'Expect chaos': The $1 Ultra returns to NYC
New York City's backyard ultra is back for its second iteration, this time with a few new elements of mayhem
Over the last several years, backyard ultras have exploded in popularity.
The concept—originated in 2011 by Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell, best known as co-founder and race director of the separate Barkley Marathons—features competitors running one 4.167-mile lap on the hour every hour until one person remains, the 4.167-mile loop allowing runners to complete 100 miles if they make it to 24 hours. Typically, the race is held in a large ranch or backyard, hence the name. But last year Austin Lo and Victor Zeitoune decided to introduce the format to New York City, with a twist: runners would pay no entry fee and simply add a $1 bill to a jar for each lap they attempt, with the winner bringing home the entire pot.
In the end, 57 people showed up to the start line of last July’s inaugural $1 Ultra on the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan, with Kieran Calderwood earning the ultimate trophy of $397 after running 25 laps down to South Ferry and back, or 104 miles over 25 hours. This Saturday at 6 a.m. EST, the $1 Ultra makes its return, this time with roughly 200 expected starters and a few new elements of mayhem.
Each lap will begin and end at Printers Alley, a midtown sports bar just south of Times Square. This year’s race will have no exact course—instead, runners have to navigate on their own to and from one or more checkpoints during each lap, the shortest possible route totaling 4.167 miles. The initial checkpoint(s) won’t be announced until 30 minutes prior to the start of the race, and could potentially change during the race as well. All the while participants will have to traverse through unclosed streets during opening weekend of the World Cup as well as Game 5 of the NBA Finals, with the Knicks looking to clinch their first NBA Championship in 53 years.
In terms of preparing for the logistical challenges, Justin Kunz—who’s returning to the race after completing 18 laps (74 miles) last year—says there’s only one thing you can do: “expect chaos.”
“That’s just the core and the crux of ultra-marathoning, is you just figure it out,” added Charlotte Werner, who volunteered at last year’s $1 Ultra and is doing so again this year. “That’s sort of like the layout of the race as a whole, and I think that makes it special.”
Origins
The idea for the $1 Ultra started out mostly as a joke.
Last spring, Lo and Zeitoune were following the social media coverage of the BPN Last Man Standing Ultra in Texas, one of the latest iterations of a growing list of backyard ultras across the globe. The pair met running unsanctioned races in New York, have grown closer over the last few years while diving deeper into the ultramarathon space and started searching for backyard ultras in New York City—to no avail. As they followed the BPN race, that quickly turned into, “What if we just organized one?” and eventually a dinner of spitballing ideas at Teddy’s Bar & Grill in Williamsburg.
There, they scribbled “$1 backyard ultra, July 26, New York City” on a napkin, posted it to a new Instagram account titled @onedollarultra and never looked back.
“The $1 Ultra started off as a silly idea,” Lo said. “But in my mind and Vic’s mind, it’s kind of our thank you to the New York running community, and a way to spread the joy or spread the passion of ultra-endurance events to a broader audience.”
The two kept posting additional details on their new Instagram page as it got closer to race day, expecting five or 10 of their friends to participate. They were surprised to see the turnout the morning of, and even more surprised at the reaction in the following days. Videos from the event started blowing up on social media, with the one of Calderwood beginning his final lap reaching 1.4 million views. Lo and Zeitoune hadn’t given much thought to future renditions of the race, but after DMs started pouring in from those asking if they could join the next year, they didn’t really have a choice.
“That was when we were like, ‘Wait, hold on, we’ve created something special. We’ve created something that people want to be a part of,’” Lo said. “I mean, when you look at who ran last year, a fair amount of the field set their distance PRs, people broke the marathon distance for the first time…. And we’re like, ‘Okay, this is something cool, this is something unique.’
“And when the amount of interest started pouring in immediately for a second iteration of it, we’re like, ‘All right, well, I guess we’re doing it, we can’t waste it.’ So here we are.”
‘We can’t just keep this to ourselves’
Like many others, Lo started running consistently over the pandemic, completing his first marathon at the 2021 NYC Marathon and his second in 2022 in Berlin. Ultra-endurance events weren’t on his mind just yet, but when he crossed the finish line in Berlin he realized he had more left in the tank.
“I remember crossing the finish line and thinking, ‘Oh man, this ended just as it was getting good. I was just hitting the flow,’” Lo said. “So that’s part of where this idea of, ‘Wait, hold on, I could go beyond a marathon,’ started.”
Lo ran the OSR30 the following spring as his first ultra-marathon, however his first true ultra-endurance test—what he calls beyond a 50k—came when a friend signed up for the 2024 Black Canyon 100k and convinced him to join.
“I remember crossing the finish line of that, and just feeling this, like, ‘Oh my god, nothing can hurt me. I’ve broken through this thing that I thought was impossible,’” Lo said. “And that feeling, I described it as afterglow. It carried on for months, and it kind of became like a drug.”
