I’ve started training for a marathon, and while I was running today I got to wondering: what is the longest distance a person has ever run? That is, what is the longest marahon-type run where the person didn’t stop (for more than a few seconds anyway) to sleep or eat or anything. I know there are 50 and 100 mile ultramarathons, but I can’t find any references to any longer runs. And surely, if there are organized runs of this length, there must be nutjobs out there running further than that.
When I googled, I found records for “longest continuous runs” of 17,000 km and things like that, but obviously something like that would take months, so the person must have stopped to eat and sleep. Does anyone know the farthest unbroken run that anyone has accomplished?
When I ran Boston, I picked up a copy of a periodical (too thick to be a mag) called “Marathoning and Beyond”. It described races at the turn of the century in which the contestents would do silly things like run as far as they could in 6 days on a track. IIRC, a couple of guys, in the same race, ran something like 440 miles in that time period. :eek: They did, however, take a few rest breaks in there, but shockingly little. I also know that some nut cases do things like double ironmans (ironmen?) and double ultras.
I suspect if you google cleverly, you can find some organizations that track various records like: furthest distance in 24 hours, 1 week etc. However, since people must sleep, I would think no one can run for more than 48 continuous hours. And, I would hesitate to call it running by the end of that.
Good luck. Which one are you running?
Check out and [URL=http://]http://www.dewittrunner.com/running_crud.html I am a proud member of both, although I am not pictured. I am a proud winner fo the purple pineapple.:o (At least, not at Team CRUD. I gotta check the other, but there are little hundreds of incline club runners, so maybe I am.)
Well, Terry Fox ran the equivalent of 143 consecutive daily marathons between April 12 and September 1, 1980.
And he did it with only one leg.
[sub][sup](And for much of it he must have had active cancer since it was unequivocally diagnosed shortly after he was forced to stop running on August 1.)[/sup][/sub]
This site has records for many distances and times, including 640 miles in 6 days, but it doesn’t explain which were run non stop. (And watch out for the pop-ups, as it’s on Angelfire.)
Geez, I thought I remembered something in the 600’s, but then thought that couldn’t possibly be right. :smack:
An ultrarunning friend of mine sent this response:
Not sure; I know that Yannis Kouros has run (I mean, run with no breaks)
for 24 hours. He holds most world records for distances of 100 miles and up.
I think his 24 hour record is around 7:30 a mile! 6 Day races used to be
real popular, but the participants def. took eating/sleeping breaks during
those events.
So, I googled a little while and found this link:http://www.ultramarathonworld.com/milroy/world%5Frecords.htm According to it, Yannis holds a 24 hour record of 290 km, and a 48 hour record of 408 km. :eek: Since there is only about a 60 mile differnce between those records, I have to believe the 24 was nonstop, and the 48 was not.
I hope to run the Hops Tampa Bay Marathon in January.
This is a frustrating question. It should have an easy answer, but none of the sites seem to care or elaborate on the aspect I’m interested in. How long can the human body go without sleep – especially when being worked so hard? It looks like the longest distance may be about 200-250 miles.
There’s a fellow I’ve hiked with who goes by the name of Cave Dog who has set the records for the quickest time finishing the 48 4000’ peaks in the White Mountains of NH, the 46 peaks in the Adorondacks, the 35 peaks in the Catskills, the Colorado 14000’ers, and is just set (today!) the record for the 40 peaks above 6000’ in the southern Appalachians.
Teddy just keeps going, he sleeps about 1 to 1.5 hours a day during these attempts. It’s pretty amazing, he is completely in another class of athlete to the rest of us weekend hikers. He also recently completed the Barkley ultramarathon in Tennessee which is an incredibly difficult 100 mile mountain race, only three people in history have completed it. His time was 56 hours.
He’s an amazing individual, check out his site for details, milages, and times.
Cavedog needs to move out to Colorado, where he can romp with like minded idiots. A race has been held out here that scales something like six straight 14 teeners. No trail, just go from peak to peak. Until last year, no one had finished it in the cut-off. Several finished it last year. I can’t seem to find the race though, and the guy I know he has done it is in Korea.