Phil Gore Ran a 6.7km Loop Every Hour for Six Days Straight

Australia's Phil Gore set out to run a 6.7km loop every hour for 168 hours straight. He stopped at 152 laps and 1,019.3km, short of the full week but well past his own fundraising target, more than A$280,000 raised for children's charity Telethon 7.

By Miles Ashworth · 2 Sept 2026 · 2 min read · United Kingdom edition

Phil Gore during Project 168, his six-day solo backyard ultra challenge at Alfred Skeet Reserve, Western Australia, 2026. Photo via Running Magazine (Canada); original source not independently confirmed, not a Wikimedia Commons CC image.

Phil Gore set out to run for seven straight days. He made it to just over six, and it's still one of the more remarkable things anyone has done on foot this year.

The Australian ultrarunner's challenge, called Project 168, ran on the backyard ultra format: a 6.7 kilometre loop, run once every hour, on the hour, for as long as the runner can keep going. Gore attempted it alone, at Alfred Skeet Reserve in Forrestdale, Western Australia, with a target of 168 hours, exactly seven days. He got through 152 of them, completing 152 laps before stopping, a total distance of 1,019.3 kilometres covered almost entirely on an hourly treadmill of his own making.

Not Officially a Record, and Gore Would Be the First to Say So

Because backyard ultra rules require multiple competitors racing each other to determine a winner, a solo effort like Project 168 can't be recognised as an official world record no matter how far it goes. Gore already holds the real one: 119 laps, just over 790 kilometres, set at Dead Cow Gully in Queensland in 2025, a mark that still stands. He's also the reigning Big's Backyard Ultra World Champion, having won the sport's original event in October 2025 after 114 hours and roughly 750 kilometres. Across his backyard ultra career, he's won 14 of the 16 he's entered.

Project 168 wasn't really about the record books. To manage six days of accumulating fatigue, Gore ran some laps in as little as 35 to 40 minutes, faster than necessary, deliberately banking 10 to 15 minutes of sleep before the next lap began on the hour. It's a small, practical detail that says a lot about what actually decides these events: not raw speed, but how well a runner can manage the hour itself.

The Number That Mattered More

The challenge was built around a fundraising target of A$168,000 for Telethon 7, a charity providing medical and financial support to children and families in Western Australia, one dollar goal for every hour he hoped to run. By the time he stopped, Gore had raised more than A$280,000, well past the target, even though he came up short of the full week on the course. Judged purely as an athletic feat, Project 168 falls short of his own official record. Judged by what it was actually built to do, it's hard to call it anything but a success.