Here at Runner’s World, we spend numerous hours poring over race outcomes—specifically while those times are global information. But most of the excellent times we write are in contemporary events, consisting of the marathon or if a new American file is set on the track.
Then there are the more significant, let’s assume, bizarre running facts. While it’s tougher to maintain a close eye fixed on who can dash up the Empire State Building the fastest or who’s proudly owning the global beer mile scene, we still see these moments as really worth writing approximately.
Here, we’ve rounded up some of the strangest, unique information in the running, a lot of which can be as magnificent as they are kooky. (Do you have got a document you’re enthralled by? Let us understand within the feedback at the bottom of the page.)
Compared to the rest of the feats in this listing, jogging a 1/2 or full marathon on a treadmill isn’t too difficult to wrap our heads around. After all, many of us have been pressured sooner or later to complete our long runs on the ’mill while horrific conditions or different responsibilities keep us inside.
According to the Treadmill Running Records database, the guys’ international file for strolling a marathon on a treadmill is held using Eric Blake, a 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier who, in 2006, ran 26.2 miles in 2:21: forty on a Malibu Fitness gym treadmill in Connecticut.
Tyler Andrews, a 2:16: fifty-nine marathoner from Concord, Massachusetts, holds the report for the quickest half of the marathon on the ’mill, a 1:03:38 he ran on the Boston Marathon Expo in 2015. For ladies, Jenna Wrieden, a North Carolina pass-u. S. A. Educate holds the 1/2 marathon treadmill document of one:20: forty-three, which she also set on the equal Boston Expo in 2014. Currently, there’s no legit girls’ treadmill marathon record.
2. Indoor Marathon
While going for walks 26.2 miles over the floor is better than doing them on a treadmill while you’re jogging on a two-hundred-meter indoor tune—which means you need to pass 211 laps to finish a marathon—the mission appears just as daunting. So every spring, The Armory indoor tune in Upper Manhattan hosts an indoor marathon championship, where a field of around one hundred runners gradually ticks off their laps with the hopes of nabbing an international report inside the quirky event.
Last year, each of the guys and ladies’ legitimate indoor marathon facts had been set at The Armory. Malcolm Richards, a primary school instructor from San Francisco who holds a 2:thirteen:29 outdoor marathon PR, received the race in 2:19:01. Championing for girls turned into Lindsey Scherf, a 2:32:19 marathoner from New York who ran 2:forty:55 indoors.
3. Hula-Hoop Half Marathon
Betty Shurin, additionally referred to as “Betty Hoops,” takes the cake in this category. The runner and yogi from New York, who now instructs hula-hoop health classes, set the Guinness global document for the fastest half of marathon with a hula hoop when she finished the 2012 Hollywood Half Marathon in 3:03—without losing or preventing the circle as soon as. Shurin additionally set and broke her international record for 10K with a hula hoop at the Bolder Boulder 10Kin 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. Her satisfactory 10K time is 1:14.
4. Backward Marathon
While strolling backward, or “retro running,” indeed has its merits—it can strengthen muscle groups that typically pass unused in our legs—most of us flip around pretty quick. That’s now not the case for Xu Zhenjun, who ran the whole 2004 Beijing International Marathon backward and completed in 3:43:39, putting the Guinness World Record for the fastest backward marathon for men (in keeping with the World Records for Backward Running database, two different guys, Achim Aretz and Markus Jürgens, have run quicker times. However those aren’t diagnosed through Guinness). According to the website, Kathryn Clewley holds the document for ladies, a four:26:06 she ran in Hamilton, Canada, in 2017.
5. Underwater Marathon
For all you injured oldsters accessible, don’t worry—you continue to risk cracking a world going for walks file. It merely happens to be on an underwater treadmill.
In 2012, Mike Studer, Oregon’s Northwest Rehabilitation Associates Inc. president, set the file for longest—and quickest—distance run underwater when he ran 26.2 miles in three: forty-four:52 on an underwater treadmill in Salem, Oregon.
6. World’s Longest Race
Every June, ultrarunners in Queens, New York, begin the world’s longest licensed road race: the Self-Transcendence three, one hundred Mile Race, an extremely-staying power event hooked up in 1987 by way of meditation guru and distance runner Sri Chinmoy. Participants have to complete the considerable distance over the direction of 52 days. The craziest component? The race is administered totally on a half-mile long loop along an extended metropolis block in Jamaica, New York. To finish the run, contributors should complete 5,649 laps on the sidewalk.
Self-Transcendence isn’t for the faint of coronary heart. On the event’s website, race director Rupantar LaRusso writes, “The serious athlete needs to have incredible courage, physical stamina, concentration and the capacity to bear fatigue, boredom, and minor injuries.”
Endurance athlete Madhupran Wolfgang Schwerk of Germany has the document for completing the distance the fastest—he finished the 3, a hundred miles in forty-one days, eight hours, 16 mins, and 29 seconds in 2006, averaging nearly 75 miles in step with a day.
