100 WTF running facts
True, sourced and slightly unbelievable. Every card links to where we read it.
Facts as reported by their sources on 7 Oct 2026.
Records go stale. Marathon and mile world records in particular keep changing. The two newest ones here, the 1:59:30 London marathon on 26 Apr 2026 (fact 32) and the 3:42.66 mile on 18 Jul 2026 (fact 43), were checked against World Athletics before we published them.
Origins and history
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The famous "run from Marathon to Athens" story is legend: National Geographic's history of the marathon says it never happened as told.
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The Spartathlon (246 km, Athens to Sparta, since 1983) is based on the run Pheidippides made to Sparta to ask for help before the Battle of Marathon.
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The marathon is 26 miles 385 yards only because of the 1908 London Olympics course, which was set around the British royal family's viewing needs.
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The first modern Olympic marathon winner, Spyridon Louis in 1896, was a Greek water carrier.
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Women were excluded from the 1896 Olympics, so Stamata Revithi ran the marathon course on her own anyway.
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In the 1904 St. Louis Olympic marathon, winner Thomas Hicks was given egg whites, brandy and strychnine sulphate during the race.
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Same 1904 race: South African Len Taunyane was chased a mile off course by a pack of wild dogs.
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Shizo Kanakuri started the 1912 Stockholm Olympic marathon and finished it 54 years, 8 months and 6 days later, in 1967.
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The Boston Marathon began on April 19, 1897, inspired by the first Olympic marathon, and is still called the world's oldest annual marathon.
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In 1966 Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes near the Boston start line, then jumped in once half the pack had gone, to run the race as a woman.
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In 1967 Boston's race manager tried to rip the bib off Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run officially registered.
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Switzer's bib number 261 was retired by Boston in 2017, the first number ever retired.
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Until 1984 the Olympics had no women's running event longer than 1,500 m. The women's marathon was added that year in Los Angeles.
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The treadmill began as a prison punishment: Sir William Cubitt introduced the treadwheel in 1818 to keep convicts busy.
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Adidas and Puma exist because brothers Adi and Rudolf Dassler fell out and split their shoe company.
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Nike's waffle sole was inspired by a waffle iron used by co-founder Bill Bowerman.
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Thames Hare and Hounds, formed in 1868, is the oldest adult cross-country club in the world.
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The Hash House Harriers running clubs began in Kuala Lumpur in 1938.
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The Dipsea, still run today, held its first race on November 19, 1905, making it one of the oldest trail races around.
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The Olney Pancake Race dates back to 1445 and has run every year since 1948.
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parkrun began on 2 October 2004 with 13 runners, five volunteers, a stopwatch and washers from a hardware store.
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The 1928 "Bunion Derby" footrace ran 3,423.5 miles from Los Angeles to New York.
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At Helsinki 1952 Emil Zatopek won the 10,000 m, the 5,000 m and then the marathon, a distance he had never run before.
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Abebe Bikila won the 1960 Rome Olympic marathon barefoot because he did not like the shoes he was given.
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Bikila won the 1964 Tokyo marathon just 40 days after having his appendix removed.
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Eric Liddell, of Chariots of Fire fame, refused to run the 1924 Olympic 100 m heat because it was on a Sunday.
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Wilma Rudolph overcame polio as a child and went on to become a world-record-holding Olympic champion.
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Roger Bannister ran the first sub-4 mile (3:59.4) on May 6, 1954. John Landy broke his record 46 days later.
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Haile Gebrselassie ran 10 km to school and 10 km home each day as a child, and ran with one arm crooked from carrying his books.
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Alberto Salazar was read last rites after collapsing with a 108 degree F body temperature at a 7.1-mile race in 1978.
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Rosie Ruiz was declared 1980 Boston women's winner, then disqualified. A photographer said she met Ruiz on the subway during the New York City Marathon.
Records that sound fake
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On April 26, 2026, Sabastian Sawe ran 1:59:30 in London, the first sub-2-hour marathon in an official, record-eligible race.
Runner's World UK (source, opens in a new tab) Checked: World Athletics (opens in a new tab)
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Sawe's run took 65 seconds off Kelvin Kiptum's 2023 world record.
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Eliud Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019, but it did not count as a record because of rotating pacemakers.
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For Kipchoge's Vienna run, a pace car projected a laser formation line on the road to guide the pacemakers.
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Before Vienna, Kipchoge missed two hours by 25 seconds in Nike's Breaking2 event in Monza (2:00:25).
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Physiologist Michael Joyner floated a sub-2 marathon in 1991 and his peers laughed it off.
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In a lab study, prototype Nike shoes lowered the energy cost of running by 4% on average.
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Ruth Chepngetich cut the women's marathon world record by nearly two minutes in Chicago in 2024, running 2:09:56.
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Paula Radcliffe's 2:15:25 from London 2003 stood until Brigid Kosgei ran 2:14:04 in Chicago in 2019, about 16 years later.
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Usain Bolt hit 44.72 km/h between 60 and 80 m when he ran his 9.58 world record.
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Florence Griffith-Joyner's 10.49 for 100 m, set in 1988, was still standing 36 years later.
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Hicham El Guerrouj's 3:43.13 mile from 1999 was listed as the record until Josh Kerr ran 3:42.66 in London on July 18, 2026.
World Athletics (source, opens in a new tab) Record checked
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The 2024 New York City Marathon had 55,646 finishers, the biggest marathon ever.
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Fauja Singh finished the Toronto Waterfront Marathon at age 100.
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In 2015, Harriette Thompson finished the San Diego marathon at 92, the oldest woman to do so.
