Camille Herron sets six-day world record
American runner Camile Herron set a women’s world record for the six-day distance. She recorded 901.76km, 560.330 miles running in the lululemon FURTHER event, held on a 2.56-mile (4.119km) lap around Lake Cahuilla, Palm Springs, California, Adrian Stott reports.
Her distance improved the previous record of 883.663km/549.063 miles, set over 30 years ago by Sandy Barwick of New Zealand in 1990, by just over 11 miles/18km.
The event began last Wednesday (March 6) at 5pm California time and concluded after the full 144 hours on Tuesday (March 12).
Along the way, Herron also broke several intermediate records or, as the longer ultra records are technically known, “world best performances.”
These were:
300 miles – 59hr 54min 58sec
500km – 62:50:45
3 days – 342.091 miles
600km – 81:23:38
400 miles – 88:34:26
4 days – 429.836 miles
700km – 98:33:59
800km – 117:44:55
500 miles – 118:19:17
5 days – 501.753 miles
900km – 142:40:58
6 days – 560.330 miles
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Herron already held the world's best marks for 50 miles, 100 miles and 48 hours. She had also held the 24-hour record until recently, when it was broken by the Japanese runner Miho Nakata at December’s IAU 24-hour World Championship.
The fact that Barwick's record had stood for 30 years is a testament to how good a performance that was. And it was set at a time when Barwick and the British duo of Eleanor Robinson and Hilary Walker, among others, were pioneers in pushing out the boundaries of women’s performance in ultra races.
Herron had even speculated pre-race that she could get close to the men’s six-day world record of 644.2 miles (or 1036.8km) set by the Greek legend Yiannis Kouros almost 20 years ago in 2005.
Although the reality of how good a record that was will now have been recognised by Herron, one hopes her performance will inspire other women to reach out and explore the limits of performance over six days and longer.
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Seasoned multi-day observers are already speculating that if she attempts another six-day event then slightly more conservative pacing in the first 48 hours could lead to a much bigger total.
The race had ten other female competitors of all standards. Second place went to another US athlete, Leah Yingling, a top 10 finisher in both UTMB and Western States 100 in 2023, who ran 399.9miles /643.54km in her first race beyond 100 miles. Third was former USA 100km international and Leadville 100 winner, the experienced Devon Yanko, who was also making her first foray into live multi-day running with 310.7 miles/500km.
Lululemon, the global sportswear company behind the event, invested a substantial budget into what they proclaimed was a race "created with the multiple purposes of providing lululemon athletes with the opportunity to go after several distance and time-based world records and personal bests, gathering data on female performance factors, and publicising new apparel and shoes".
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While Herron, Yanko and Yingling certainly have impressive running CVs, many of the other 10 participants, all lululemon ambassadors or influencers, had varying sporting or fitness backgrounds.
To their credit, the organisers seemed to do the homework to ensure all was in place for potential record attempts from Herron with course distance certification from USATF, regular drug testing from USADA and a top-level ultra-distance official flown in from London to check the course and organisational set-up were in order.
Full results HERE
