Guinness Has Approached the New Zealand Lawyer Who Ran 1,000 Ultras About a Marathon Record

Shannon-Leigh Litt finished her 1,000th ultramarathon in 1,000 days in Whangārei on Saturday, and as we reported, Guinness World Records now lists the New Zealand criminal lawyer at 1,000 consecutive days. In an interview published by 1News on Monday, she said Guinness had already been in touch about another record, this time over the marathon.

She didn’t name the record, saying only that Guinness was able to check it, and she is open to trying for it soon. She has also put a firm limit on how long any attempt would run. “That’s always tempting, but it won’t be past the end of the year,” she told 1News.

Every one of her 1,000 runs covered at least 51K, almost 9K more than a marathon. Guinness’s women’s record for consecutive days at marathon distance, which counts outdoor runs of 42.195K (26.2 miles), stands at 366 days. Belgium’s Hilde Dosogne set it by running a marathon on every day of 2024, more than tripling the 106 days Kate Jayden of Britain had reached in April 2022. On the men’s side, China’s Li Shuangyong took the record to 372 days in August.

The 1,000 days took Litt to nine countries, and every run abroad still had to fit inside a New Zealand calendar day. In Bali, that meant being done by 8 p.m. local time. The days got longer as the streak went on, too. “Initially, the first 18 months or couple of years it was taking 5.5 to 6.5 hours, but the last few months I’ve had to allow eight hours to do it,” she said.

“I just wanted it to finish. I wanted to not have to do that 51kms every day,” she said of those final months. Her body held up through all of it, with no injuries in 1,000 days, and the number itself was never in the original plan. Guinness lists her starting goal as 200 days, the total Candice Burt had set as the women’s ultra record in 2023.

Sunday was supposed to be Litt’s first day off, and she ran a marathon anyway. “It wasn’t actually a day off. I ran a marathon as a taper, and it felt so much shorter. I could go faster,” she said. She told RNZ before the finish that she expects to keep running a marathon a day through December and to cut back properly in 2027.