Photo: Robeter at English Wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Harvey Lewis Wins Big's Backyard Ultra With a World-Record 85 Laps

The vegan schoolteacher runs 354 miles over three and a half days to be the last person standing

October 19, 2021

Vegan ultrarunner Harvey Lewis is the last person standing at Big's Backyard Ultra. The Cincinnati schoolteacher completed 85 laps of the 4.167-mile loop in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, finishing on Tuesday, October 19 after more than three and a half days on his feet. That's 354 miles, and a new world record for the backyard format.

The rules are brutally simple. Every hour, on the hour, runners set off on another loop. Anyone who doesn't make it back in time, or doesn't start the next one, is out, and the race goes on until one runner completes a lap nobody else can. Of the 35 starters, former champions Courtney Dauwalter and Maggie Guterl were gone by lap 43.

By lap 80 it was down to three. Japan's Terumichi Morishita fell on the course and missed the start of lap 81 by just 30 seconds. Chris Roberts, struggling with his knee for over a day, turned back early on lap 85. Lewis finished that loop in 49 minutes 42 seconds to win, beating the old record of 81 laps, iRunFar reports. The prize for all that? Nothing but bragging rights.

Lewis was already vegetarian in college, and when his mother had a stroke at just 54 a few years later, it made him look harder at what he was eating. He says the strongest running of his life came after he went fully vegan in 2016. He told the PLANTSTRONG Podcast:

I ended up being vegetarian up until five years ago and then in 2016, I said, changed back to eating just plant-base, all-vegan. That's remarkable to me because my strongest running years of my life have actually been the last five years since I've gone back to eating vegan.

His race fuel is about calories, and lots of them: soups, vegan mac and cheese, sandwiches with avocado and lentils, mashed potatoes mixed with vegetable broth, and plenty of fruit.

It has been some year for Lewis. In July he won Badwater 135 for the second time, across Death Valley in summer heat, and he has already won the USATF 24-hour title three times. Over in Britain, Damian Hall has been breaking long-standing records on plants too.