In what seems to be her first try on the 100-mile distance, Eire’s Catherine Jennings set a brand new girls’s 100-mile world file on the 2025 Tunnel Hill 100 Mile with a time of 12:37:04. She eclipsed the earlier file of 12:42:40, which was set by Camille Herron on the identical occasion in 2017.
Caitriona Jennings trying happy together with her new girls’s 100-mile world file. Picture: Micki Colson/Colson Images
Jennings ran an impressively evenly break up race, averaging 7:34 minutes per mile (4:42 minutes per kilometer) for the total 100-mile distance (160.9 kilometers). Whereas temperatures have been cool on the 7 a.m. CST begin on November 8, issues obtained heat all through the center of the day, however this didn’t appear to sluggish Jennings in any respect.
Whereas the 100-mile distance could also be a step up for Jennings, she’s no stranger to extremely distances. She set the present Irish 50k file in February 2025 on the Donate 50k when she ran 3:16:33. The occasion served because the Irish 50k Nationwide Championships. She additionally holds the Irish 100k nationwide file with a time of seven:43:01, set in 2021. In 2022, she received the Worldwide Affiliation of Ultrarunners (IAU) 50k European Championshipsand he or she’s completed within the high 10 of the Comrades Marathon not less than 4 occasions.
What is maybe probably the most spectacular about Jennings’s 100-mile run was her consistency. For practically the primary 80 miles, her tempo by no means wavered greater than a second or two away from 7:26-minute miles. And after 80 miles, or about 10 hours of racing, her tempo solely barely crept up. For all the race, she was capable of maintain her tempo beneath that of the world file.
Caitriona Jennings stops her watch with a brand new girls’s 100-mile world file. Picture: Micki Colson/Colson Images
The 100-mile race is held along with the Tunnel Hill 50 Mile. Earlier within the day, American Anne Flower set a brand new girls’s 50-mile world file in 5:18:57. The course is held on the Tunnel Hill State Path, which is a rails-to-trails gravel path with a crushed gravel floor. Essentially the most well-known landmark on the course is an previous rail tunnel that runners move by means of. The race consists of a flat double out-and-back beginning in Vienna, Illinois, and the 100-mile racers full each out-and-back legs twice. The course has garnered a repute for pace, and several other world information have been set right here within the 50- and 100-mile distance in recent times. The course is USA Observe and Area-certified, and the file will have to be ratified by the IAU.
