American ultrarunner eyes sub-11-hour 100-miler

American ultrarunner Taggart VanEtten will be chasing the 100-mile world record on Sunday at the Six Days in the Dome race in Wisconsin. VanEtten, who only started his ultrarunning career in late 2020, is the 100-mile treadmill world record holder with a time of 11:32:05 that he ran in May. His goal is not only to beat the world record of 11:14:56, which Lithuanian runner Aleksandr Sorokin ran in April, but to run the first sub-11-hour 100-miler in history. VanEtten has titled this record attempt Mission 10:59:59, and the action will be streamed live on YouTube.

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VanEtten has only raced one ultramarathon, the Tunnel Hill 100-miler in Illinois, where he ran the second-fastest time in the event’s history. His time of 12:19:54 was only slightly slower than Zach Bitter‘s course record of 12:08:36. After that race, VanEtten shifted his focus to the treadmill, and he decided to take a stab at the 100-mile record of 12:09:15 that Bitter set in May 2020. 

RELATED: American ultrarunner smashes 100-mile treadmill world record with 11:32:05 run

Running in a bar in Morton, Ill., in early May, VanEtten shattered Bitter’s record, taking 37 minutes off his time with a 11:32:05 result. He’s now back to racing on solid ground, and he will be running around an indoor track at Six Days in the Dome. The venue is the same one where Bitter set his own 100-mile world record of 11:19:13 in 2019. That mark stood as the fastest ever until Sorokin lowered it with his 11:14:56 run earlier this year. 

To beat Sorokin’s time, VanEtten will have to average at least 4:12 per kilometre throughout the entire 100-mile (161K) event. That pace would only just beat the world record, though, and VanEtten is aiming to run much quicker. In order to lower the world record to the first-ever sub-11-hour 100-miler, he will have to average 4:06 per kilometre. That’s like running 16 straight 41-minute 10Ks with no rest between them. 

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VanEtten certainly realizes how difficult this goal will be to reach, but as he recently wrote on Instagram, he wants to achieve as much as possible in his ultrarunning career. “I’m on a level right now I would’ve never thought was possible for myself,” he wrote. “Every step I run is on borrowed time. I want to make the most of it. Whether I’m here for a year or 10 I won’t have a single regret pushing my limits to the absolute max.” 

RELATED: Lithuanian ultrarunner breaks 100-mile, 12-hour world records at U.K. race

In another Instagram post, his caption closed with a simple phrase: “10:59 or bust.” VanEtten will go all in on this attempt, and his effort could lead to an amazing result.