Jasmin Paris achieved something extraordinary to become the first female outright winner of the 268 mile Montane Spine Race on Wednesday (January 16).

The phenomenal athlete wasn’t finished there though, and after covering the 268 mile route in 83 hours, 12 minutes and 23 seconds, she dismantled Eoin Keith’s overall course record by more than 12 hours.

Congratulations to Jasmin Paris for breaking, sorry destroying, the men’s and women’s course record for @TheSpineRace when winning outright tonight.

268 miles, in winter, in 83hrs 12 minutes. That is some going. Bravo.

— Fast Running (@FastRunning) January 16, 2019

In a time when female athletes are seeing more – but still not an equal share – of media coverage, one sport seems to be doing a huge amount to inspire other women to break boundaries. Ultra running, I like to think, is leading the way. 

The sport involves running anything longer than the traditional marathon distance of 26.2 miles. It might be a niche one itself, but the wow factor often sees it make headlines in running media, if not mainstream media.

For any ultra runner there are a bunch of fantastic women at the front of the sport inspiring all of us. They’re taking not only women’s ultra running, but ultra running as a whole to new levels. Just exactly what Paris demonstrated along the Pennine Way.

Why?

Many will point out that the longer distances suit female runners better. It can be due to factors such as how fuel is burnt within our bodies and just how much pain and suffering can be endured. That said, physiologically there is still a similar 10-11% difference between world records. Male athletes should, physically, have more potential. Ultra running isn’t just about the physical side though.

Ultra running is about dealing with pain, being organised and pacing well. You need to forget about your ego and just grind it out when the going gets tough. It’s a wonderful leveller across the board and as a male I take full advantage of this too, beating much better runners over longer distances.

I have to be careful how I write this, but hopefully, the sentiment comes across correctly. Even though I disagree that female runners are more physically suited to ultra running – they are better ultra runners!

Being a good ultra runner isn’t about your VO2 Max, top speed or how quick you run a marathon. It’s about reaching the best of your own potential and the women beat the men at this nearly every time. Being a good ultra runner is about being the best you can be. Not just running but managing everything within your control to get to that finish line as soon as you can, not trying to get there ‘quickly’.

These ladies

Plenty of ultra races have been won outright by female athletes, but some might have put this down to weak fields. I even heard this week that it was “good weather for the Spine this year, everyone will beat records”.

Yet the course record holder was racing as well. Irish international Eoin Keith toed the very same start line, in the same conditions, as Paris did. She was just the better ultra runner on the day.

The same can be said for Camille Herron at the Desert Solstice 24hr race in December. The Nike runner beat the world record for 24hrs, but also achieved the feat while racing some of the best male ultra runners such as Patrick Reagan and World 12hr record holder Zach Bitter.

It’s not just that ladies are winning outright, but it’s the dominating style in which they are doing it with.

RELATED: Camille Herron: Breaking world records, 100-miles at a time

Both Paris and Herron were there to race. They were racing everyone and gender was not in the equation. If you’re there alongside them wearing a pair of trainers, then you’re finishing second. Whoever you are, if you’re racing this ladies in their sport then you’re in for a rough ride.

Holly Page was winning fell races outright last year and travelling the world to win Sky Running races too. Backpacking and hitchhiking to start lines and still beating the world’s best.

Our housemate, Swedish Mimmi Kotka, strikes fear in the hearts of everyone on a startline too. Major international races like the Mont Blanc 90km and the Annecy Maxi Race Mimmi is in the top 10 overall. My wife Natalie White streams past everyone whilst descending in a race. You can even tell it annoys some of the men. Some try to stop her coming past, but that won’t hold her back. 

Personal inspiration

The list of women that I look up to in my sport doesn’t stop there. At the very beginning of my career, women like Mimi Anderson were running like I could only dream of.

In my first really big event, the 145 mile Grand Union Canal race, I was delighted with my seventh spot and 31 hour plus time. But my friend Claire Shelley had bounced along to a 30 hour finish.

I was still trying to get into the 24hr running squad when the likes of Debbie Martin-Consani, Sharon Law and Emily Gelder were winning medals and running great distances.

