Luke Slater runs 350km to finish third in GV Last Man Standing Backyard Ultra, earning qualification to national team

At noon on a spring Saturday during the GV Last Man Standing Backyard Ultra, the Shepparton lawyer-boxer-ultra-marathoner lined up for his adopted home town event with a simple goal: beat his last attempt.

Fifty-two loops later – and at around 4pm on Monday – he had done exactly that, chalking up 350km, third place in the race and a spot as the fourth-ranked runner on Great Britain’s team.

Not bad for a bloke who only stumbled across the sport last year.

Slater had run backyard ultras before, but not with this kind of home-field advantage - and it soon paid dividends, as he was able to beat his previous attempt by 11 hours.

“It was good to be here, because it meant I could be a bit more prepared,” Slater said.

“I’ve obviously got good knowledge of the track as I’ve spent a lot of time running up and down the botanicals.

“But also the home advantage was having a better crew where I could rotate three or four people, not just relying on my daughter to run the whole shift.”

At his last backyard ultra in Queensland, Slater relied almost entirely on his teenage daughter Della to be his eyes and ears during a gruelling 41 loops at Dead Cow Gully.

In Shepparton, however, he rotated three or four helpers with both daughters and some friends on the clock, supplying him with cooked meals, proper hydration and bursts of inspiration.

Which, as he pointed out, are in equal parts important as the hours drag on.

“Just those little things, when you’re talking about running for three or four days, they make an enormous difference,” Slater said.

“In these things, the last thing you want is your crew encouraging you to quit because they’re exhausted as well.”

Slater and his daughters had talked it through over breakfast beforehand – why this time would be bigger.

Better food prep. Familiar terrain. More experience. A temperate climate.

“Everything pointed to why we should crank it up,” Slater said.

“We managed to get 11 more hours and 11 more laps – about 80 more kilometres – which is really good.”

He’d put in the work too: three months of 100-plus kilometre weeks and added strength work, as “a lot of it is how your body can cope with the trauma of pounding into the ground millions of times.”

But what about the variables you can’t prepare for?

Slater admitted his pre-race favourite, Barry Keem, dropped out at 20-odd loops with an injury before another in Brandon Lee was forced to stop after 40 hours with nasty chafing and foot issues.

It shows the tempestuous nature of ultra-enduro running is often a roll of the dice when it comes to performance.

But Slater wasn’t leaving anything up to chance.

“It’s one thing running 100km a week to get ready for the race, but you’ve got to train sleep deprivation, you’ve got to train your gut to cope,” he said.

“I was having a laugh with my mates; the food that I ate between Saturday morning and Monday when I finished, if you sat on the couch for three days and ate that, you’d almost die.

“It’s really unhealthy food, but it’s good for fuel if you’re immediately burning it off but you’ve got to get your stomach and body used to consuming that amount of carbohydrate and junk.”

Slater’s nutrition plan was less gourmet, more stripped-back sustenance.

During the race he consumed at least 50 grams of carbs every hour, running off a drip-feed of protein, fruit, rice pudding, water and Tailwind supplement.

He’d been swapping notes with his coach, New Zealand star Sam Harvey, one of the best in the world, and soaking up tips from the new wave of backyard-ultra nutritionists about carb-loading and race fuelling for racking up simply absurd mileage by foot.

The payoff was obvious.

Lap after lap, Slater clicked around the loop – a 6.71km circuit from Shepparton’s Victoria Lake to the Botanical Gardens and back – at roughly 50 minutes each.

He finished third out of 135 runners, and though he lost out to Mathieu Dube who won for the fourth straight time at 60 hours, Slater felt the town lifting him when the going got tough.

“I was dying in the late 40 hours and I saw a guy who was running around the Botanical Gardens by himself – he’s a 60-year-old fella and a really good triathlete,” Slater said.

“He asked me if I was all right after hearing about the event, ran all the way back to the lake and gave me a remedial massage for the 10 minutes that I had before the next loop.

“It just made me proud to be part of the Shepparton community.”

By Monday afternoon, Slater had pushed beyond his old ceiling - but it came at a price.

“It’s not for the faint-hearted; I’ve got severe swelling in my feet, ankles, I’ve got bad blisters, I’ve got swollen groin glands,” he said.

“Funnily enough I’ve got really bad ulcers all through my mouth and tongue which I’ve never had before.

“My watch isn’t even recognising that I’m sleeping at night at the moment because my heart rate hasn’t gotten down to the right level.

“If you’re going that long, 50 hours, it takes a couple of weeks before you’re getting back to normal.”

Recovery will take weeks, but what really matters is the numbers.

His 52 loops put him fourth on Great Britain’s qualifying list for the 2026 Backyard Ultra Satellite Team World Championships, an event in which national squads run simultaneously around the globe.

“I think given I’m now at number four, I probably have secured a spot – but you just never know,” he said.

But ahead of that milestone, Slater is already plotting his next test.

He’s eyeing off the MVP Backyard Ultra at Brimbank in February, the same event his journey began at in 2024.

The course is hotter, hillier and famously brutal; Slater “only” managed 23 hours there last year, seven shy of the winner.

But if there’s someone you don’t want to underestimate, it’s a man who’s never satisfied by his limits.