A Chinese geezer who goes by ‘Uncle Chen’ is going viral online for smoking non-stop while running a marathon.
The lung-distance runner (had to) is 50 years old and completed the 42.2km race in a commendable time of 3 hours and 28 minutes, finishing 574th out of around 1500 other runners - he didn’t exactly smoke the competition but he was cig-nificantly better than a large portion of the contestants.
Credit: Weibo
According to the Mirror, Uncle Chen was either lighting up or smoking a cigarette the whole race, which is quite lit-erally as shocking as it is impressive. Why does Uncle Chen do this? We may never know. We just know it's got to be incredibly bad for him.
Images of Uncle Chen puff, puff, passing other runners in the Xin’anjiang Marathon went viral on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, with race officials even sharing his finishing certificate on the site, confirming he actually completed the race.
Credit: Weibo
Uncle Chen’s been known to run marathons while hooning tobacco. The NZ Herald reports that as far back as 2017 he was known as ‘Smoking Brother’ while running in marathons and ultramarathons.
There are even some reports that the bloke only whips out the ciggies while he runs, which is one backwards smoking philosophy but again, it’s his life.
Earlier this year, some fellas from Christchurch completed their own marathon with a bit of unhealthy on the side. They travelled 43.36kms around Christchurch (walking it, not running) and hit a bunch of bakeries to buy pies and other treats on their journey, totalling six pies, a sausage roll, a donut, and a raspberry slice.
Perhaps those Christchurch blokes need to message Uncle Chen and get him to ease off the ciggies and replace them with some quality New Zealand mince and cheese pies.
