20/08/2026
This is absolutely next level! 🤯 168 laps. 7 days. 1,127km. What an incredible test of endurance and mental strength. We’ll be following this one! 💪🔥
Phil is taking on 168 laps in a backyard ultra format...
On Sunday 23 August 2026, at 8am AWST, Perth ultra-runner Phil Gore starts Project 168 at Alfred S***t Reserve on Armadale Road in Forrestdale, Western Australia. The rules are brutally simple. He runs a 6.71km loop starting at the top of every hour, on the hour, and he keeps doing it for seven straight days until 8am on Sunday 30 August. If he completes all 168 laps, that is 1,127km. Seven hundred miles.
The format is borrowed from backyard ultra racing, but this time there is nobody to chase and nobody chasing him. No competitors. No assist. Just one man, a loop, and a clock that does not care. Whatever time is left in the hour after he finishes each lap is all he gets to eat, change kit, treat his feet and sleep. Run faster, sleep longer. That is the entire deal, repeated 168 times.
Gore is not new to this. He is the reigning Big Dog's Backyard Ultra World Champion, taking the 2025 world title after 114 hours. In June 2025 he ran 119 hours at Dead Cow Gully for the win and a world record, having already set a world record there in June 2023 with 102 hours. He was the fifth to last one standing at Big Dog's in 2023 on 100 hours, won the Backyard Ultra Satellite Championship in 2024 on 96 hours, and became Australian Champion and Australian record holder in 2022 on 76 hours. Fourteen wins from sixteen backyard ultra events. He is also a father of four.
Here is the number that matters. His own world record stands at 119 hours. Project 168 asks him to keep going for 49 hours past it. That is more than two extra days on legs that have already been broken down for five, with no rival on the loop to pull him through the worst of the night hours.
Every lap raises money for Telethon, which supports sick and disadvantaged kids across Western Australia. The target is $168,000. So far $13,061.09 has been raised, around 7.8 per cent of the goal, with a top single donation of $510.12.
Phil Gore, you are a Harry.
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