New Zealand woman runs 1000 ultramarathons in 1000 days
Pounding through over 90 pairs of shoes, floods, tummy bugs and 40+ degree heat, Shannon-Leigh Litt has smashed the record for the most days in a row running 50km.
Shannon-Leigh Litt has burned through over 90 pairs of shoes in her quest to run an ultra-marathon every day for 1000 days in a row.
The 47-year-old criminal barrister has trotted through flooding in Malaysia, sweated in 40+ degrees on trails in Thailand and was borderline hypothermic during -10 degree days in Austria.
She’s hallucinated during super long runs (the furthest stretch was a 37-hour, 249km King Backyard Ultra this year) in which trees morphed intro dragons and ghosts appeared in front of her eyes.
Three battles with severe flu this year were some of the hardest days to push through - but on Saturday afternoon Litt will crack an ice-cold Corona at a pub in Whangarei where she lives and celebrate reaching 1000 ultramarathons in 1000 days.
Before locking in on the extreme goal, Litt had 20 years’ experience in long-distance running. She qualified for the 100k World Championships in 2023 in the speedy time of eight hours, 29 minutes. But she sat it out, having committed to this record-breaking mission.
“I planned it in about April of 2023,” she says.
“… I'd always wanted to do a marathon a day, and I saw that a woman had run 150 marathons consecutive, an Australian woman, and I thought, well, I'm going to do that.”
During a road trip in the South Island Litt’s friend Jayden Anker (who’s also a personal trainer, nutritionist and ultramarathon runner) convinced her to up the ante.
“We just decided that because I've done a lot of ultras, that an ultra was more me and that I could do it,” Litt says.
She didn’t call on any professional support, relying on her own interest, research and learning about nutrition to fuel her body (stacks of carbs and protein, creatine, a daily coffee, water boosted with electrolytes and salt and lollies). There have been no black toenails, no injuries, just a few blisters on occasion and a bit of tension in her thigh muscles.
“I've got a very good nutrition outlook, and it's proven, because of what I've done,” she says.
“… It’s something you need to watch it because you do need to have enough fat to, to be able to do this and actually to cover the vital organs.”
Litt set off on her first run in the series on 1 January, 2024. For years she would wake up at 1am to smash out an ultra in about about five-and-half-hours before work each day (with a sleep-in til 5am or 6am on weekends).
For each run to count Litt had to complete an outdoor ultra distance (technically that’s 42.3km, but Guinness demanded a minimum of 50km and Litt made that 51km to buy herself wiggle room). She needed to clock the runs on two GPS watches for accuracy, get checked off by two witnesses, submit videos at the start and end of each run and capture photos during (“I'll take 20 photos a day and maybe do like 15 minutes of video footage every day”). She can walk some and stop for chats and snacks (often smashing bowls of pasta, sushi or a potato en route).
Litt admits “boredom kicks in” so she has passed time listening to legal papers for work, joining up with run clubs, finding mates along the way and sometimes streaming podcasts or music.
“I'm completely disassociated half the time. Like people will see me and I just won't see them because I'll just be focused too much internally,” she says.
Guinness has accepted data on about 800 runs so far (with more to lodge) and a certificate verifies Litt’s smashed the record of most ultras on the trot - she only needed to complete 200 consecutive runs to tick that off.
There have been some tough days, she says, but she’s never considered quitting.
“… I did want to beat the 200 days and certainly did not think I'd be going for all of this time … but after about 200 I thought, ‘no, I'm gonna keep going’.”
Once she hit 500 runs, she realised she could double down.
The last few months she’s slowed down - allowing some later starts and taking closer to eight hours to finish the ultra distance. That’s not because of wear and tear on her body, she’s just a bit more “distracted” now, she says.
“It actually got really taxing having to get up so, early, no one's around, having to go to bed at 5 or 6pm,” she says.
“It got a bit too much, so I decided to keep motivated just to change the times that I was running.”
This year she also added some long races to the calendar.
“Doing a 200km race, ordinarily that might take four weeks to recover and I'm doing 50km a day, so I've had to allow more time,” Litt says.
“I would be able to do them a lot quicker if I hadn't done that, and it's probably a stupid thing to do, you know, going out and doing all these long distance races, having to get up the next day.
“But I feel like my body's used to it.”
On Sunday, Litt will ease back, running “just” a marathon distance (42km) every day.
“It will feel weird, and I think I'll do it very slowly, but I do think that I'll probably end up maybe doing a marathon, aiming to do a marathon a day till the end of the year.
“Then really taking the foot off the gas next year.”
Correction: A previous version of this story referred to Shannon-Leigh Litt as a 38-year-old. She is 47.