Mission Statement

GOMU was founded on October 19th, 2021, to promote multi-day running globally, to hold GOMU World Championship multi-day races, and to recognize multi-day records that the International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU) does not.

GOMU World Championships are created to encourage multi-day athletes from many nations and of all calibers to come together to compete on a level playing field and to aspire after world, national, age group, and personal records. Through our World Championships, we hope to cultivate a thriving and vibrant community of multi-day athletes, to make multi-day ultramarathoning mainstream.

We are not a governing body of ultrarunning. World Athletics (WA) is the global governing body for running, and WA recognizes IAU as the governing body for ultrarunning. We do not presume or intend to usurp either of these roles. In addition, both WA and IAU maintain records for the best performances achieved over certain standard distances in races. WA recognizes some ultra-distance records (50 km, 100 km); IAU recognizes many more. These marks must be achieved in races subject to WA / IAU / national governing body (NGB) rules, and must be ratified via a process of application and certification.

We step in to take over the maintenance of records for the many standard multi-day distances that IAU does not recognize, or has abandoned. Currently, IAU recognizes only 48-hour World Records, and 6-day World Best Performances. But there are many more multi-day formats than these of both current and historical importance; it is vital that the best performances here are not lost.

What does it mean to call a mark a "record"? Different people have different opinions on what constitutes an actual record. Here, we provide complete transparency on our process and our criteria; this defines what it means to be a GOMU record.

We define these to be the "standard" multi-day formats: 48 hours, 72 hours, 6 days, 10 days, 500 miles, 1000 miles, 2000 miles, 3000 miles, 3100 miles, 500 km, 1000 km, 2000 km, 3000 km, 4000 km, and 5000 km. These are of primary importance. We also maintain records for a number of non-standard formats (4 days to 49 days, 200 miles to 2900 miles, and 300 km to 4900 km). Coming soon: we will recognize age-group records for our standard formats.

A record in our database will have a status that is one of the following:

• Initial. These are the best marks we are aware of prior to GOMU's founding, based largely on data obtained from statisticians Andy Milroy and Sahishnu Szczesiul. All were performed on certified courses subject to NGB sanctioning and have verified lap splits.

• GOMU-ratified. These are marks achieved after GOMU's founding for our standard or non-standard formats, other than 48-hour and 6-day, that have had paperwork submitted and have passed the GOMU ratification procedure. Our application form, containing the requirements, may be found here.

• IAU. We reflect IAU 48-hour and 6-day records into our database, so that all multi-day records can be found here. 

• IAU split. These are marks achieved as splits in an IAU record (e.g., 4 days in a 6-day race, 300 km in a 48-hour race). We record these when IAU ratifies the record, when certified lap splits are available, without need for an explicit application.

• Pending. These are marks which exceed the current official mark in our database, but have not had paperwork submitted yet, or are still pending ratification by GOMU or IAU.