Zeitoune’s undergone a similar transformation within his running journey.
He got into running after graduating college in 2018 and spent his first several years in the sport chasing PRs on the clock. In 2024 he ran The Speed Project in memory of his friend Sam Norton, and upon completing the ~340-mile relay from Los Angeles to Las Vegas decided that he wanted to return the following April to race it again—except this time, solo.
Lo remembers Zeitoune telling him before the trek that it would be a one-and-done endeavor, before watching the latter experience the same “afterglow” feeling he’d warned him about. Seven months later Zeitoune won The Speed Project Atacama solo, a ~334-mile journey through the Atacama Desert in Chile, with Lo helping crew Zeitoune during both solo runs.
“Breaking through the barrier of perceived limitation can be so powerful and so uplifting that it’s something we had to share”
“The feeling emotionally and mentally that you get from conquering something that you don’t think was possible, that’s a drug,” Lo said. “That’s a really powerful drug, in a good way, in that it allows you to carry yourself through life where everything just rolls off of you. Everything can go wrong, and your world can be turned completely upside down, and you hold on to this little feeling of, ‘Well, I’ve felt a lot worse, and I’ve made it through before’....
“Sharing that is also part of why Vic and I started the $1 Ultra. Breaking through the barrier of perceived limitation can be so powerful and so uplifting that it’s something we had to share. It’s something we want to share. It’s something that we were like, ‘Hey, we can’t just keep this to ourselves.’”
‘Community-focused’
Another inspiration for the $1 Ultra was what Lo sees as an increasing corporatization of the sport, and races in particular.
He and Zeitoune, who each run their own separate startups in New York, had no intention of making money off the $1 Ultra and actually lost a fair amount organizing the race last year. But it was that lack of monetary motivation that allowed them to play around with the structure in such unique ways—including the $1 feature itself, which Lo says was influenced by his time playing cards and fascination for parimutuel betting (where the pot grows as more players play).
The format not only creates an entry point into ultramarathons far cheaper and more accessible than most alternatives, but it also establishes a grassroots nature that further attracts runners seeking an escape from the commercialized running world.
“I just loved how community-focused the entire event was,” Kunz said. “It wasn’t put on by a brand or by really any of the organized infrastructures within the running world. I loved how it was just a bunch of people getting together to do something really hard on the West Side Highway.”
This year, Lo and Zeitoune decided to really put their creative race director chops to the test.
It began with the registration process. They received far more demand for entries than they could reasonably handle while keeping that desired grassroots character, and so they created a questionnaire for prospective applicants. Just over 200 racers were accepted, but nobody was outright rejected. Instead the remaining applicants were waitlisted, and given a simple option to get off the waitlist: complete a custom-built game where they had to press a button once an hour for 24 hours, a virtual backyard ultra. Six people completed the game to get into the race.
Then there’s the location. The Parks Department repeatedly threatened to shut down the event last year due to the Hudson River Park officially closing at 1 a.m., so Lo and Zeitoune knew they needed to find an alternate race HQ this time around. Naturally, they decided on Times Square. While the Knicks have now added some complications to that choice, it still had its own rationale from the beginning.
“Part of the original piece of this was New York City’s our backyard,” Lo said. “There are no traditional backyards. The city is our backyard…. As New Yorkers, if running is your passion, you run through the streets.”
Similar to last year Lo and Zeitoune will be awarding various lap prizes throughout the race, and are also introducing a variety of other additions to the overall experience—including a website with live GPS tracking, livestreams at Printers Alley as well as an app where racers can upload photos and videos while on course and spectators can leave voice notes for racers. It’s certainly a lot to oversee for a pair of new race organizers, but to some extent the whole essence of the $1 Ultra is putting things out into the world and seeing what works.
“We all understand it’s unsanctioned…. And that’s the beauty of it too, is that I don’t think there’s any real expectation, other than a community of people who really want to run and see how far they can go,” Werner said.
That’s the spirit that brought Calderwood to the West Side Highway last year. He says he had no goals of winning the race, and just wanted to have “a time” with his friends and “to go until the wheels absolutely fell off, and then maybe roll some more.” Calderwood actually recalls being disappointed when the remainder of the podium, Lindsey Nelson and Sophie Szew, dropped after 24 laps and 100 miles—he called the day an “adventure,” and didn’t want to see it come to an end.
He adds that he’s yet to use his winnings, and hopes that doesn’t change anytime soon.
“The jar is a trophy. I have not opened it. I have not counted the money. If I ever open that jar to get money out of it, it’ll mean I am in the worst, most down bad spot imaginable,” Calderwood said. “That thing I hope is never going to be opened, is something that my great-grandkids will have, and they better not open it either.
“I have no idea how much money’s in it. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It is a great reminder of the adversity of the day, of the adventure that that was, and the friendships that were made.”
