Lithuania’s Aleksandr Sorokin runs 319.6 km in 24 hours, creates new world record

Last year, Aleksandr Sorokin had created a new record by running for 309.399 km in 24 hours. He broke the record on Sunday. (Image credit: @ultrarunner_aleksandr_sorokin/Instagram)

Lithuania’s Aleksandr Sorokin created a new world record after he ran for 319.614 km in 24 hours at the 2022 IAU 24-Hour European Championships in Verona, Italy, on September 17 and 18.

Reacting to this feat, the 40-year-old wrote on Instagram: "I'm very tired, however I'm double excited. Very, very thankful for your support, I really felt it."

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A post shared by Aleksandr Sorokin (@ultrarunner_aleksandr_sorokin)

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Last year, Sorokin broke Yiannis Kouros’s “unbreakable” 24-hour world record of 303.506 km by nearly 6 kilometers by covering a distance of 309.399 km. This weekend, Sorokin broke his own record by more than 10 km by running for 319.614 km.

Interestingly, Aleksandr Sorokin took up running only in 2013 to lose weight. “I began running to get in shape when I weighed 100 kg. At the time I wasn’t playing any sports, just drinking and smoking a lot. Then I just began running,” he told the media. “The thing about running is you can do more than you think you are capable of."

The former kayaker had put on the extra weight after a shoulder injury. "I began to drink a lot of beer and smoke cigarettes, from 2006 to 2013. My weight was about 100 kilograms, and one day I told myself that I needed to stop and change my life," he told iRunFar. "For my first 100K run, and until 2019, I ran without a coach. Preparing for the first one was just intuitive. I used some information from the internet, and some experience I had from training for kayaking."

Now, he runs 100 to 300 km per week.

Read more: Planning to run your first marathon? Here is what it takes