A group of Canada’s top female distance runners were working together in Hamilton on Sunday to reclaim a Guinness world record they helped set back in 1999.

25 years ago Patti Moore and Paula Schnurr, two long distance runners, were a part of the team that set the Guinness world record for the fastest 100-by-1 mile female relay — a race broken up into 100 individual segments, ran by 100 individual women.

“Last summer when I found out that some girls in San Francisco had taken our record away we decided we needed to go and get it back, so Paula and I have been working on this for a year,” Moore said.

The record they set back in 1999 was completing the relay in nine hours and 24 minutes.

The record to beat is nine hours, 18 minutes and 32 seconds.

Schnurr says there’s a really good chance at reclaiming the record because of the caliber of runners they have, who range in age from 12 to 50.

“Its a really neat event because we have a lot of younger athletes and we have a lot of university and some of the best long distant runners participating,” Schnurr said.

Although the main goal is to reclaim the Guinness world record, the organizers and runners say this event is much bigger than that, and tell CHCH News they aim to inspire the upcoming generation of female athletes.

“We know that girls don’t have the same opportunities as boys and this event highlights the power of sports and its ability to unite us,” Sasha Gollish, one of the runners, said.

“We are at that critical point where we can have unbelievable woman play sports and I cant wait to see what that future looks like too.”

By the end of the event, they finished out the race with a final time of eight hours, 57 minutes, and 26 seconds — reclaiming the record.