Newsdesk

Orkney’s William Sichel to attempt 1000-mile world record

Orkney-based ultra marathon runner, William Sichel, travels to Athens next week to compete in the Athens International Ultramarathon Festival 1000-mile road race.

The event will start at 1pm UK time on Thursday, 16 January and will finish at the same time on Saturday, 1 February.

Sichel’s main focus will be the current world over-65 age-group record of 15 days 2 hours, 50 minutes and 1 second set by Russia’s Vladimir Glazkov in New York in 2004.

The ultramarathon festival has been held in Athens for over 10 years, mainly at the Glyfada site of the 2004 Olympics. The event consists of multiple events ranging from a 24-hour run right up to a 5000-km race, which lasts until 16 March.

The 1000-mile race will be held on a 1-kilometre paved loop.

Sichel will be using his run to raise funds for CLAN Orkney.

He said: “I’m healthy and fit and looking forward to tackling Glazkov’s 16 year old record in Athens. I’ll need to average over 67 miles a day to break his record which puts it into perspective. I plan to do a mix of steady running and run/walking with short naps and a 3 hour ‘long sleep’ at night. This has worked well for me in the past.”

Sichel, who moved from the Isle of Sanday into Kirkwall a couple of months ago ran his last 1000-mile race at the same venue, but over different course, in 2010 – setting a new over-55 world age-group record of 13 days 20 hours 8 minutes 1 second along the way.

Sichel is currently pursuing his record-setting project called “Journey to 750” in which he is attempting to set 750 running records at World, British and Scottish level, including age-group records.

He has currently set 732 records, including 104 world age-group records and two Guinness World Records. His shortest record is for 30 miles on the track and his longest is an overall British record for 3100 miles/5000km on the road.

His last major outing was in Milwaukee, USA last August, where he set a new world indoor age-group 6 Day record of 434.82 miles.

Previous & Next News

top