Reefton's Emma Timmis just spent 48 hours on a treadmill to break a world record. Photo: Kerry Hastings / 123RF
By Raquel Joseph of The Westport News
West Coast-based athlete and artist Emma Timmis has broken the Guinness World Record for the greatest distance run on a treadmill in 48 hours.
The distance to beat was 322.93km, set by Sweden's Kristina Paltén in 2014.
Timmis - who lives in Reefton - smashed the record by almost 20km, clocking up 340.36km in 48 hours - an average of just over 7kmh.
Timmis said the challenge, which began Friday morning at Koha Fitness in Christchurch and finished Sunday morning, went as she had hoped.
She remembers breaking the record in "anticlimactic" fashion with about three hours to go.
"It was all a bit of a blur… It was quite anticlimactic because I knew that I had to do more to be able to push the record further, and I was so exhausted by then."
Running through the evenings was the hardest, most mentally challenging time, she said.
To push through, Timmis set herself constant goals of time or distance.
"At the beginning when I was feeling good, I was setting myself goals of 10km, then 20km… then when it was getting tough it was breaking it down to the next 10 minutes, get through the next kilometre, get through the next 100m."
She was allowed a two-and-a-half hour break to sleep, but could not manage to drift off.
"Even just having a lie down was good, I felt refreshed when I got up again."
She was pleased to make it through the 48 hours without major injury or strain, aside from some bad blistering on her toes.
Timmis said she set herself the treadmill challenge to test her mental limits, and that was exactly what it did.
"I wanted to test myself mentally… to see how far I could push myself… and it most definitely was the biggest mental challenge I've ever taken on in my life."
Once verified by officials, 48 hours on a treadmill will be Timmis' third Guinness World Record.
After the successful challenge, Timmis has set her sights on her next ambitious goal: breaking the world record for the greatest distance run covered on a treadmill in one week. The current record is 833.05km, set by United Kingdom's Sharon Gayter in 2011.
For the next challenge, Timmis said she would fundraise for Street Freaks, a Christchurch charity that used running and walking to aid recovery from addiction and other mental health issues.