Shepparton’s Luke Slater runs 275km in 41 hours during world record Dead Cow Gully Backyard Ultra event

Above him: a moon that looked like it might fall out of the sky.

Inside him: a question, whispered on every loop of the 6.71km course — can I go again?

He did. Forty-one times.

Slater, a Shepparton-based lawyer by day and boxer by night, recently completed 41 loops — or in layman’s terms, 275km — in the 2025 Dead Cow Gully Backyard Ultra held from June 21-26 in Queensland.

Here’s the premise — runners are given one hour to finish each loop.

Do it quicker than an hour and you have the time in between to rest before the next lap.

Don’t and you’re out.

Slater finished 22nd out of nearly 300 runners in the same race where Australia’s Phil Gore broke the world record by running 119 loops — or 798.49km — over five delirious days ahead of New Zealand’s Sam Harvey.

“In summary, I ran for 41 hours and ran 275km,” Slater said.

“You're getting in with somewhere between six and 15 minutes to rehydrate, get some food on board, change clothing, change shoes if necessary and, possibly, have a short sleep.

“I was getting about five or six three or four-minute sleeps in that time, which is good progress for me because I haven't really slept previously.”

Progress.

It’s a curious word when you’re blistered and battling tendinitis.

But as Slater reached the final 22, his name ushered among revered company, another word reverberated around his fatigued mind.

Pride.

“Literally all of the other athletes on there were either their national champion — there were about 14 or 15 different nationalities — or they were former world record holders,” he said.

“It was so surreal to be sitting in my bed on Thursday morning at 3am watching them (Gore and Harvey) break a world record and to think that on Saturday and Sunday night, I was literally running next to them and talking to them in the same event.

“It was pretty emotional, actually, just to be part of that world record event.

“But in the end ... I think I had tendinitis across both my ankles, which was the main factor that just stopped me from running any more.”

What separates Slater from the rest — and there is plenty that does — isn’t just the volume of pain he’s willing to swallow, but the context around it.

Born in England, Slater has called Shepparton home for more than two decades.

He spends his working hours in a courtroom and, yet, he is somehow carving out a space in the rarefied air of ultra-endurance.

And his entry into this peculiar sport wasn’t exactly deliberate.

“One September morning in 2023, I was walking around the lake and I saw people running around and they looked like they were dying,” he said.

“I wondered what on earth they were doing and it turned out to be Shepparton's Backyard Ultra.

“From that moment I thought ‘that looks pretty crazy, I'd love to have a go’.”

He’s been chasing pain ever since.

It’s not a metaphor. Slater is honest about what drives him.

“I can't describe it; when you've run a couple hundred kilometres and you're in the middle of a cow field at 3am on your own with a head torch on, you're in severe pain from blisters and you've got an opportunity to quit every hour that you get back to your tent,” he said.

“To be honest, running towards pain has been like a bit of a socially acceptable form of self-harm.

“You've got some control over the pain and it just makes you feel a bit more bulletproof when it comes to real life.

“You can be running at 5am, feeling like you want to die.

“And when you’re still going at 7 and you’re thinking, ‘I've just run 200km through the night and now the sun's up’ — it's such an exhilarating feeling.”

A cocktail of mental tenacity and physical curiosity led him to train up to 125km a week.

And that balance of suffering and joy reached its peak at Dead Cow Gully.

Not just because of the kilometres.

For Slater, the most meaningful moment came from his crew: his daughter, Della.

“I had my 16-year-old daughter there crewing me, which was a big effort for her because she, during that time, couldn't really sleep because I needed support once I got back to base,” Slater said.

“That is such a difficult job and she was on her own and we were in the middle of nowhere in Queensland.

“She only got about three or four hours of sleep in 42 hours — that was a big disadvantage because a lot of the other athletes have two or three people rotating.

“So that was pretty special, doing it as a joint effort with her.”

So what’s next for Slater?

While he’s still nursing wrecked feet, his mind has already begun preparing for the Shepparton Backyard Ultra in September, which now carries “silver ticket” status — a guaranteed entry to the Australian team for the Backyard Ultra World Championships.

Except, there’s a catch.

“I'm not an Australian citizen — I still have my British passport,” Slater said.

That technicality means Slater now ranks inside the top 15 backyard runners for Great Britain.

His countrymen, he notes, are “not as strong” as Australians in this event, which means 40-plus hours is enough to earn selection.

While the current benchmark to make the Australian team is north of 60 hours, Slater’s unwavering grit, willingness to smash the pain barrier and drive to make it to sunrise means there’s only one thing he’ll be doing at the next Backyard Ultra.

Pushing past what he previously deemed impossible.

“I'm hoping to knock up at least 48 hours at Shepparton in September,” he said.