Dan Richmond wins the IOM Backyard Ultra: Training, trauma and triumph

Dan had played rugby since the age of six and was scrum half for Ramsey's first team. Away from the pitch he works as a strength and conditioning coach. He was fit and committed, and he loved the game. That changed in October 2024 with a single tackle. A knee caught him in the eye socket and caused a blowout fracture. He woke up the next morning with his face badly swollen.

He was sent to Liverpool for surgery, where his eye socket was rebuilt with titanium. For the next two months he was largely bed-bound. His vision had changed, his eye watered constantly, and every few weeks he was back in Liverpool to see the specialist, with no clear answer on whether the damage was permanent. His rugby career was over.

While he recovered, the rugby club kept him involved in his strength and conditioning role, but it wasn't the same as playing. Once he was moving again, he was restless and looking for something bigger.

That something turned out to be running. One night in late January he entered the Ramsey half marathon on a whim. He had no plan, just a need to get a race on the calendar and see what happened.

As he started to take his training more seriously, Dan turned to Ollie Lockley for coaching. He loved his first Manx Mountain Marathon, even if it taught him some hard lessons. Coming out of Russian Mines he cramped for the first time in his life, which he blames on under-fuelling, and Gary Kelly helped him round for much of the rest of the race. The final section was a struggle. Dan puts it down to a big sugar crash, and he walked much of the last stretch to the finish.

Things started to come together on the road. In August he ran 1:20 for the half marathon in Ramsey, and in September he travelled to Oslo chasing a sub-2:50 marathon. He went through halfway in 1:21, hit the red line in the second half and finished in 2:50. He is quick to point out that the course measured 26.4 miles. It was also the first time he had tried to kick with 400 metres to go and found nothing left. Even so, he loved the city and the whole experience.

By winter, though, the road was starting to bore him. He wanted to do something a bit nuts. Nikki suggested he have a chat with Orran about hill reps and fell running, and before long he was training with the ESTR group. The hill reps became a staple of his week and the trail sessions sharpened his speed over rough ground, but the bigger change was the company. There was always someone in the group to chase on a climb, and Orran and Nikki were never far away with advice and encouragement. The gains came quickly, and the biggest were on the descents, once Dan started backing himself.

That confidence came at a cost. Out on the fells, Dan admits he was getting a bit too cocky on a descent. He landed on the side of his ankle on a rock he hadn't seen and tore two ligaments, both grade two. It ruled him out for most of the rest of the year. He came back in late October with low-impact runs on the beach, moved on to the road, and was back on the fells in November. His fitness had dipped, but much less than he feared. Around the same time Tom Felton-Smith joined the group, and the two were soon pushing each other in sessions.

What surprised him was that his nerve on the descents survived. He knew exactly what had caused the injury, and it wasn't a lack of ability. Years of strength and conditioning had left him with strong legs, and he was determined to get the skill back.

On New Year's Day he was racing again at the St John's fell race, finishing sixth in a quick field. Ard Whallian, later that month, was a harder lesson. His navigation wasn't there yet, and although Orran had led a recce of the course in the snow, Dan had been too cold to take much in. He still finished ahead of Orran. Then came second place at Carraghan. That was the moment he realised his fitness was the real thing, and he started to believe he belonged.

Black Combe was Dan's first race off the island, and it was humbling. He expected to be quick, but the field went hard from the gun. He struggled through the middle with a stitch, in a t-shirt that was too warm. On the way back down from the stream, everything clicked, and he made up around fifteen places on the final descent alone. For the first time he was just another runner in a field of serious athletes, and he loved it.

His first win came at Mount Karrin. This time he prepared properly. Like every course that year, he recced it in company, sometimes with the wider ESTR group and sometimes with Orran and Tom, then went out again the day before to find his lines. The race turned into a battle on the descents, slipping through briars and over rocks. When he hit the road, he put the hammer down all the way to the finish.

From there, the year quietly gathered pace. He won the summer league and finished second in the Manx fell league. He trained for the Manx Mountain Marathon alongside Orran and took nearly an hour off his time, crossing the line just behind him. He travelled to the English Championship fell races with Orran, and often Nikki, who had been firmly in his corner since that first conversation, and moved a little further up the field each time. In between there were big days out in the Lakes with Orran, including legs of the Bob Graham Round.

