Athlete and artist Emma Timmis has just broken her third Guinness World Record: she has now run the longest distance run on a treadmill in 48 hours. The previous record of just over 200 miles was set by Sweden’s Kristina Paltén in 2014.
Timmis—who lives in New Zealand—bested the record by nearly 11 miles, covering more than 211 miles in 48 hours.
Timmis said the challenge, which began Friday morning at Koha Fitness in Christchurch, New Zealand, and finished Sunday morning, went well but finished in an anticlimactic fashion.
More From Runner's World
“It was all a bit of a blur … It was quite anticlimactic because I knew that I had to do more to be able to push the record further, and I was so exhausted by then,” Timmis told Radio New Zealand.
Timmis said that the most challenging aspect of the run was in the evenings. She took a two-and-a-half-hour break for sleep but was unable to get any rest and set herself time or distance goals to make the run go by faster.
“At the beginning, when I was feeling good, I was setting myself goals of 10K, then 20K … then when it was getting tough, it was breaking it down to the next 10 minutes, get through the next kilometer, get through the next 100 meters,” she said to Radio New Zealand.
Timmis completed the 48-hour marathon unscathed, except for a few blistered toes. She says the most challenging aspect for her was the test of her mental strength.
“I wanted to test myself mentally … to see how far I could push myself … and it most definitely was the biggest mental challenge I’ve ever taken on in my life,” she said.
The record, once Guinness officials verify it, will be Timmis’s third such entry into the record books—she already owns the “fastest crossing of New Zealand on foot (female)” and “longest journey by elliptical cycle in a single country.”
But Timmis isn’t satisfied yet. She already has her sights set on the next record: breaking the world record for the longest distance run on a treadmill in one week. The current record is 517.6 miles, set by the UK’s Sharon Gayter in 2011. Timmis hopes to use the challenge to raise money for Speed Freaks, a charity based in Christchurch that promotes recovery from addiction and mental distress through walking and running.
Laura Ratliff is a New York City-based writer, editor, and runner. Laura's writing expertise spans numerous topics, ranging from travel and food and drink to reported pieces covering political and human rights issues. She has previously worked at Architectural Digest, Bloomberg News, and Condé Nast Traveler and was most recently the senior editorial director at TripSavvy. Like many of us, Laura was bitten by the running bug later in life, after years of claiming to "hate running." Her favorite marathon is Big Sur.
