Monaco 8-Day Race – William’s targets for the later stages of the 8-Day Race – 1000km M55 World Record?
William Sichel around 147hrs
Aside from reaching a good distance for the 7-Day point in the race (William’s current personal best for 7 Days is 883km/ 548.670 miles), William will now be focussing on his biggest race target –
to break the 1000km M55 World Record.
William currently holds the Scottish and the British M55 1000km records with a time of 7 days, 23 hrs, 45mins, 43 secs, which William set in Athens during the 2010 1000 mile race.
At that point his time also became the M55 World Record for 1000km, but this was then broken by Wolfgang Schwerk in the 1000km race in Athens 2011, with a time of 7days, 15hrs, 48mins, 58secs.
William now aims to regain the M55 World Record for 1000km.
Given that at the 6-Day mark William had covered 803.2 km (approx 500 miles), this means William will have to cover around 200kms (124.274 miles) in less than 1 Day, 15 hrs and 48 mins.
Many people would consider that task “daunting” (to put it mildly), but bear in mind William will be attempting this after already having run for 6 days.
William - up and preparing for a 7th day of running...
Can he do it? Speaking as William’s training advisor, yes he can – but it won’t be easy. William entered the race in really amazingly good shape for any athlete (let alone a 58 year old cancer survivor with one leg slightly longer than the other!) and physically he’s up to the task.
The main questions will be the race conditions both in terms of the weather and the other entrants in the “No Finish Line” event (there have been 5,723 people taking part in the race so far – all on a fairly narrow, just over 1km long track, and a 24hr race starts on Saturday 2pm local time, bringing a whole load of new runners onto the track).
Alan told me earlier “without being over confident, William is in great shape-and feels at 800k now to be in a race”.
So what’s coming up for William in this event? As Alan put it
“our planning is now to get him from 803 to 1000k in 39 hours”.
We’ll all be pushing William on as much as possible, but as always, at the end of the day William is the one actually running, and the one who has to dig down and find the mental strength to keep going as the fatigue of the race begins to take its toll.
…watch this space…