Stephanie Gicquel, ultra-distance runner, conquered the Desert Solstice Invitational Track Race, earlier this month, by covering 249.3 km in 24 hours non-stop on an athletics track located in the middle of the desert in Phoenix, Arizona. This is the fastest distance covered by a French athlete in 24 hours.
The 42-year-old covered 623 laps on a classic 400m track at an average pace of 10.4 km/h while Lauren Jones (620 laps) finished second and Lauren Jones (619) took the third place.
“I held on to give the best of myself until the end, despite the setbacks encountered along the way,” Gicquel said.
“The slope was steep during these 24 hours, often, and I hung on to give the best of myself until the end, despite the problems encountered along the way, she wrote on her Facebook account. I still learned a lot, both in the training phase beforehand and during the race. It is often the small errors that make significant gaps in the end, and I made a few errors during the race. I will continue to progress in this quest, this exploration of performance. But first, it’s time to rest, to recover, before the time for analysis .”
Gicquel, incidentally, is accustomed to all kinds of exploits. She became the French 24-hour champion in 2018 and is the first French woman to run the North Pole Marathon at -30 degrees.
Moreover, a marathon addict, she competed in seven marathons in as many days in 2019.