There’s something uncomfortable about signing up for a race you don’t fully understand yet.
Not physically. Mentally.
Because a Backyard Ultra doesn’t really ask how fast you are. It asks something much more difficult: how long you can stay composed when your body starts negotiating with you.Every hour, you start again. Same distance. Same loop. Same decision.
Go again — or stop.
“A Backyard Ultra doesn’t ask how fast you are. It asks how long you can stay composed.”
And honestly, that’s one of the reasons I signed up for the Backyard Ultra Tragamillas on June 13th.
Not because I suddenly want to become an ultra runner. Not because I want to abandon HYROX or stop training as a hybrid athlete. And definitely not because I think doing more kilometers automatically makes someone mentally stronger.
I signed up because I want to understand what happens when fatigue stops being a moment and becomes a place you have to live in.
HYROX vs Backyard
In HYROX, fatigue hits hard. Aggressive, explosive, immediate. Your heart rate spikes, your legs burn, your breathing becomes chaotic, and you learn how to keep performing while your body is under pressure. But a Backyard Ultra feels different. The fatigue doesn’t attack you all at once. It slowly sits on top of everything. Hour after hour, loop after loop, until the real challenge becomes how long you can stay composed without wasting yourself too early.
That difference fascinates me.
The Tragamillas Backyard Ultra is not an extremely technical mountain ultra with endless climbs and impossible terrain. The course is relatively runnable, with around 140 meters of elevation per loop. On paper, it doesn’t look terrifying. But that’s exactly what makes this format dangerous. The difficulty is not the mountain itself. It’s the repetition.
The same loop. Again. And again. And again.
Eventually, small climbs stop feeling small. Your posture changes. Your feet start sending signals. Your fueling matters more than your fitness. Your pacing matters more than your ego. And mentally, you enter a completely different space than most hybrid races ever force you into.
That’s why I don’t believe preparing for this as a “pure ultrarunner” would make sense for me.
My long-term goals are still hybrid competition. I’ll be competing in Athlon-X in August, followed by HYROX races already confirmed for September and beyond. This summer isn’t about leaving hybrid behind, it’s about building a stronger engine underneath it. Not becoming a different athlete, but a more complete one.
And I think that’s an important distinction.
Not Becoming a Different Athlete
A lot of hybrid athletes make one of two mistakes when they approach endurance. Either they try to out-suffer everything with intensity, or they completely abandon strength and structure to become “just runners.” I don’t think either approach is sustainable for the kind of athlete I want to become.
So my preparation over these four weeks looks different.
I’m not spending my days only accumulating endless mileage. But I’m also not turning every session into a maximal high-intensity effort. The goal is not to arrive exhausted and proud of how much I suffered in training. The goal is to arrive durable, functional, and capable of staying efficient under fatigue.
That changes the way I train completely.
I’m still keeping strength work in my week because strength matters for hybrid athletes, especially women who want to maintain muscle mass, resilience, and long-term athletic durability. But the focus is different now. Less ego lifting. More useful strength. More posterior chain, unilateral work, carries, core stability, and movement quality.
I still keep controlled HYROX-specific sessions too. Compromised running, carries, wall balls, transitions, SkiErg and rowing remain part of my identity as an athlete. But I’m careful not to turn every session into a fight against myself.
That’s probably one of the biggest lessons this process is already teaching me: not every session should feel heroic.
A Backyard Ultra punishes athletes who constantly live in the middle zone — too hard to recover, too easy to truly adapt. So instead of chasing exhaustion every day, I’m focusing on building durability.
Long Zone 2 runs, controlled threshold sessions, time on feet, learning how to fuel while moving, learning how my stomach reacts after hours, and practicing pacing that feels almost “too easy” at first. Because in this format, going slightly too hard early can become a disaster much later.
And maybe the most important thing: learning how to restart.
