Camille Herron runs 560 miles to set new 6-day world record
At Further, Lululemon’s women’s-only six-day ultramarathon which concluded on Tuesday, Camille Herron ran 560.33 miles to break the 6-day women’s world record. The US athlete racked up a staggering 220 laps of the 2.56-mile course, averaging 93.38 miles of running per day, and surpassed the old record — Sandra Barwick’s 549.063 miles from 1990 — by over 11 miles.
From 6 to 12 March, 10 women — Lululemon ambassadors from around the globe —attempted to run the furthest distance of their careers on a loop course at Lake Cahuilla in La Quinta, California. To support the athletes, Further was held in partnership with the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific, the goal being to advance women-first research and address the gender gap in sports science.
Some of the other top finishers included Leah Yingling, one of the best ultramarathoners in the US, who cranked out an impressive 157 laps (400 miles), as well as Montana Farrah-Seaton, who logged the third-most laps at 124 (315.82 miles).
Ahead of the race, Yingling told RW that the furthest distance she'd covered to date was 108 miles in around 26 hours at last year's UTMB.
'Historically, running on a flat loop for days at a time has not been something that interested me,' she said, speaking about Further's loop course. 'I've always found myself being more attracted to mountain races and trail races. [But] this is a special challenge – all of the community around it and all of my fellow ambassadors turned the switch in my head. With how well supported the event is, I thought: "I can be competitive in this".'
Devon Yanko, who ran 313.3 miles (123 laps), also told RW: 'It's nice to have a theory of what I can do, but I'm excited to actually see.'
Herron posted on Instagram after the race, laying out the 13 world records she set on her way to the 6-day (144 hour) record.
Coming into the competition, Herron was the women’s world 48-hour record holder – the third best performance in the world behind only two men – and the first runner to have won all three road IAU World Championships for 50K, 100K and 24 hours.
Throughout the multi-day challenge, the 10 women were allowed to take breaks to eat, sleep or accept help from their crews at any time, and there was no minimum quota for time or distance covered each day. Each athlete had individual aspirations for Further. Herron was curious to test her outermost limits and see what women are capable of as ultra endurance runners, while author and inclusivity activist Mirna Valerio had a goal of logging 12 hours of 'joyful running' each day.
Further wasn’t just about supporting Herron and the other athletes on their long distance journeys, though. In a pre-race panel discussion, Herron said that in the year leading up to Further, she had the most support she’s ever received in her running career. 'It shows in what I was able to do last year,' she said, referencing her 48-hour world record.
Beyond Herron’s success, there’s research coming out of the initiative. A 2014 audit of select sport science and sports medicine journals found that 4-13% of published studies were female-only, with around 90% of those studies using incorrect methods to review a woman’s menstrual cycle.
So, in an effort to better understand female athlete performance, all of the Further athletes were involved in research for about a year leading up to the ultramarathon. Researchers also used various testing methods within the race, which looked particularly at biomechanics, to explore questions such as whether female ultrarunners have superior fatigue resistance to male ultrarunners, and to analyse the overall physiological and biomechanical effects of running for six days straight. Lululemon and Canadian Sport Institute Pacific aim to publish initial findings later this year.
Mallory Creveling contributed to reporting.
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