Joasia Zakrzewski, an accomplished ultramarathon runner from Australia, was stripped of her bronze medal and trophy won in a recent 50-mile race after organizers learned that she had used a car for a portion of the course.

47-year-old Joasia Zakrzewski finished third in the 2023 GB Ultras 50-mile (80km) race from Manchester to Liverpool on April 7 and even posed with her medal and trophy after crossing the finish line despite knowing full well that she had broken the rules of the competition. After analyzing GPX data, race organizers concluded that Zakrzewski had reached a speed of 35mph (56km/h) during a short section of the race, which made her faster than Usain Bolt, the fastest human in history. Upon interrogating race staff, witnesses and the runner herself, Joasia Zakrzewski was disqualified and stripped of her medal for riding in a friend’s car during the race.

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A Chinese man recently went viral on social media after he was photographed lighting up and smoking several tobacco cigarettes while running a marathon.

At this point, I think everyone can agree that smoking tobacco isn’t the healthiest thing you can do. But it’s one thing to light up in the comfort of your own home while enjoying a cup of coffee, or on a cigarette break at work, and quite another while running a 42-kilometer marathon. So when photos of a man in his 50’s casually smoking while taking part in the Xin’anjiang Marathon last week went viral, everyone was curious to know his story.

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An Australian man has become known as the COPD Athlete because of his incredible ability to run entire marathons despite having only 30 percent lung capacity as a result of an incurable and progressive condition.

Russell Winwood was diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) in 2011. By that time, the Brisbane native had already turned his life around, having survived a stroke at age 36. He had given up smoking, cut down on drinking alcohol, started eating better, and, most importantly, he had taken up sports. For years, he competed in varying distances of triathlons, from sprint to Half Ironman and even a few ultra-marathons. Everything was going great, but at one point Winwood noticed that his usual training felt harder and he found it difficult to breathe. That’s when he received his COPD diagnosis, along with the warning that his lungs were operating at less than 30 percent capacity.

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Barbara Humbert, an 82-year-old great-grandmother from Val d’Oise, France, recently set a new world record after running a whopping 125 km (78 miles) in 24 hours.

At the end of last month, during the French Championships held in Brive-la-Gaillarde, 82-year-old Barbara Humbert broke the world record for the longest distance run in 24 hours for her age category. A German woman had run 105 kilometers (65.2 miles) on tarmac a few years back, and Barbara had her sights on improving that record by about 15 kilometers. She exceeded her own expectations, though, smashing through the old world record with a recorded distance of 125 kilometers covered in 24 hours. Not bad for an 82-year-old great-grandmother, is it?

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A couple that documents their family’s outdoor activities and athletic achievement on social media recently landed in hot water for encouraging their 6-year-old son to complete a 26.2-mile running marathon.

Kami and Ben Crawford routinely share their family’s athletic exploits with their tens of thousands of fans on YouTube and Instagram, but their latest challenge attracted more criticism than praise. Last week, the couple took to social media to post photos of their entire family running the Flying Pig marathon in Cincinatti. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with that picture, except for the fact that their youngest son, Rainier, is only 6-years-old and the Flying Pig marathon is a whopping 26.2-mile run. The fact that he had to run for 8 hours and 35 minutes to finish the race was viewed by many as nothing less than torture for the young child.

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Michael Kish, a 70-year-old American runner, stunned the audience at the Penn Relays athletic event last Thursday, by finishing the 100-meter dash in under 14 seconds.

Imagine being a pensioner and turning up at an important sporting event meant primarily for athletes in prime physical shape and stealing the show. That’s exactly what Michael Kish did last week with his awe-inspiring performance in the 100-meter dash, blowing past his competitors and finishing with an impressive time of just 13.47 seconds. That’s a time most 20-year-olds can only dream of beating, yet this 70-year-old grandfather ran it like it was no big deal.

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Described as “the world’s first premium ultra,” the Highland Kings marathon requires participants to pay a £15,499 ($21,500) entrance fee. That makes it the most expensive ultramarathon on Earth.’

Ultramarathons aren’t usually associated with luxury, but Primal Adventure, an outdoor adventure business based in Scotland, is hoping to change that by organizing what many are calling the most expensive ultra marathon in history. The Highland Kings, a four-day camping race covering a distance of 120 miles on the west coast of Scotland, is limited to only 40 participants, each of whom will be required to pay an entrance fee of £15,499. The premium cost will give them access to luxury amenities like butlers, Michelin-star chefs, and hydrotherapy pools, among others.

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Having been running for the last 15 years, TV Asahi’s Zenryokuzaka is one of Japan’s most longstanding television shows, which is a bit strange considering its simple premise.