The bigger shift came away from racing. Dan went to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow as part of the medical team, surrounded by Olympians and world champions, and came home wanting to be even more focused. In mid-September, with three weeks' planning, he and his brother went to Chamonix. The brief was to take it easy with the Backyard coming up. He was out on a two-hour run within three hours of arriving, and by the end of the week he had run almost every trail out of the town. The trip convinced him that if he wanted to close the gap on the natural mountain goats, he needed to spend serious time in serious mountains.

The format is simple and brutal. Runners complete a 4.167-mile lap every hour, on the hour. Finish inside the hour and you rest until the next start. Miss the start and you are out. The last runner standing has to complete one more lap alone to take the win.

Dan arrived with no benchmarks and no plans to place. His big target for the year had been the Manx Mountain Marathon, and that was done. On the bank holiday weekend he ran two six-hour simulations in the forest and was surprised how easy they felt. Across those two weeks he logged more than seventeen hours of running without it registering as fatigue, and he took confidence from having already covered a quarter of a 24-hour effort. In the weeks before, he and Orran talked through his training, his planning and the mindset he would need. Helping at the working party the weekend before, barrowing stone around the course, made it feel like his race too.

The build-up was not smooth. The van broke down, his kit was spread across the house, and he didn't start packing properly until the Tuesday. He sat down and wrote a step-by-step plan covering dusk, overnight, morning, wet weather and warm weather, bought his food and charged everything. He was still scrambling on Thursday night, but he slept well. On race morning it was fruit loaf and orange juice, then down to Archallagan to set up. He picked the worst pitch available, in the bottom corner, and filed it under lessons learned.

The first six laps were all conversation. Dan ran with Charlie and Chris, talking about life rather than pacing, and fuelled on two scones and a gel per lap, alternating electrolytes and water in his soft flasks. Then the rain came. He and Rory Poole were on the boardwalks when the sky opened. Dan picked up the pace and came back in 42 minutes to find his gazebo underwater. He took shelter with James Reed and Jamie Callister, changed into full waterproofs, and stress-ate an entire packet of Jaffa Cakes.

At 8pm he switched to his overnight plan. Between laps it was dry robe, headphones and eye mask, sleeping in ten-minute bursts from 8pm to 1am and five-minute bursts from 1am to 5am, then waking at eight minutes to the hour [CHECK: transcript says '5:52'], putting wet kit back on and going again. He swapped solid food for carb mix in a bottle, sipped through each lap, which his mum and dad had filled and waiting. By 5am he felt refreshed.

Of the night itself, he remembers almost nothing. It was a blur of getting round, getting back to sleep and getting out again, staying cosy in his waterproofs throughout. His one clear memory is sneezing violently and breaking wind at the same moment.

With daylight he felt good. Around 9am he changed out of his waterproofs into dry kit and sipped a single 250ml can of Red Bull over three hours. His legs were ticking over with no real soreness, and his attention turned to the people around him. He was more interested in getting others to the 24-hour mark than in his own position, chatting to anyone who was struggling and keeping them talking about what they would do next. It was that sort of race. The clock was the opponent, and the other runners were mostly company. As 24 hours approached, he told his brother and Regan to plan for a second night, with the same 8pm sleep routine.

It never came to that. Tommy stopped after lap 29, still capable of 50-minute laps, and Dan had hoped he would keep going for a few more. That left Dan and David. They ran lap 30 together, chatting as they went, but David was seeing things on the course and struggling badly, and he did not start lap 31. His 30 laps earned him second place and the assist. It was Nikki, who had pointed him towards the fells in the first place, who gave Dan the time. He realised the race was his if he could complete one more lap alone.

He had walked the climbs on every lap and did so again, but he was running everything else and feeling good. Charlie had set the fastest lap of the race so far, just over 34 minutes, and partway round Dan worked out what it would take to beat it. He made his decision. He came home in under 34 minutes, the new fastest lap, 31 laps and 129 miles after the start, and put on the crown.

He had said he had no plans to place. Anyone who had watched his year could have told him otherwise.