Ironwomen

   A few years ago I wrote about a "Wonder Woman", Camille Herron, who is an ultramarathoner. For example, she has run close to 170 miles in one day (270,km). In "Women Running Around", you learned that in the 1960s women weren't allowed in the Boston Marathon and it was not until the early 1980s that women could run a marathon in the Olympics. If you combine those two posts with this one, you will have a pretty good pile of impressive, athletic female feats.

RUNNING - Very Far
   

    Shandra Hill - Vernon, B.C.
  I remember thinking back in the late 1970s that no one would be able to complete an "Ironman Triathlon", since it included a marathon which was hard enough. I was wrong, now there are "ULTRA"-triathlons and they are being completed by women. Ms. Hill is doing "Decas", and even double and triple ones. Here is the story:
  "B.C. Ultra Triathlete Becomes First in the World to Complete 3 Double-Deca Races," Shaurya Kshatri · CBC News · Posted: Oct 20, 2023.
   "Imagine running, swimming and biking more than 4,500 kilometres for 26 days with three-hour naps and 15-minute breaks in between. Now imagine doing that twice in a row. Shanda Hill of Vernon, B.C., just did.
  After completing an ultra triathlon in Switzerland, the 41-year-old took a week of downtime before doing the same race in San Felipe, in Mexico's Guanajuato state, where she clinched the top spot in the DecaUltraTri Continuous Double Deca on Thursday, besting five other athletes. 
   With her latest victory, Hill has become the only person in history to compete in and finish three double-Decas. 
   The Deca exists within an extreme niche of the triathlon world, where participants go through a 38-kilometre swim, 1,800-kilometre bike ride, and a 422-kilometre run. A double-Deca, as the name suggests, is twice that distance.   
   According to the International Ultra Triathlon Association (IUTA), the official governing body of the sport, the double-Deca requires athletes to complete 76 kilometres of swimming, followed by 3,600 kilometres of cycling, and finally 844 kilometres of running.
  That's the equivalent of 20 Ironman races.
 According to Ms. Hill, "Smart people would have stopped at one. I'm not quite sure how I ended up doing three of those."
   Update: As this was being done, Ms. Hill was competing in Taiwan when a typhoon arrived and she has decided she has had enough - or her body has:
"Vernon Ultra Athlete Announces Retirement from Competition mid-race", Roger Knox, Vernon Morning Star, Nov. 12, 2025.
Sources: 
Her website is here: https://www.shandahillultra.com/
For more details and photos, her FB pages are here and accessible:  https://www.facebook.com/ShandaHillUltraAthlete/
All of this activity is made clearer by looking at the Wikipedia entry for "Ultra-triathon."

The Bonus: A Simple 100 Mile Run
  This story just broke: "Irish athlete Caitriona Jennings Breaks 100-mile World Record: The run of Jennings of 12:37:04 was almost four hours ahead of the next best woman," Ian O'Riodan, The Irish Times, Nov. 9, 2025.
   "Caitriona Jennings has broken the world record for 100 miles after running 12 hours, 37 minutes and four seconds to complete the Tunnel Hill 100 Mile, a US ultra-marathon event staged in Illinois."

ROWING- Across the Pacific

   It is a long and tiring trip in a jet.
   "How Jess Rowe and Miriam Payne Made History Rowing the Pacific Ocean, Caoimhe O'Neill, New York Times, Nov.6, 2025.
    …”the two British women made history by becoming the first female crew to successfully row non-stop and unsupported across the Pacific Ocean. To grasp the magnitude of their feat, more people have walked in space than successfully rowed across the world’s biggest ocean.
Their journey started in Callao, Peru, in May and finished in Cairns, Australia on October 19: a 6907-nautical mile odyssey from east to west in 165 days."

The Bonus: A Tragic One
   In MM you will find this post by clicking on the following link. It is about a woman with no legs (or breasts) who tried to row across the Pacific, but didn't make it:
"Angela Madsen (R.I.P.) 

WALKING - A Very Long Way

   Betty Kellenberger has done many difficult things, and attempted to hike the Appalachian Trail a few times, where she got Lyme disease and a concussion from a fall. Recently she had shoulder surgery and a knee replacement, but she decided to try the Trail again.“We put all kinds of limitations on ourselves,” said Kellenberger, who lives in Carson City, Michigan. “Sometimes the biggest one is we don’t get up and try it.” 
   She thought it was interesting that you can actually walk from Georgia to Maine and she has now done it - the entire 2,197-mile Appalachian Trail (3535, km).
She is 80!

   I learned about her in this article: "She Hiked the Entire Appalachian Trail at 80, Unaware She’d Just Made History," Sydney Page, The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2025. That article is behind a paywall, but you can read more about her trek and see more photos in The Trek: "Betty Kellenberger Just Became the Oldest Woman To Thru-Hike the AT at Age 80." 