Learning How to Restart
That’s why I’m not approaching this with endless junk mileage or a single heroic training run meant to prove something. I will include a couple of longer 6–8 hour Backyard-style simulations, mixing running and hike-running, to expose the body and mind to sustained fatigue, fueling, pacing, and repetition. But even that will depend on how my body responds over these four weeks and after the first simulation itself. This process is still a test, something I’ll have to learn and adjust through experience, paying attention to how my body absorbs the load rather than forcing it blindly.
The goal is not destruction. It’s learning how to stay functional, composed, and efficient for as long as possible. Because that’s what this race actually is. Not one long effort — but repeated decisions under accumulated fatigue.
I think many hybrid athletes underestimate how difficult that can become.
We’re used to pushing hard. We know how to suffer. But sustaining yourself without emotionally overreacting to discomfort is another skill entirely.
“HYROX teaches you how to suffer hard. Backyard teaches you not to waste yourself too early.”
Quiet Endurance
And honestly, this project connects to something much deeper for me outside sport. I’m a mother of two daughters, and after moving back to Spain with them while their father continues working abroad, it’s mostly just us. In many ways, life itself taught me about endurance long before I ever signed up for this race.
Not dramatic endurance. Quiet endurance.
The kind where you’re tired and still have responsibilities. The kind where nobody claps for consistency. The kind where you still need to function even when mentally exhausted.
And maybe that’s why the Backyard format resonates with me so much.
Because it’s not really about one big moment of heroism. It’s about your ability to keep showing up for another loop.
Sport becomes very honest there.
You can’t hide behind hype. You can’t fake preparation after hour six. You can’t negotiate with poor pacing, poor nutrition, or poor recovery decisions forever. Eventually, the race exposes everything.
And strangely, I think that’s exactly why this experience can help me grow as a HYROX athlete too.
Fueling for Function, Not Ego
HYROX teaches you how to suffer hard.
Backyard teaches you not to waste yourself too early.
One teaches intensity under pressure. The other teaches emotional control under accumulation. And for a hybrid athlete, I think learning both matters.
Even the way I’m fueling has changed through this process. In HYROX, nutrition often feels connected to performance and explosiveness. In a Backyard Ultra, fueling becomes something quieter but just as important: protecting clarity, stability, and the ability to keep making good decisions hour after hour.
Over these four weeks, I’ll need to eat more, recover better, and take care of my body in a much more intentional way. And honestly, that may be one of the biggest challenges too. Between training, work, responsibilities, and daily life, recovery is never perfect. But this block is teaching me that preparing for something like this isn’t only about the sessions themselves, it’s about giving the body enough support to still function when the fatigue finally arrives.
This isn’t about becoming smaller. It’s about becoming more capable.
More Than a Race
And beyond the physical side, this entire process is also becoming something important for TEAM BADDAZZ.
Not as a marketing campaign. Not as “look at us.” But as a real project built around performance, process, uncertainty, and evolution.
We’re not trying to position ourselves as elite ultrarunners overnight. We’re documenting what it actually looks like when hybrid athletes step into an unfamiliar endurance space while still holding onto their identity.
That means showing the fatigue. The doubts. The logistics. The fueling mistakes. The gear testing. The recovery. The balancing of strength and endurance. The mental negotiations that happen before anyone even reaches the start line.
And honestly, I think that’s more valuable than pretending to already have all the answers.
The event itself is also connected to something much bigger than sport, supporting the fight against cancer, which makes the idea of endurance feel even more meaningful.
Right now, I still don’t know exactly how my body will react once I’m there.
That uncertainty is real.
But maybe that’s part of the point.
I trust the work I’m doing. I trust the process. I trust the strength I’ve built through years of hybrid training, motherhood, pressure, discipline, and learning how to continue when things get uncomfortable.
But I also respect the unknown.
Not pure runner.
Not pure lifter.
Not here to fit into one category.
Hybrid athlete, going ultra.
One more loop. Be BADDAZZ 🖤.