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The fastest run up the Empire State Building (1,576 steps, 86 floors) is 9 min 33 sec.
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Joe Salter holds the Guinness record for the fastest marathon joggling backwards with three objects: 5:51:25.
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Lloyd Scott took 26 days to run the London Marathon in a heavy deep-sea diving suit.
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Ron Hill ran every single day for 52 years and 39 days, from December 1964 to January 2017.
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Jon Sutherland ran every day for 55 years, 7 months and 6 days (20,309 days) before his streak ended.
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Terry Fox ran for 143 days and 5,373 km on his Marathon of Hope.
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Dean Karnazes ran 350 miles in 80 hours and 44 minutes without sleep in 2005.
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Karnazes also ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days.
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Kilian Jornet climbed Everest from base camp to summit in 26 hours in 2017.
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The fastest 3,100-mile race finish is 40 days, 9 hours, 6 minutes, by Ashprihanal Pekka Aalto in 2015.
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Cliff Young, 61, won the 1983 875 km Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon in 5 days, 15 hours, 4 minutes, wearing gumboots.
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Courtney Dauwalter won the 2017 Moab 240-mile race outright by more than 10 hours.
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Bruce Fordyce won the 89 km Comrades Marathon nine times, eight in a row.
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Sunita Williams ran the Boston Marathon on the International Space Station treadmill in about 4 hours 24 minutes.
Races at the edge
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Barkley Marathons entrants must bring a license plate from home as part of the entry fee, and first-timers hang it in the trees.
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Barkley runners who come back to race again must hand over a pack of Camel cigarettes in their fee.
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Jasmin Paris became the first woman to finish the Barkley, in 59:58:21 in 2024, inside the 60-hour limit.
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In 2006 nobody at the Barkley finished even the 60-mile "fun run" inside 60 hours.
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Man v Horse in Wales began in 1980 after a pub debate about whether a man or horse is faster over mountains.
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It took 25 years for a man to beat a horse in Man v Horse, when Huw Lobb won £25,000 in 2004.
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A Siberian marathon was held at -52 C in Oymyakon, Yakutia, in 2024.
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The NorthPole Marathon is run on drifting Arctic sea ice at the top of the world.
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The Tenzing-Hillary Everest Marathon starts at Everest Base Camp and ends at Namche Bazaar.
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The Great Wall Marathon climbs 5,164 steps on the Great Wall at Huangyaguan.
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Badwater 135 runs 135 miles across Death Valley in heat of up to 53 C, and shoes have melted.
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The Marathon des Sables is 250 km in 6 stages across the Sahara, and runners carry their own food.
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Tor des Geants is 330 km with 24,000 m of climbing and a 150-hour time limit.
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Western States 100 started in 1974 when Gordy Ainsleigh ran the horse-race trail in 23 hours 42 minutes, proving a person could do it.
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Western States grew out of a 1955 ride in which horsemen showed that horses could cover 100 miles in a day.
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At the 1993 Leadville 100, Tarahumara runners swapped donated Rockport shoes for sandals made from old tires.
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Arnulfo Quimare, a Tarahumara runner, won Leadville for three years in a row.
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Iten, Kenya sits at about 2,400 m, has some 42,000 people and has produced some of the best long-distance runners in the world.
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Eliud Kipchoge still cleans the toilets at his training camp.
Body and science
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Humans are built for distance: a 2004 Nature paper argued endurance running shaped our body form.
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A 2024 study in Nature Human Behaviour argued endurance running evolved with persistence hunting.
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Humans have fatigue-resistant leg muscle and sweat to dump heat, two traits rare in mammals.
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Your Achilles tendon stores and releases elastic energy with each step, which makes running far more efficient.
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The "runner's high" may come from endocannabinoids: dogs and humans both show the rise, ferrets do not.
Journal of Experimental Biology (source, opens in a new tab)
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In a marathon study, 82% of runners showed a rise in a blood marker of acute kidney injury, which recovers.
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At the 2002 Boston Marathon, 13% of tested runners had low blood sodium (hyponatremia).
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A large study found runners had about 3 years higher life expectancy than non-runners.
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Ostriches can sprint up to 43 mph and run continuously at 30 to 37 mph.
India and Pune
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The Pune International Marathon first ran on September 25, 1983.
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More than 800 Punekars ran the "Run for the Hills" at Vetal Tekdi in one Sunday, to save Pune's hills from unrestricted development.
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Milkha Singh's Rome 1960 400 m time (45.73) stood as India's record for 38 years.
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P.T. Usha missed a 1984 Olympic bronze in the 400 m hurdles by one hundredth of a second.
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Lalita Babar reached the 2016 Olympic steeplechase final, 32 years after P.T. Usha was in an Olympic final.
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Sriram Singh ran 1:45.77 to finish 7th in the 1976 Olympic 800 m final.
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Avinash Sable set a national record in the 3000 m steeplechase at the Tokyo Olympics.
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Ladakh Marathon's course runs from 11,500 to 17,618 ft, and is advertised as the world's highest marathon.
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The 72 km Khardung La Challenge is described as the highest ultra marathon in the world.
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Charity money raised at the Tata Mumbai Marathon grew from Rs 7.75 crore in 2009 to Rs 53.62 crore in 2025.
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Budhia Singh from Odisha ran 65 km from Puri to Bhubaneswar in 7 hours 2 minutes as a young child.
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Sufiya Khan holds the Guinness record for the fastest female trip around India's Golden Quadrilateral on foot: 110 days.
The Pune and India section is short on purpose. We only add a fact when there is a source for it.
That is all 100. Know a strange running fact with a good source? Share it in the WhatsApp group and it might make the next set.