Every night at 1:20 a.m., Monday to Thursday, thousands of people tune in to TV Asahi to watch the latest episode of Zenryokuzaka, a bizarre show featuring women running up steep streets. Each episode lasts no more than six minute, including the opening and closing credits, and focuses solely on following the protagonist as she runs up the street. It’s an extremely simplistic concept, even for late-night TV, but one that has somehow remained popular in Japan for the last 15 years.

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A 70-year-old Chinese woman has been dubbed “Super Grannie” after it was revealed that she is an avid runner, with over 100 marathons completed in the last two decades.

Most people choose to take it easy after they retire, but Liaoning-based Wang Lang is definitely not one of them. She only started running at the age of 50, as a way to keep in shape, but soon realized it was her passion. She ran her first marathon in 2004 and hasn’t stopped since, racking over 100 completed marathons under her belt. From 2005 to 2017 she completed the annual Beijing Marathon thirteen times, and this year she set a new record, becoming the oldest person to ever complete the 168-kilometer Liaoning marathon, within some 40 hours.

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In an effort to prove that been confined or quarantined indoors during the coronavirus pandemic is no excuse for neglecting daily exercise, a Spanish athlete recently spent ten hours running a 61-kilometer marathon in the comfort of his own home.

Like the vast majority of people in his country and much of Europe, Javier Castroverde, a 41-year-old triathlete from the Spanish region of Galicia, has been spending his days indoors, as part of a social distancing effort to slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus. However, instead of binging on Netflix, napping and going on social media, he has been busy keeping in shape. Despite being confined to a relatively small apartment, Castroverde was able to run the equivalent of a 61-km marathon in about 10 hours. He shared the data recorded by a smartphone app and dedicated his feat to the health professionals risking their lives to help others.

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The coronavirus wreaking havoc in China right now has really turned things upside down for a lot of people, but not even it can come between a marathon runner and their training.

Like many of his countrymen, Pan Shancu, an amateur marathon runner from Hangzhou, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, is trapped in his apartment because of the coronavirus epidemic, but he didn’t let that small detail stop him from keeping in shape for his next race, whenever it may be. He has been using the small space in his apartment as a miniature track, jogging around two tables and the short length of a small hallway, and recently posted on social media that he had covered a distance of 50 kilometers (31 miles).

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Sixteen brave runners recently gathered in the Russian village of Oymyakon, also known as the world’s pole of cold,  to compete in the coldest official race in history.

Oymyakon is the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth, with temperatures constantly dropping to under -50 degrees Celsius in winter time. This place is so cold that a person’s unprotected face can suffer frostbite in a matter of seconds, and sometimes the mercury in thermometers freezes. Oymyakon can barely be called inhabitable, let alone suitable for a marathon, and yet at the beginning of this year, 16 runners gathered here to take part in a series of extreme races.

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In Robert Zemeckis’ 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks’ character is supposed to have run a total of 15,248 miles coast-to-coast across America, after being left heartbroken by his childhood sweetheart, Jenny. It seems like an impossible challenge in real life, but someone actually managed to break Forrest’s record by running a total of 15,600 miles in 409 days.

Rob Pope, a 39-year-old veteran from Liverpool, in the UK, spent over a year of his life recreating Forrest Gump’s epic coast-to-coast trek across the United States, an amazing four times. He quit his job in order to complete this monumental challenge in four stages, and has been running an average of 40 miles a day through blistering heat, torrential rain and weather so cold it froze his beard. Despite suffering several major physical injuries throughout his epic run, and repetition and loneliness straining his mental health, Pope says quitting was never an option.

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Ultrarunner Kelly Agnew, 45, has been disgraced and stripped of his titles after an investigation by event officials revealed that he had hidden inside porta-pottys to win races.

Agnew had one the last four 48-hour Across the Years ultramarathons since 2014, when he was the first to run 201.5 miles within the allotted time, but event officials have disqualified and banned him from all future races for cheating. According to a Facebook post by event organizers, Agnew was seen “registering laps without running the complete loop of the course,” instead hiding inside a port-a-potty for seven minutes before getting out to cross the start/finish mat. The experienced runner would apparently time his breaks in the toilet to keep his mile pace consistent.

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Ibrahim Mukunga Wachira, a 27-year-old marathon runner from Kenya, became an overnight sensation in the small Baltic country of Estonia, after winning the 35th annual Tartu Half-Marathon, a 23-kilometer race he ran in his socks.

Just last week, we wrote about the monumental achievement of María Lorena Ramírez, a native Rarámuri woman from Mexico, who won a 50-kilometer ultramarathon in rubber sandals made from used car tires and wearing a long traditional skirt. Today, we cover the amazing story of a man who not only won a 23-kilometer marathon in Estonia, but also set a new speed record, after running with no shoes on. It’s definitely an incredible time for sports, and running in particular.

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