Phil Gore’s Project 168 was always going to be remembered as an extreme test of endurance, but the bigger question now is what that effort has done to his body. After running 1,019.3 kilometres across 152 hours at Alfred Skeet Reserve in Forrestdale, the Australian ultrarunner is back in hospital for a third time as he tries to work through a left-leg complication that has already complicated his recovery.
The latest update came on Monday, when Gore said on Instagram that he had returned to the hospital after seeking a second opinion from a sports doctor. He went to the emergency department at Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth and was awaiting surgery, a significant development after he was first discharged from Perth Royal Hospital on Sept. 9, when doctors believed the issue in his left leg was a hematoma.
A run that still changed the numbers
Project 168 was Gore’s personal backyard ultra challenge, and even though it fell short of 168 yards, the attempt still raised more than A$300,000 for Telethon 7. That detail matters because it keeps the achievement from being reduced to a medical update alone. This was not just a difficult recovery from a hard race. It was the aftermath of one of the most demanding endurance efforts Gore has ever attempted, and it produced a result that mattered far beyond the finish line.
Gore’s own comments help explain why he chose to make the challenge personal. In an official format, he said, runners have to rely on others to push the distance. He also noted that there have been times he has reached 114 or 119 yards and felt he had more to give, only to stop because the event was shutting down. That is why he decided to take it into his own hands and turn it into a solo challenge.
Recovery, not just performance, is now the story
What makes this more complicated is that Gore has said this is the worst he has pulled up from any event he has done. He also acknowledged that it is probably not surprising given how far he ran and that he kept going until he could not continue, rather than stopping when the field narrowed to the final runners. In other words, the physical cost was built into the idea from the beginning.
That leaves him in a race against time as much as against distance. Gore said he is taking things day by day, and he has a race in five weeks: the Satellite Championships, which begin on Oct. 17 and are also considered the Backyard Ultra World Championships. He said he is hoping to be ready in time, but the medical update makes that far less certain than it would have looked before Project 168 ended.
For now, the biggest lesson from Gore’s attempt is that extraordinary endurance efforts do not end at the finish line. Sometimes the performance is only half the story. The other half is what the body can absorb afterward, and in Gore’s case, that story is still being written in hospital.
