Natalie Dau, a 52-year-old Australian-born Singaporean ultrarunner, recently completed an extraordinary 621.4-mile run across Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, setting a Singapore record for the fastest ultramarathon over this distance. Her grueling journey, which started in late May and concluded on June 5 in Singapore, is equivalent to running two marathons a day for 12 days straight, covering an average of 52.2 miles each day.
Despite the severe heat and a hip injury, Dau’s determination and resilience saw her through the journey. Dau shared, “After four days, I first doubted whether I could finish this. I love the challenge of a marathon and the raw feeling it gives, but I hate these low points (feelings of despair). And they come often.”
Dau’s journey was meticulously planned last September as part of Project 1000, an initiative to encourage women’s sports participation. Her previous record was 124 miles, and she sought this new challenge to push her limits further. The run also raised $37,000 for the GRLS fund.
However, Dau admitted to being naive about the journey’s demands. She had to run almost continuously, with minimal breaks for sleep and meals. She shared in a message on the fifth day, “I had breakfast at a roadside stall and admired the scenery for five minutes before setting off again.” Running during the night to beat the heat meant she could only sleep 2-3 hours a night. “It’s not fun to set the alarm for 11:30 PM after finishing dinner at 8 PM,” she wrote. Waking up every day was the scariest part for her. “Every day I woke up thinking, ‘What if I can’t run today?’ In the end, I felt very broken. I felt like I couldn’t make it back to Singapore for my final journey,” she confessed.
Dau hopes her journey will inspire women and the elderly to push their boundaries and take on new challenges. Her message to runners and aspiring athletes is powerful: “It doesn’t matter whether you come in first or last. You are doing something almost superhuman, something only 0.05% of the world’s population has done.”
4o