Teesside lecturer breaks world treadmill world record

Sharon Gayter said she was "confident" she could break the records

A woman has broken the men's and women's world records for the distance covered running on a treadmill in seven days.

Teesside University lecturer Sharon Gayter, from Guisborough, reached 1,010km (628 miles) to beat the record earlier than expected.

Ms Gayter, 48, hit the distance in six days, five hours and is still running.

"I was always confident I could do it but I didn't know what the time would be," she said.

"It's very rare that a female can take a male record and to extend it by a considerable margin to make sure it stays for a considerable amount of time."

She will carry on running until Wednesday completing the full seven days and extending her record.

Ms Gayter beat the existing women's seven-day distance record in five days, four hours and 47 minutes.

'Keep it slow'

Ms Gayter, who has run more than 300 marathons and more than 100 "ultra-distance" races, trained at the university's hydrotherapy pool and said the secret was to keep a steady pace.

She said: "A lot of people can't control their pace.

"I've just been jogging along watching the heart rate, effortless really. If you keep it slow you can keep it going."

According to Guinness World Records, the previous record holders were Lee Chamberlain who ran 753.24km (468 miles) in July 2009 and a grandmother from Kent, Mimi Anderson, who ran 650km (404 miles).

During the record bid, Ms Gayter has been raising money for two charities - Zoe's Place, a hospice for babies in Middlesbrough, and Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research.

She said she hoped to raise money to support her colleague Michael Wren, whose daughter Charlotte died from leukaemia aged three in 2007.