Relatively new to 24-hour racing, Great Britain’s Sarah Webster stormed to a new women’s 24-hour world record on Saturday, October 19, running 278.622 kilometers (173.127 miles) at the 2025 IAU 24-Hour World Championships in Albi, France.
She exceeded the previous record, set by Japan’s Miho Nakata, of 270.363 kilometers (167.996 miles) by an incredible 8.259 kilometers (5.131 miles). Nakata set the prior mark at the 2023 IAU 24-Hour World Championships, the last edition of this event.
Sarah Webster of Great Britain setting a new world record at the 2025 IAU 24-Hour World Championships. Photo: iRunFar/Deki Fourcin
Webster completed 185 full laps of the 1.5-kilometer (0.93 miles) loop and headed out for one more partial lap before time was up. She averaged about 5:11 minutes per kilometer (8:19 minutes per mile), which included any breaks needed over the 24-hour period. The margins of world records in this discipline are often measured in meters — that is to say, incredibly small percentages compared to the total distance run — but Webster was able to break the prior world record with about an hour left to run. In the final hour, she was able to add about another 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) to the record.
Webster, who was third both at the 2024 IAU 100k World Championships and the 2023 IAU 50k World Championships, qualified for this event by running an impressive 243.393 kilometers (151.237 miles) in 24 hours this past April. It seems that the 46-year-old, a veterinarian originally from the Isle of Man and living in East Sussex, England, is relatively new to ultrarunning, but she came into the sport with intention, winning the 2023 Northern Ireland and British 100k Championships in 7:03, and podiuming at a world championships event each year since then. That said, this world record performance represents a big step forward in her ultrarunning career.
Sarah Webster during the 2025 IAU 24-Hour World Championships. Photo: Adrian Stott
While there were a few lead changes early on in the race, Webster took control of the race in the second half. Six hours into the event, Webster was about five kilometers behind Nakata’s 2023 world record splits, but by the halfway point, she was even, having covered about 145 kilometers (90 miles). From there, she ran incredibly consistent lap splits for another six hours, with nearly all of her laps between seven and eight minutes as she gained nearly a 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) gap on the record with 18 hours elapsed. While Webster slowed slightly in the final quarter of the race, her early consistency took her to a massive world record.
You can read more about the full race in our 2025 IAU 24-Hour World Championships results article, which will publish shortly.
