New world record attempt by endurance athlete (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

New world record attempt by endurance athlete

7:12pm Monday 12th December 2011 in News By Graeme Hetherington

A TOP endurance athlete is attempting to beat the men’s world record for long distance running on a treadmill over seven days.

Sharon Gayter, who begins her trek on Wednesday lunchtime, hopes to surpass the 468.04 miles that Lee Chamberlain managed in July 2009 to get his name in the Guinness World Records.

The female record holder is grandmother Mimi Anderson who achieved a total 403.81 miles.

Through her world record bid the runner, who is a part-time lecturer at Teesside University, is raising money for two charities - Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research to support a colleague Michael Wren, who lost his daughter Charlotte to Leukaemia when she was just three years old, and Zoe’s Place, a hospice for babies in Middlesbrough.

The athlete has run from Lands End to John O’Groats, over 800 miles and chopping 17 hours from the world record, she has run the Badwater Ultramarathon of 135 miles across Death Valley – billed the hottest race on earth and set the best time by any British athlete male or female.

This year she completed the world’s highest race around the Himalayas in India. In 2009 she won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Championships 24 hour event.

She said: “This is a world record attempt I have wanted to do for some time and thanks to the support from Teesside University, I have been able to organise it. I am both physically and mentally prepared now.”