An extreme race to delirium: "One day I found my three-year-old son alone on the road"

TorellóAccept that people can call them hamsters. "We always make the joke too: 'Come on, let's go do the hamster'," says Oriol Antolí (Terrassa, 1983). A few days ago, he achieved the Spanish record for Backyard Ultra, a discipline that comes from America. It consists of running a 6.7-kilometer circuit with a start every hour on the hour: the minutes left between crossing the finish line and the next starting gun are used to eat, rest, and even sleep. Whoever lasts the longest wins, like in the Japanese movie Battle Royale. It's a test of endurance, not speed. The discipline is "very successful" and is becoming increasingly popular in Catalonia: the third edition of the Backyard Ultra de Terra Endins brought together 200 participants in Torelló at the beginning of May.

A few days ago, Antolí reached 113 laps, in Belgium. Almost five days, more than 750 kilometers. He started running on a Saturday morning and didn't stop until the early hours of Wednesday to Thursday. The world record is 119 laps. "It's a bit strange," explains Antolí. He is an electronic engineer by profession and, at the same time, is the first person in the world to exceed one hundred laps in three races in one year. Last year he was seventh in the World Championship.

Antolí had always played basketball. In the summer of 2007 or 2008, he was living in Madrid for work, and one day during preseason, he planted the seed for the present: "I thought I'd go for a walk around El Retiro until I got tired. I had a Nokia with GPS, I put it in my backpack, and I took a euro to get home by metro afterward. I walked 38 kilometers, that day I bought myself running shoes, and I signed up for the Madrid Marathon." Later, he would make the leap to the Matagalls-Montserrat, the Ultra Trail del Montblanc, and other ultra-endurance races. He fell in love with these challenges. In 2018, he won the Monarch's Way, a 990-kilometer race in England. It took twelve days and ten hours.

Suddenly, he landed in Backyard Ultras. "I liked it a lot because you always have the challenge of self-improvement, and because it's very social: in an ultra, you're alone 99% of the time, and conversely, backyards restart every hour, and you're always with people. It's a very different concept, and I got hooked on it – he admits. It's a beautiful thing because you can go for one lap, seven – which is a marathon –, fifteen – which is a hundred kilometers – or however many you want. You go to surpass yourself. And the most beautiful thing is that you share it with everyone: the one who finishes first can be with the one who finishes last," Antolí continues.

The physical part is key, but the mental aspect is just as relevant: "I think whoever reaches 60, 70 laps is strong enough to do more. In the end, there comes a point where you continue out of stubbornness, dragging yourself along. Mentally." When a race approaches, he often trains by running routes that pass by where he parked the car: "To train the mind and be able to overcome temptation and not give up when the urge to quit comes." His maxim is never to give up: normally, he drops out because he doesn't manage to complete the lap before the next start and gets eliminated.

The athlete from Vallès states that the secret lies in finding "the balance between running little so as not to get too tired and running a lot to have more time to rest between laps." One of his goals is to "maximize" sleep time. They take five, eight-minute naps. "The first day you try and you don't fall asleep, but in the end, you manage it. Everyone is very surprised that you can sleep for five minutes, but when you're very tired and haven't slept for two nights, you fall asleep instantly," he explains.

Participants who ran "with glazed eyes"

Sleep and tiredness often have consequences in the form of hallucinations. On the last lap of the Belgian race, he had the sensation that the plants were cheering him on. In the 2023 World Championship, a fairground attraction appeared out of nowhere. "Suddenly I also found my son alone in the middle of the road. He was three years old then. It was very impactful because it was as if I were abandoning him. You already know it's a hallucination and you try to ignore it because it can't be real, but the doubt remains – Antolí assures –. I suppose the brain looks for alternatives to distract itself and comes up with whatever it comes up with."

He has seen people "running with their eyes rolled back" and participants who were "scary" and has warned his family so that if they ever see him like this, they don't let him continue. "I'm very clear about it: health comes first," he emphasizes after asking for common sense to stop when there is danger. He also advises trying not to think too often about the number of laps so that the race doesn't become tedious. He celebrates that since it is such a young sport, he is able to live at the world elite level: "It's something I had never imagined. If it had caught me when the discipline had already been around for fifty years, it would be much more difficult. Perhaps in twenty years, the under-11s will do 113 laps."

In some Backyard Ultras, even wearing headphones is prohibited. Antolí, in races where it is allowed, sometimes listens to music or podcasts. He says he listens a lot to El búnquer or La Renaixença. "It's a way to keep yourself awake and alert," he admits, ready to keep running laps on the hamster wheel.