Posted: November 12, 2007

Ultra Running: Sichel attempts first British record over 6 days in Monaco

Scotland’s top ultra distance athlete, William Sichel, travels to the Principality of Monaco later this week for his first serious British record attempt at the Monaco “No Finish Line” Six Day race from Saturday November 17th to Friday 23rd. William is going for the 19 year old British road record of 518 miles set by England’s Richard Brown in New York in 1988. The Six Day event has a long history with records and performances going right back to the 1800’s and the era of the ‘pedestrians’ – the professional athletes of the day. For this attempt William is returning to the venue where he won his debut Six Day event last year, setting a course record and world best distance for the year of 478.6 miles. “It is a pretty good course around the spectacular harbour in Monaco. I know the set up and feel it is a good race to make the record attempt.” William is still fresh from his epic run in the Greek Spartathlon in late September where he knocked over 4 hours off his best time for the event, an improvement of over 12% on his previous performance. “I need an improvement of 8% over my Six Day distance from last year. That’s quite a lot but I feel that if I don’t have any major problems and the weather is reasonable I’ve got a good chance.” William’s main crew man will be Dundee’s Alan Young and he will be joined by Manchester’s Tim Rainey for the last two days. In order that people can follow his progress William has arranged for his web site www.williamsichel.co.uk to be updated throughout the record attempt. BBC Radio Orkney will also carry updates from November 19th -23rd. They will report on William’s progress in their morning news programme “Around Orkney” from Monday to Friday. Listen again here: BBC. William is grateful to sponsors: Myprotein, Loganair & The Orcadian Subscribe to the Runner's Web Weekly Digest