Women Running Around

 

   A few days ago, I mentioned the  "Wonder Woman", Camille Herron, who is an ultrarunner.  She holds the world record for the 100 mile run (160km) and she has run 167 miles (270km) in 24 hours. I thought of those numbers when I read this:

"When Kathrine Switzer, a twenty-year-old journalism and English major at Syracuse University, set out to run the Boston Marathon in 1967, women were barred from it. Switzer registered under her initials and showed up anyway, only to be outed by reporters shouting, “It’s a girl! It’s a girl!” The race director tried to eject her physically from the course. Switzer and others later appeared on television to promote female runners, and the seventies jogging craze attracted women, too. President Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments into law, promising female athletes equal access to facilities and funding in schools. In 1984, the Olympic Games held a women’s marathon for the first time. Today, more than half of all marathon runners are women."

   Apparently in the radical '60s, running for women was a radical endeavour, rather unfeminine and likely to cause damage to the undercarriage. Even if one was  only running  a marathon (26m or 42k). Some things for women have changed. 

Sources:
   The quotation is from a review of this book and a few others: Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World by Danielle Friedman. The review is by Margaret Talbot, "Muscle Memory: Is Fitness Culture Our Friend," The New Yorker, Mar. 22, 2022, p.69.
   The photo above is from: "Women Are Better Than Men at Marathon Pacing, Says New Research," Kate Carter, The Guardian, Jan. 20, 2015.

The Bonus:
   During "March Madness" it is worth mentioning that now women can even play basketball like men. When I was in high school, the girls could only dribble three times. Now there are 68 teams of women running full tilt in the NCAA tournament. 
   One female basketball player who is not running is Brittney Griner, who was playing professionally in Russia and is now in detention there. See: "Brittney Griner, Star, W.N.B.A. Center, Is Detained in Russia," NYT, Mar. 5, 2022. 

A Few More Factlets

Wonder Woman - Factlet (10)

   If you are thinking about working out more (or even some) when the weather gets better, then this brief set of statistics may serve as an incentive. On the other hand, if you are breathing heavily after walking from the couch to the fridge, you might get depressed when reading about this woman for whom a 100-mile run is just a jaunt. She is clearly both finely tuned and named.  The stats are from here: “Woman Ultrarunners Age Like Fine Wine: Camille Herron, 40, Has Set Another World Record,” Victor Mather, New York Times, Feb. 27, 2022. On your ready, get set, go:

She has set multiple world records in open-road races and on tracks, in distances from 50 miles to races that lasted 24 hours. In 2017, she shattered the 100-mile world record by over an hour, finishing in 12 hours 42 minutes 40 seconds…

On Feb. 19, she did it again, breaking her own world record, in 12:41:11, a pace of 7:37 per mile. She also beat all the men in the race, with the first male runner, Arlen Glick, coming in about 30 minutes behind her with a time of 13:10:25.

If you are not yet impressed, she mentions at the end of the article: “I also hold the world record for 24 hours. I ran 167 miles in a day.” (about 270km).

Southern Ontario Real Estate - Factlet (11)

    If the rundown bungalow on your street is being offered for sale under a number in the high six figures, then I suppose it is reasonable to assume that the land upon which it sits is also worth a lot. This is good news for farmers, but rather bad news for those of us who enjoy eating. The raising of rutabagas looks less glamorous when one realizes that the land can produce warehouses more quickly and the yield is far, far more profitable. As I said in my earlier rant, there will soon be nothing but tarmac from Tillsonburg to Tilbury and all of southern Ontario will soon look like Toronto the Carbuncle. Here is the factlet:

"The rush is widespread, involving tens of thousands of acres of land in regions outside the Greater Toronto Area, including the Golden Horseshoe and all the way to Windsor, he adds. “Two years ago, we were talking between $300,000 to $450,000 per acre across Southwestern Ontario. Now it’s $800,000 to $1.5-million per acre."
From: "Commercial Real Estate Sees Record-breaking Canada-wide Land Rush," Wallace Immen, Globe & Mail, March 1, 2022.

If you are concerned about the loss of good agricultural land, there is an election soon. Here is a good resource produced by Environmental Defence Canada. 

WOE CANADA - Factlet (12)

   Given the focus on Identity and Indigeneity this statistic made me wonder if there will be a Canadian identity in the future, or several thousand solitudes not just two.

There are more than 630 First Nation communities in Canada, which represent more than 50 Nations and 50 Indigenous languages.
From: First Nations. 

Post Script:

   For the fine distinction between FACTLETS and FACTOIDS, new readers should see my post about GEE-GEES.