Actually my first run for Great Britain I was just hoping to equal the PB of Emily as she was a teammate. Gelder had won an individual medal at the last champs. We were actually told off for running together as you’re not allowed to pace people in a different race. Seeing as my PB at the time was significantly less than Emily’s I guess I was the one accepting illegal pacing, but I was just running with a peer who I looked up to.

Then you have the likes of Herron and Courtney Dauwalter breaking boundaries in the USA. Herron is setting world records that, for me, make the men’s world record seem not as totally impossible as it once did. If Herron thinks she can do it, then maybe I can get a bit closer too. The sheer belief of such a great athlete inspires me to be better than I am.

Female ultra runners for the win

Our sport of ultra running, as strange as it might be, has some of the best female role models in sport as a whole. I could reel off a dozen names of women who inspire me, many mentioned in this article already. 

The media should be shouting from the rooftops about Jasmin Paris, a new mother who works as a vet and still studying, setting a new course record for this race. How great a message could this be? Hats off to Matt Butler at the i newspaper for running the story. The BBC Breakfast show even did an interview, but it should be even more mainstream. It should be everywhere.

So I’m writing this simply to say well done to a fellow ultra runner, but also to highlight how the inov8 athlete is one of many amazing runners I look up to.

What Jasmin Paris did this January isn’t just a one-off. She’s been breaking new ground in the mountain and fell running world for the last few years, and her records, be it the Spine or the Bob Graham Round, will stand the test of time. 

RELATED: Holly Page wins fell race outright and sets course record

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The post Taking inspiration from the women of ultra running appeared first on Fast Running.

Camille Herron won the race outright and set a new world best at the Desert Solstice Invitational 24hr race in Phoenix, Arizona on Sunday (December 9)

So just how far one woman can run in a single day? The answer, incase you wondered, is 162.919 miles or 262km.

The Nike athlete broke the world record for 100 miles last year and set a 12 hour best too, but this is her first full effort at the 24hr distance.

The event, organised by Aravaipa Running, has 33 athletes running around a 400m track at Central High School in Midtown, Phoenix. Runners all have targets of open and age group National and World records.

The format

When the gun went off at 8:00 on Saturday morning the intrepid runners all headed off casually around the first bend of many ahead. The goal was simple, to run as many laps as possible in a 24hr period. Apart from changing direction every four hours, there wasn’t much more to it. Sounds easy right?

The difficulty in this type of event often comes from pacing, fuelling, hydration, muscle damage or just sheer boredom. Runners with world class ultra marathon pedigree have come unstuck at 24hr races in the past and this weekend was no different.

One such athlete was world 12 hour record holder Zach Bitter. The Altra sponsored speedster set the early pace with Herron and went through 100 miles in around 13 hours, with Herron not far behind. Both runners looked like they were working hard and still had 11 hours left to run.

It may have been a little short of the American male 100 mile marker for track (which Bitter owns anyway), but Herron posted a 13:25:00 track 100 mile record en route to the 24hr. It had previously been held by Gina Slaby at 13:45. Such was the pace though Bitter, in his first 24hr attempt, struggled soon after and it was his body letting him down as Herron surged onwards.

RELATED: Fast Running interview with Camille after her 100 mile world record.

The record

Once the tall ultra runner with an unconventional stride hit the front of the race there was no looking back. Apart from a short blip around 18 hours, where Herron changed shoes and walked a few laps, the record of Patrycja Bereznowska kept her moving forward.

Using Maurten energy drink and Spring energy gels the tall former 100k World Champion continued to eat up the track ahead of her, but visibly slowed in the latter stages. The record predictor suggested we’d see the mark go at 21-22 hours but as the hours passed it looked like the buffer had gone down to fifteen minutes.

In the final 30 minutes we got closer and closer and only a full collapse would have stopped the record being broken. Some wondered if Herron would stop at the previous mark or just beyond, but it seemed to give her new life. Poland’s Patrycja Bereznowska has only held the record for under two years and the American wants to keep it for a while it seems.

Herron was supported by her husband Connor Holt and his crewing and encouragement seemed to play a big part in the success as teamwork is an important part of 24hr running.

