One hundred Canadian women took to the track at Hamilton’s McMaster University on Sunday to reclaim the 100 x 1 mile relay women’s world record of nine hours, 18 minutes (set last year in the U.S.), and they smashed the record by almost 21 minutes, finishing in eight hours, 57 minutes and 26.90 seconds.
The event began at 9 a.m. Sunday and ran until almost 6 p.m. The average goal pace to break the record with a few minutes’ cushion was five minutes, 34 seconds per mile. Sixty miles in, the group was already more than seven minutes ahead of the goal. As the day wore on and the faster runners took to the track, their lead only widened.
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 took five minutes off their record, running 100 individual miles in nine hours and 18 minutes.
100 Canadian women to chase incredible Guinness World Record in Hamilton
Sunday’s event involved 100 women running the 1-mile distance consecutively on the track–and if you think it’s easy to run a sub-5-minute mile on your own in the heat of July, think again. Runners included collegiate athletes, high school athletes, a 12-year-old (5K sensation Sawyer Nicholson), masters runners such as distance star Sasha Gollish and marathoner Rachel Hannah, Canadian Running’s own multiple OFSAA and OUA champion Cameron Ormond, Tokyo 2020 Olympian Maddy Kelly (who had the honour of running the final mile of the day) and Selena Loaring, the great-granddaughter of Canadian Olympian 400m legend John Loaring. The group also included Krestena Sullivan, who participated in the earlier record set by the Canadians in 1999.
The final time goal was nine hours and 10 minutes on Sunday, but the runners came through with much more. The event is sanctioned by Athletics Ontario, and extra effort was made to ensure accuracy; four laps around a 400m track (1,600 metres) is slightly short of one mile, so to ensure the distance was accurate, runners were directed slightly wide of Lane 1 on the final lap.
“What excites me most about the project is banding together with the incredible women in the running community to accomplish this collective goal,” Ormond said before the event.
