Jim Walmsley (This photo was downloaded from the Facebook page of Hoka One One and is being used here for representation purpose. No copyright infringement intended)

In a race in northern California on May 4 2019, the longstanding world record for running 50 miles was improved albeit unofficially.

The new timing – 4:50:08 – credited to Jim Walmsley of USA compares to the 4:50:21 set by South Africa’s Bruce Fordyce at the London to Brighton ultramarathon in 1983. The improved timing was reported from the Hoka One One Project Carbon X 100km race, organized by running shoe manufacturer Hoka. The attempt entailed challenging the existing records over 100km and 50 miles; the latter tackled in the course of running 100km. According to a report ahead of race on letsrun.com, eight athletes were scheduled to participate: Jim Walmsley; Hideaki Yamauchi, Patrick Reagan, Tyler Andrews, Sabrina Little, Mike Wardian, Yoshiki Takada and Aiko Kanematsu. Walmsley is one of the most accomplished ultra-runners today with seven course records at ultramarathons worldwide to his name, Yamauchi is two-time defending world champion in 100km and Little is the former American record holder for the 24 hour-run. The world record over 100km (6:09:14) is held by Japan’s Nao Kazami.

In its pre-race report, letsrun.com said that Fordyce sent the runners texts of encouragement. The South African great is best known for winning the Comrades Marathon nine times, eight of that in a row.

Hideaki Yamauchi (This photo was downloaded from the Facebook page of Hoka One One and is being used here for representation purpose. No copyright infringement intended)

Race day in California was quite warm. The course started in Folsom and went down to Sacramento where the runners then ran five loops. While Walmsley shaved off several seconds from Fordyce’s 36 year-old 50 mile-record, Yamauchi covered the 100km distance in 6:19:54, tad outside his personal best (PB) from 2016. Patrick Raegan was second across the whole 100km distance and Yoshiki Takada third; Walmsley having crossed the 50 mile-mark ahead of the rest, finished fourth overall. The video of the race, available on Hoka’s website, qualified the final timings as ` unofficial.’

Readers may notice the similarity this event has with Nike’s Breaking 2, the 2016-2017 project that sought to break the two hour-barrier in the marathon. It was held at a Formula One race track in Italy and featured three elite athletes and pacers to keep them on track for targeted timing. Although Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge won the race with a timing of 2:00:25, a significant improvement on the then prevailing world record, it did not count as a new world record under the standards of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). The current official world record held by Kipchoge is a slower 2:01:39 set at the Berlin Marathon of September 2018.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)