Last One Standing Ultra

Keep Starting Until You Cannot

Last One Standing is not a race against a distance. It is a six-mile loop repeated on a ninety-minute cycle: finish the loop, rest whatever is left of the ninety minutes, and start again when the clock says so. Miss the window and you are out. Sixteen laps run that way, and a seventeenth decides the overall winners.

The format changes what the event asks of you. A conventional ultra rewards pace judgment over a known distance; this rewards the ability to keep getting up. Finishing lap fourteen in good shape is worth nothing if you cannot start lap fifteen on time, and the runners who last are rarely the fastest ones early.

The Loop

The course uses the paved Mayor's Loop trails along the Virgin River, based out of Crosby Family Confluence Park in St. George. It is asphalt rather than singletrack, which matters over sixteen laps — this is a surface you can run in the dark without turning an ankle on rock.

Support on the loop is deliberately thin, so the start-finish area becomes the practical heart of the event: this is a self-supported race with a base camp, and what you have laid out there is what you get.

December, and the Dark

Running this in December in St. George is the point. The valley's winter is what makes an overnight event possible here at all — the daytime is mild enough to run in, and the night is cold but not dangerous in the way a northern Utah night would be.

It does mean a long stretch of darkness on the loop, and a large temperature swing between the afternoon and the small hours. Plan the layers you will want at three in the morning, not the ones you want at the start.

Kids and Relays

There is a children's division on a slightly shorter loop of about 5.3 miles, following the adult course without its opening out-and-back section, and children may cover it by non-motorized means rather than strictly on foot. A relay option splits the commitment across a team.

Both exist for the same reason: the format is more interesting than it is exclusive, and the organizers have kept a way in for people who are not going to run through the night.

What You Take Home

A finisher medal comes after the first loop, so nobody who starts leaves with nothing — which quietly tells you what kind of event this is. The prizes are structured to reward continuing rather than winning.

Who It Suits

Runners curious about the last-one-standing format without traveling far, anyone building winter mileage, and — because of the kids' division and the lap-by-lap awards — families who want to be part of an endurance event rather than watch one. If you are visiting to run, the same trail system carries the Virgin River Half Marathon in February, and the county's endurance calendar runs from here through to the Ironman 70.3 in May.