It’s a warm winter afternoon on Monday and Camille Herron is sleeping. She lies on a camp bed in a tent next to a flat dirt road. Lined with palm trees, white stone and desert grass, it runs two and a half miles along the edge of a large olive green lake. A screen of steep mountains covered in scrub towers above the lake. It’s one of several resorts in California’s Coachella Valley and the setting for Lululemon’s FURTHER event, a chance for ten select women to run as far as they can in six days.
It’s the penultimate day, and her nap is long—five hours—and the timer on the leash is ticking—and Herron has less than 24 hours to run 48 miles. If she can hold her own, she will break a record that has stood for more than thirty years.
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Once the gold standard for what people could endure on foot, the six-day race predates both trail racing and the modern marathon. In the 19th century, thousands of spectators lined up to watch these “pedestrians” walk for six days – at the Empire Skating Rink at PT Barnum’s Hippodrome, where the Met Life Building now stands in Lower Manhattan, and at fairs across the United States . They were popular in Europe and America and brought better people, challengers and diversity. The first six-day women’s race took place in Chicago in 1876. According to Davy Crockett of the website Ultrarunning History, “more than 300 women” took part in these nearly week-long events in the 19th century. In 1880, a Haitian immigrant, Frank Hart, amazed the crowd at New York’s Madison Square Garden by traveling 600 miles in six days. He got away with $21,567, about $679,000 in today’s money.
Then came accusations of cheating, poisonings, the rise of the bicycle and the coup de grace: baseball. The 1980s saw a revival of timed ultramarathons and the men’s six-day record was broken for the first time in a century. But it seemed like things had come to a head. No one had come close to Yiannis Kouros’ 645 miles in 1988 and Sandy Barwick’s 549 in 1990, the men’s and women’s records respectively. “Their records have proven completely resistant to successors,” says former Trans-America race director Jesse Riley.
Then, in 2015, a lanky 6-foot-4 runner from Norman, Oklahoma burst onto the ultramarathon scene. With an awkward gait, a broad smile and an eccentric personality, Herron, a 2:37 marathoner, began an unprecedented streak. In 2017, she became the third American to win the Comrades Marathon, a legendary 55-mile race in South Africa, and in 2023 she won the Spartathalon, a 153-mile ultramarathon in Greece. She is the first athlete, male or female, to win both. That same year, she completed 430 kilometers on a 400-meter course in Bruce, Australia. She did this in 48 hours and not only improved her own score, but also became the first woman to hold an all-time American record – for men and women – in distance running.
When the FURTHER event started last Wednesday, Herron already held several world records from 50 to 250 miles. A small crowd gathered under four towers of stage lights and rows of orange and white tents. The 42-year-old wore sunglasses and a water bottle in the crotch of her shorts. On the first day, she drank a Coke float and ran 133 miles. On day two, she ate tacos and added another 110 miles. On March 8, International Women’s Day, she broke the American 48-hour road record for women. More would follow.
Every time Herron broke a record, she stretched her arms wide, her hands pointing to the sky, as if to say, “isn’t this incredible?” The fact that she is openly awed by what she does has sometimes made her a target in the ultrarunning community. Her whimsical pre-race mantra of ‘letting the magic come out’ only adds to that. But it’s hard to argue with the numbers. And the numbers and records piled up: a new record for the 300 km, the American road record for 48 hours, a new road record for the 300 miles, the world record for the 500 km for women, the world record for the 500 miles for women. When she completed the latter, she danced around the starting line in pink compression socks and celebrated with high fives and hugs.
But the six-day milestone was still there – Barwick, 1990, 549 miles. As Herron slept during the day Monday, questions began popping up on ongoing forums and Facebook groups. “Bell shot!” wrote ultrarunning veteran and statistics master Mike Dobies. “Has she saved enough for a final push?”
The push comes at 2:30 in the afternoon. Herron is on the move and soon the night will welcome cooler air and more miles. But after a few loops she is off course again. Rest again. “Do the routine,” she tells herself: Run, eat, hydrate, sleep and repeat. But it is now becoming increasingly difficult to do all that. As Christian Griffith once said about his journey across America, the goal is ‘way too close for far too long’.
Close now is 40 miles in 18 hours, and Herron is on the move, logging 15-minute miles; for her a walking pace, a death struggle. Then another stop. She is now in the realm of uncertainty. The late ultrarunner Al Howie told the Ultra Daily News, “She’s dying… she’s back from the dead… she’s not going to make it.”
She continues to fight all night and at 3:30 am Herron crosses the invisible threshold: 550 miles, a new world record, the Biggy, the six-day. But it’s not official. The International Association of Ultrarunners, which ratifies the six-day race, does not call any score beyond a 48-hour run a world record. Only the best.
Herron promptly takes a nap as the praise rolls in fast and furious. “It was only a matter of time,” said Trishul Cherns, head of the Global Organization of Multi-Day Ultramarathoners, an organization that tracks ultrarunning statistics. “Camille’s achievements have proven that women who enter the game can compete on an equal footing with men.” Crockett says she is “the best female ultrarunner ever, on tracks and on roads.” And Barwick, the New Zealander whose record of ‘best’ or performance Herron broke, says she is ‘impressed by her speed. A truly amazing achievement, so courageous and inspiring for all athletes.”
But Herron isn’t done yet. As the sun rises over the Santa Rosa Mountains, she rises again. Another push. One more loop, then two, three. She reaches 900 km, another record, and then it’s over. In her wake, 11 world records are recognized by GOMU and a world best performance by the IAU. Anyway, the numbers on the LED screen clearly indicate a distance of 900.5 kilometers. Above is one word in capital letters: NEXT.