, because I see that as a limiter... for example, if I set a goal at 150 hours and I reach it, then it’s like, ‘OK cool, I reached my goal’.” he said. “I just want to keep pushing and pushing... it’s all about seeing what I’m capable of, and seeing what my body is capable of. “Sometimes I think back to when this sport started, and it’s like, how did we get here? Who would have ever thought I would be running for five days in a row?”