Future showdown

What might be exciting in the future is that we have athletes like Herron and Berenowska competing in the same era. Often great athletes do not meet when records and limits are being redefined, but with other great females, like USA’s Courtney Dauwaulter and Poland’s Aleksandra Niwinska, all hopefully aiming to compete at the 2019 World 24hr Championships in Albi, France next year we might see the record go again.

It is an empowering time for women’s sport and there is no greater example than in ultra running. Not only are Herron, and others, beating all the men in their races, they’re also setting course records and running times that might turn the European and World championships on their heads too.

It’s worth mentioning that it was a good day for US men’s 24hr running too with a win in the men’s race (but second overall) for Jacob Jackson with 157.58 miles, and three other men also breaking 150 miles. School teacher Greg Armstrong actually ran his whole 155.09 mile distance in a fancy pair of sandals and his feet looked a little sore by the end. Kudos Greg.

Full results can be found here.

Watching the events unfold as Herron beat my own personal best too, all I can say is I better get out running again soon.

Not only is Camille inspiring female ultra runners, but the men best all get their act together too. We’ve already had a female outright winner for the 24hr Commonwealth championships in Britain’s Lizzy Hawker, could we see a female outright winner at the Worlds in 2019?

RELATED: Fast Running interview with Camille after her 100 mile world record.

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The post Camille Herron runs 162.9 miles and breaks 24hr world record appeared first on Fast Running.

Herron, in her first full 100-mile race, broke the world best time for 100 miles, and not just by a few minutes, but shattered it by an hour.

“Nike actually got me a new pair on the Thursday before the race as I had trained my others into the ground. I love them,” says the new world record holder, referring to the shoe worn by Shalane Flanagan en route to her New York City Marathon victory.

Crossing the line in 12:42:39 and averaging a pace of 7:38 per mile, the 35-year-old made light work of Gina Slaby’s 13:45:49 track record set in 2016.

Everyone who talks about the 100-mile distance does so with trepidation and a touch of fear. It’s going to hurt, at some point and the dreaded bonk of a marathon will feel like a sneeze in comparison to a 100-mile bonk.

“I kept expecting a bear to jump on my back and reduce me to a crawl in the second half” jokes Herron. You might assume it was the expectation of a real-life bear, an unwanted companion known to join US trail races. However, the metaphorical bear Herron was waiting for thankfully never came.

Fuelled by sports drinks, gels and an odd rewarding beer in the second half of the race, Herron kept everything in motion on her way to clocking the world-leading time.

“I had 24, maybe 23 gels throughout as I think I lost one. I had to stop and pick up a gel a couple of times and it wasn’t the easiest to bend over mid-race, explains Herron. “In the second half of the race, the Maurten drinks saved me, they kept the carbs coming.”

For those unfamiliar, the Maurten drinks, along with the VaporFly shoes were used in Nike’s Breaking2 project – but should they have been aimed at the Breaking13 project instead?

As with a lot of American ultra runners, the Oklahoma native has a solid background in track and marathoning. She has a personal best of 2:37 over the 26.2 miles and athletes of that calibre stepping up to ultra distance is not something you often see in UK ultra running.

On why she attempted the 100-mile distance, Herron says: “I love to run and part of this is just discovering what I’m capable of. Not knowing what my body would feel like was intriguing and I had been inspired recently by the likes of Patrycja Bereznowska setting the world record at the 24hr Champs in July.”

Thrilled to set the 100 mi World Record & best the men's and women 100 mi trail FKTs at #TunnelHill100 ! Thank you for believing in me! pic.twitter.com/hS6QZQoZS3

— Camille Herron (@runcamille) November 12, 2017

Does that mean the 24hr set up is on her radar too? “Well Harvey Lewis [US 24hr Team member] did talk to me about it whilst we were doing this race and I want to try and qualify for the US team in 2019 but I have some other goals first,” she says.

Ann Trason, the former 100-mile record holder on the road is a role model to many in the ultra running community, and some of her records and achievements mean a lot to Herron, who says: “I want to break the US 100k record next year, at the World 100k Championships, but before that the Comrades and the Western States double, just like Ann did, that’s my goal.

“The last time I ran 100k I was sick for the last 35km and still managed 7:08 [and won the World 100km Champs in the process] so I think I can break that US record.”

