Starting on March 6 and through March 12, 2024, lululemon’s Global Ambassador Collective will participate in FURTHER, a first-of-its-kind, 10-woman ultramarathon at Lake Cahuilla in La Quinta, California.
Created with the multiple purposes of providing lululemon athletes with the opportunity to go after several distance and time-based world records and personal bests, gathering data on female performance factors, and publicizing new apparel and shoes, the event is being run on a looped course and spans six days.
The diverse group of runners will start ahead of International Women’s Day, which is on Friday, March 8, and includes Stefanie Flippin, Camille Herron, Kayla Jeter, Mirna Valerio, Devon Yanko, Leah Yingling, Montana Farrah-Seaton, Xiaomeng Jia, Yoon Young Kang, and Vriko Kwok.
Each woman has different goals for the six days of racing.
Herron has been candid with her goals for the event and is setting out to try to break the men’s six-day International Association of Ultrarunners World Best Performance of 644.238 miles, which was set by Yiannis Kouros of Greece in 2005. The women’s six-day world best is 549.063 miles, set by New Zealand’s Sandra Barwick in 1990.
In a promotional video released by lululemon, Herron says, “I’m excited to push my own human limits. How far can I go for six days? I feel pretty good that I can break the women’s world record but I want to see if it’s possible for me to close the gender gap to the men’s world record or exceed the men’s world record.”
Throughout the event, scientists from the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific and others from lululemon’s research network will be gathering physiological, biomechanical, and psychosocial data from all the athletes.
lululemon is also using the event to release several new products. A custom colorway of the brand’s beyondfeel shoe model is a part of the product drop, which the athletes will wear all week.
You can follow live tracking of the event starting on Wednesday, reportedly at 9 a.m. U.S. Pacific Standard Time.
No official announcement of the course layout has yet been made, but details are trickling forth via the content creators and influencers who are part of the production. The course looks to be a loop of about 2.55 miles miles on mostly dirt encircling Lake Cahuilla. The start-finish area includes indoor pods and RVs for each of the athletes.