Shannon-Leigh Litt’s 1,000 Ultras Join the Longest-Running Streaks in the Record Books

When Shannon-Leigh Litt finished her 1,000th consecutive ultramarathon in New Zealand on Sept. 26, she took a Guinness World Record that had stood at 23 days only three years earlier. Hers is one of a family of records for doing the same run every single day, each tied to a set distance, and the numbers in them range from a few weeks to more than half a century.

Guinness keeps the distance-based records, from 10K a day up to 100K a day, and splits most of them by gender. The oldest and longest streaks of all, where any run of at least a mile keeps the count alive, are tracked separately by Streak Runners International and its U.S. arm, the United States Running Streak Association.

Sources: Guinness World Records record pages; Streak Runners International statistics, as of Oct. 1, 2026.

Every Day, at Any Distance

Jim Pearson of Marysville, Wash., has run at least a mile every day since Feb. 16, 1970. On Sept. 24, 2025, his streak passed the 20,309 days that Jon Sutherland of Utah had built between 1969 and the end of 2024, and by then Pearson had logged more than 183,000 miles. He has kept going ever since and now stands at 20,682 days, more than 56 years.

Lois Bastien ran every day from 1980 until she stopped at 88 in July 2025, and her 16,526 days are the longest streak on record by a woman. Barbara Latta now has the longest active women’s streak, at 15,642 days, or almost 43 years.

From 10K to the Marathon

Chad Taylor ran 10K (6.2 miles) a day in Chandler, Ariz., for 1,107 days, 11,070 kilometers in total. At the half-marathon, Helen Ryvar reached 1,000 days in Wrexham, Wales, in January 2025, breaking a record she already held, and the men’s mark belongs to India’s Lt. Cdr. Devdutt Sharma, who ran 602 in New Delhi.

Hilde Dosogne ran a marathon every day of 2024, a leap year, for 366 in all, most of them in and around Ghent. Li Shuangyong finished just six days further on, starting in Heze in August 2025 and stopping in Jinan on Aug. 9, 2026, after 372. Guinness counts these as outdoor runs of 42.195K (26.2 miles), and organized marathons have a separate record of their own, a far shorter one: Enzo Caporaso raced 51 marathons on consecutive days in Turin in 2008.

Ultra Distance and Beyond

Litt’s 1,000 days at 50K or more sit 10 times above the men’s ultra record, which David Jackson, a former rugby professional from North Wales, set at 100 days when he finished at Caernarfon Castle on Sept. 5. The women’s ultra record had been 23 days when Megan Cassidy of Florida set it in January 2023, and Candice Burt took it to 200 that May before Litt went past her in July 2024. In the non-binary category, Kirsten Beverley-Waters ran 22 straight ultras in Maine in June 2022.

Huang Zhenglong went furthest of all, running 100K (62 miles) a day for 100 days in Foshan, China, finishing on March 15. That came to 10,000 kilometers, at roughly 10 hours of running a day.

Pearson’s and Latta’s streaks are still growing, with no end date set for either. Litt ran a marathon the day after her 1,000th ultra and plans to keep running one a day through December.