A busy 2017 beckons for Herron and it looks like more records in the future. She could have broken the 12 hour World Record en route to the 100-mile record, much as Don Ricthie set the 6-hour record en route to his 100k one. However, the nature of the course didn’t allow for 12-hour record ratifying and measurement, so that’s also another target for the future.

Before any of that Camille will need to recover from this weekend, so how has that been going? “The last couple of days my metabolism has been going into overdrive, so I’ve mostly been eating and relaxing with my Rapid Reboot recovery set up, which has been really helpful. I’m actually going to try an easy run today (Wednesday) and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be okay to do my local Turkey Trot for Thanksgiving this weekend,” she says eager to get back running.

It’s possible that one of the reasons Herron had such a great race was her inexperience at 100 miles. She didn’t have any preconceived ideas of what should hurt or if something was too fast or not – “the way it’s supposed to be done”.

However she is a realist too, expecting that “everything is not going to be perfect, something will go wrong” and this is the attitude she takes into every ultra. Ready to troubleshoot any issues that arise, expecting them, rather than being surprised. This is what makes a good 24hr runner, so the future could be exciting there.

“When it got tough I just thought for inspiration. I’m a real fan of the sport so performances like Patrycja’s helped me dig deep and I looked back to the training I had done, how that felt and how hard I had worked for this race.

“A lot of my training was done to HR, including tough HR progression efforts, so knowing I just wanted to keep at 75% Max HR for this effort was something I’d trained for. Then the last 10 miles came and I just saw it as the last 10 miles of a training run,” she explains almost making her achievement seem routine.

Keeping effort steady and efficient, rather than going fast, is key to a good 100 mile to 24hr race and Herron perfected that on Sunday. Breaking it down into smaller sections, such as that last 10 miles on the run home is another common coping mechanism. Her mind was not only strong but well trained to cope with these situations.

Another big help on the day was her husband Conor, who due to the nature of the course, was able to crew his wife every 3-7 miles and provide her with fuel and of course those rewards, such as a taste of her sponsor’s Rogue Beer. Much like a pacer in a track race, in record situations like this, a crew can be a vital part.

So in this exciting record-breaking time for Women’s ultra running what will happen next? I know one thing for sure, we’re excited to find out.

The post Camille Herron: Breaking world records, 100-miles at a time appeared first on Fast Running.

Herron, one of the world’s best ultra marathon runners over 100km has rewritten the record books by running 12:42:39 for 100-miles.

It is the Oklahoma native’s first 100-mile finish and the time shatters Gina Slaby’s 13:45:49 (track) set in 2016. Previous to this, the record had stood for 25 years – Ann Trason’s 13:47 (road) in 1991.

Herron also won the race, finishing ahead of all the male competitors and ran well under the overall course record.

The Tunnel Hill 100 is a certified road course, so officially the record just needs to be ratified now.

Earlier this year the 35-year-old didn’t have a great experience in the Western States 100 – her first attempt at the 100-mile distance.

However, it did come soon after her stellar performance at the prestigious Comrades Marathon (90km) in June, where Herron became the first American winner in 20 years.

Averaging 7:38 minutes per mile for the whole race, there wasn’t much slowing down at all from Herron’s initial starting pace of 7:21, barely exceeding 8-minute miles for any section of the course.

Heading into this weekend’s race Herron set her sights on a ‘modest’ goal of 13:45:48 to slightly improve Trason’s record.

#TH100 – it's a world record for Camille Herron!!! I'm crying! pic.twitter.com/4lagKbrRQU

— Terri Durbin (@shedurb) November 12, 2017

That record was shattered and now the ultra running community is bubbling with excitement at the thought of Herron’s capabilities over the 24-hour races. Although only a couple of athletes have combined world class 100 mile times with world-class 24hr performances.

It is an exciting time for the world of ultra running when female athletes are only scratching the surface of their potential. The wealth of fast, inspiring and brilliant women involved in the sport is one of the reasons the world should be taking notice, because as role models go, ultra running has an abundance.

Fast Running will soon be featuring a host of interviews with quick 100 mile runners, starting with Patrick Reagan, recent winner of the Javelina Jundred and rumour has it Herron herself will be chatting soon.

The post Camille Herron breaks the 100-mile world record at Tunnel Hill 100 appeared first on Fast Running.