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Vegan ultrarunner Harvey Lewis recently ran 462 miles in 111 hours, a personal best, at Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra 2025 in Bell Buckle, Tennessee.
Big’s is the original backyard ultra, invented by the iconic Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell and named after his bulldog. Competitors run a 4.167-mile loop once per hour, every hour, until failure, covering around 100 miles per full day. The last person running wins.
Read more: Vegan Ultra Runner Damian Hall Wins 2025’s Lakeland 100 Race
Runners complete laps on trails during the day and switch to the road at night. Around lap number 99, after running more than 400 miles, Lewis fell. He ran another 50 miles (12 laps and 12 hours) after that, and later found out he had broken two ribs.
Lewis told Plant Based News (PBN) that he was the third-to-final person still running. According to Great Vegan Athletes, Lewis broke a US national record during this year’s race, and completing 111 laps earned him the joint sixth-best result of all time for the backyard ultra format, yet another significant achievement for the runner.
Phil Gore, the men’s overall winner with 475 miles in 114 laps, and Ivo Steyaert, who took second with 113 laps, both achieved course record-breaking performances. Sarah Perry, a British runner and teacher from Cumbria and the top women’s finisher, ran 395.83 miles in 95 laps and set a new women’s world record for the course.
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Harvey Lewis is 100 percent ‘vegan fueled’
Lewis has previously credited a plant-based diet with aiding his endurance and recovery, and has achieved a notable series of wins, records, and personal bests.
In 2023, he won the Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra with 108 loops and 450 miles in five days, breaking the previous world record by around 25 miles. He has competed in 24-hour endurance races since the mid-1990s, and won Ohio’s Backyard Ultra in March.
Lewis has now been a vegetarian for nearly 30 years and a vegan for almost a decade. The plant-based athlete is 49 years old, and in addition to his notable running career, continues to teach at a creative and performing arts high school in Cincinnati. He told PBN about some of his go-to vegan snacks while running this year’s Big’s.
“My favorite vegan fuel during the race were Abe’s vegan muffins, chips and hummus, many different soups from lentil to black bean, pad thai, vegan mashed potatoes mixed with a bit of vegetable broth, vegan mac and cheez, and much more,” said Lewis. “All vegan fueled!”
Read more: ‘What I Eat After Running 50km As A Vegan’
