It’s not every day that your community takes part in a nine-hour, 400-lap relay race. On Sunday, July 7 in Hamilton, 100 of Canada’s fastest female runners will rally together to take back the Guinness World Record for the fastest 100-mile relay in an event called 100 Women CAN.
A group of Canadian women, including McMaster University coach Paula Schnurr and Hamilton Olympic Club coach Patti Moore, originally set this record at nine hours, 23 minutes back in 1999, but last June, a group of American women in San Francisco broke the record, running 100 individual miles in nine hours and 18 minutes.
Schnurr and Moore decided to take on the challenge of reclaiming the record with 100 Women CAN; to do so, they invited Canada’s fastest women to apply, and have now received more than 125 applicants. They have narrowed it down to 100. With the possibility of last-minute injuries or illnesses, they will have 10 alternates in attendance, drawn from a waitlist. Besides Schnurr and Moore, a few names you might recognize include Canadian masters distance champ Sasha Gollish and Tokyo 2020 Olympian and three-time 800m national champion Maddy Kelly.
With the final time goal of nine hours and 10 minutes, they recruited more than 100 women who can complete a mile-long leg in five minutes and 30 seconds or faster (or who have run 1,500m in 5:05). Schnurr and Moore are confident this group will be able to achieve the world record, with 25 of the 100 women capable of running a sub-five-minute mile.
“Our youngest runner is 12 years old and we have several masters athletes,” notes Schnurr. “We have one woman who ran on the world record team from 1999, and she will be handing off the baton to her daughter. And we have one Canadian Olympian [Kelly].”
How to follow
The event will run on July 7 at Mona Campbell Track at McMaster University in Hamilton, beginning at 9 a.m. and ending after 6 p.m.
I am one of the 100 athletes participating alongside some of my training partners; what excites me most about the project is banding together with the incredible women in the running community to accomplish this collective goal. Speaking from experience, running four solo laps is no easy feat, so any support will go a long way to motivate us!
If you’re unable to make it in person, you can follow the event live on YouTube or view the results here.
