“It was carnage”: Jersey runner part of team aiming to set world record down under

“A bit crazy” is how Jersey ultra-marathon runner Beth Rainbow summed up running a 308km relay through the notoriously forbidding terrain of Tasmania in the white heat of an Australian summer.

She spoke to Express just before boarding her flight back to Jersey.

Beth was one of a team of six who had their sights set on a Guinness World Record – and they might well have pulled it off.

The team averaged an eye-watering three minutes and 34 seconds per kilometre to run from Devonport to Hobart in an aggregated total of 19 hours 26 minutes.

No running unit has completed an equivalent distance this fast on record, and an application to have their achievement recognised is firmly underway.

But why take such a challenge on? Beth was matter-of-fact: there was no documented fastest time for running across Tasmania and they “thought it would be a cool idea to go and set one”.

“We flew there on the Thursday and did the run on the Friday, and chilled out Saturday,” she cheerfully explained.

“We did it a lot quicker than we thought it would.”

The tactic, said Beth, was for the group to complete the odyssey in gruelling off-on, one-to-two-kilometre bursts.

Three runners would complete their sprints, while the other three trailed behind in a car before jumping out to sprint their section. This dynamic was repeated over and over again until the race was finished.

“It was carnage,” laughed Beth.

Surprisingly, though, neither the “super-hot” climate nor the stifling humidity ended up proving the biggest obstacle.

“The hardest part was all the roadkill,” said Beth. “I’m an empath, we had one little wallaby, it had one leg – it looked like it was coming up to me asking for help.

“I was on the brink of tears, I thought, ‘I’m not made for this!’ ”

But the runners persevered, and – subject to standard checks conducted by Guinness World Records, which can take up to 18 months – a shiny world record could be just around the corner.

Next up for Beth is the Hospice 2 Hospice half-marathon in Jersey later this month, followed by the Copenhagen marathon in early May.