Pushing to the brink
To truly compete in a race of this format, one has to approach it with a certain type of ethos. To Calderwood, that wasn’t just with the intent of enjoying time with friends, but also a deeper interest in what a race like this can bring out of you.
“I’m fascinated by what real long-distance endurance does to the human mind and the human body, the human spirit,” Calderwood said. “And I was really curious to see what it would look like if my wheels fell off, what that would take…. None of us really go there ever. So I thought, ‘Man, if I could just do it once, that would be a blessing.’”
Calderwood has also seen the backyard format referred to as a “tango,” where having partners out there pushing you along is a necessity to finding your true limits. He’s unable to defend his crown this year due to a friend’s wedding, but lucky for those that are competing, there should be no shortage of people to run with.
Two of the newcomers expected to take this year’s race deep are Joe DeAngelo and Roland Mann. The duo became quite familiar with one another during January’s New York City Burrito League, a competition that awarded a year’s worth of free burritos to whoever ran the most laps of a 0.3-mile segment in Central Park over the course of 23 days. DeAngelo took home first place with 2,254 laps—over 29 miles per day—with Mann not far behind at 2,040.
Mann also took second place at last year’s New York City Chipotle Challenge (a similar contest to and what eventually inspired Burrito League), making him even more eager to come out on top this weekend.
“I’ll be honest, my goal is to win,” Mann said. “Whatever it takes until either I win or they have to physically remove me from the course.”
Mann isn’t the only one with that never-give-in attitude. Kunz says one of his only regrets from last year is not at least attempting an 19th lap, later coming across a popularized phrase in the backyard ultra space that has since stuck with him: “never die in the chair.” It’s a saying that Tom Garvey, a retired professional triathlete and another newcomer to the $1 Ultra, is familiar with as well.
Garvey says his favorite part of any endurance event is the final third, that moment where you either commit to the pain or back off. He adds that he has no distance goals for this weekend, and has never really had any athletic goals he ever viewed as an “end point,” something he believes translates well to a race like this.
“I’m not seeing an end,” Garvey said. “I’m not going to be happy when I get to 100k, 100 miles, 150…. It’s going to be about how I feel at the end of the race, and if I feel completely and utterly wiped out, like I couldn’t go another step.”
Nelson enters as the top returner, hoping to exceed her 24-lap (100-mile) performance from 2025. But she also simply appreciates how the race provides the chance to see how long you can suffer for, a different type of mental challenge from the faster races she’s more accustomed to.
Meanwhile, Annemarie Shoemaker heads into her $1 Ultra debut from almost purely an ultra-marathon background. She says she has a “weird confidence” about the race, even having never participated in a backyard ultra specifically, partially because of a fighter mentality she feels is suited to the last one standing style. However she adds that she’s also gathered inspiration from Rachel Entrekin’s recent win and course record at the Cocodona 250, a landmark performance that further cemented the ability for women to compete outright in the ultra-endurance world.
“Especially me as a woman, I hope that I can go far,” Shoemaker said. “Running with my friends, and people that are fast and good male runners, I noticed recently that I can often out-run them. And that’s kind of exciting.”
‘One of my favorite races I’ve ever done or seen’
Nobody’s quite sure how long this year’s $1 Ultra will last.
Lo knows of at least three people who have taken Monday off from work, which he calls “a little concerning,” and DeAngelo says he expects it to go quite a bit longer than 100 miles just “based on the respect that I have for the other competitors in the field.” Werner’s official prediction is 40 hours (166 miles), which would take the event into late Sunday night.
Of course, there are many factors that can come into play to shorten a backyard ultra, from injuries to heat exhaustion to fueling and pacing strategy. And that’s not even taking into account the physical impact of cement and asphalt as well as the mental fatigue caused by the location and surrounding events this weekend.
“That’s what, to me, a real adventure is, is taking something on regardless of the outcome, having no idea what will happen next”
But that uncertainty is what defines an ultra-marathon, a backyard ultra and especially the $1 Ultra. The only guarantee is that at some point in the future one person will be the last one standing—the journey to get to there is to be determined, and also the entire point.
“A big focus was suffer well, just suffer well,” Calderwood said of his experience last year. “The mind constantly goes to the pain that you’re feeling after 40, 50, 60 miles. But if you’re trying to suffer well, that just flips the coin on its head. The whole game gets transformed into a good thing, like the farther you go, the more pain, the better. And letting that be not just purposeless, but completely purposeful. Every step teaching you something, teaching me something—I learned so much about myself, about my friends, about pain, about adventure.
“And that’s what, to me, a real adventure is, is taking something on regardless of the outcome, having no idea what will happen next…. The goal on the day for me, and anyone I was with, was just surprise yourself, do something new, do something you’ve never done before. And I got to do that…. It’s probably one of my favorite races I’ve ever done or seen.”
-By Evan Kolin