For six days and six nights, while most of us went about our daily lives, Megan Eckert and Ivan Zaborsky ran, and at the end of 144 hours of singular focus, they both emerged with new six-day world records. When the event ended at noon local time on Sunday, May 4, Eckert of the U.S. and Zaborsky of Russia had run 603.155 and 650.919 miles (970.685 and 1,047.554 kilometers), respectively, at the 2025 Six Days of France race, held in Vallon Pont d’Arc, France.
Eckert broke Camille Herron’s previous record of 560.333 miles (901.768 kilometers), set at the 2024 lululemon Further event, by 42.8 miles (68.9 kilometers). For perspective, she also got very close to the men’s American six-day record, held by Joe Fejes with a distance of 606.243 miles (975.653 kilometers) from 2015. She ran at an average pace of 4.12 miles per hour — every hour for six days, including stops for sleeping, eating, and logistics.
Zaborsky broke Matthieu Bonne’s 2024 record of 649.655 miles (1,045.519 kilometers) by 1.26 miles (2.03 kilometers). His was an average pace of 4.52 miles per hour over all six days.
While Eckert’s record seemed likely as soon as she passed Herron’s splits about 4.5 days (108 hours) in, Zaborsky’s pace saw him dip slower than Bonne’s at the end of day 5 (about 118 hours elapsed), making for a nail-biting final day of running.
The race, held in the Ardèche region of France, was held on a nearly flat paved circuit run entirely on the roads and paths in the Camping l’Ardéchois campground on a 0.70294-mile (1.13128 kilometers) circuit. The 141 participants started their journey on Monday, April 28, at noon and faced warm to hot temperatures during the days and cooler temperatures at night that provided some relief. The event was held as Global Organization of Multi-Day Ultramarathoners (GOMU) world championships.
As is usual, both records are pending ratification.
Megan Eckert on her way to setting a new massive women’s six-day world record. Photo: Samuel Lhermillier
Megan Eckert’s Women’s Six-Day World Record
If one is to believe social media chatter, 38-year-old Megan Eckert arrived in France with both the women’s world record and overall American record as her goals. Eckert is no stranger to multiday lap racing and holds the women’s backyard ultra world record with a distance of 362 miles (583 kilometers) from Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in 2024 and won the Six Days in the Dome, her first attempt at six-day racing, outright with a distance of 526 miles (846 kilometers) in 2024. She talked in-depth with iRunFar earlier this year about her life, racing career, and future goals.
Eckert seems to have had a well-planned strategy for the six-day effort, with her husband serving as her main crew and support. She took longer breaks around midnight and noon each day, and then two smaller breaks in between those, and her pacing was remarkably consistent throughout the event. This strategy was in contrast to Herron’s execution of her record, where she ran the initial 36 hours at a blistering fast pace but slowed down considerably after 108 hours. Eckert, meanwhile, aimed for consistency and seemed to almost get faster as the hours and days wore on. The pacing graphs shown on GOMU’s Facebook page stayed amazingly level as the race progressed.
After 72 hours (3 full days), Eckert had covered 323.321 miles (520.335 kilometers). At 103 hours, she’d covered 444.931 miles (716.047 kilometers). And it was after about 108 hours that Eckert finally closed the gap of Herron’s splits that she’d been chasing, right around the time that Herron’s pace had started to dip significantly. With 114 hours on the clock, Eckert had run 487.811 miles (785.055 kilometers), and in the final two days of racing, she was consistently closing the gap to Fejes’ men’s American record as she opened the gap to the women’s world record by an ever-increasing margin.
While the final day was hot, Eckert stayed on pace and made it into the cooler evening hours in seemingly good shape and with the record in sight. With 16 hours remaining, she’d run about 536 miles (862 kilometers) and only had a marathon left to go in order to break the women’s world record. With something like nine hours remaining on the clock, Eckert surpassed the world record mark, but continued on after a break.
Eckert ran strongly through the final night and until noon, finishing with a final distance of 603.155 miles (970.685 kilometers) with a new women’s six-day world record.
Megan Eckert put on a masterclass in pacing over the course of her six days of running. Photo: Samuel Lhermillier
Ivan Zaborsky’s Men’s Six-Day World Record
Consistency was the name of the game to break world records this year in France, and 37-year-old Ivan Zaborsky had clearly studied the splits he was going after. Zaborsky is highly experienced with multiday lap races, having competed at the 2024 GOMU 48-Hour World Championships in Hungary and won the St. Petersburg Backyard Ultra with 204.2 miles (328.6 kilometers) in 2023. In 2024, he also won the 24-Hour Self-Transcendence Volgograd race with a distance of 177.0 miles (284.9 kilometers) and the 304-mile (490 kilometers) Authentic Phidippides Run Athens-Sparta-Athens in Greece with a time of 2 days, 4 hours, and 52 minutes.
It appears this was Zaborsky’s first six-day race, and he opted for a pacing strategy of going out ahead of record pace and doing his best to hold on for as long as he could. When compared to Matthieu Bonne’s record splits and pacing, he seemed to be running slightly faster and taking more frequent breaks every six hours with one long break per day, while Bonne would take one major break per day. Interestingly, Zaborsky would time his big breaks to be at nearly the same times as Bonne’s were, which made for interesting spectating, speculation, and pace comparison on GOMU’s Facebook feed. Throughout the first four days, he stayed a handful of miles ahead of Bonne’s splits but started to slow with two days to go.
Somewhere around hour 118, after taking his last long break before the finish, he dropped behind Bonne’s splits for the first time since the start of the event, but it was a long stop that Bonne hadn’t taken, giving the advantage to the Russian with a day left to race.
In the end, Zaborsky’s dogged consistency, skillful execution, and fast running paid off for him with a new overall six-day world record of 650.919 miles (1,047.554 kilometers).
Ivan Zaborsky had a strong final 24 hours to secure a new men’s six-day world record. Photo: Samuel Lhermillier
