Meet ‘Uncle Chen’, the man who runs marathons while smoking

A man who calls himself Uncle Chen has become very popular on the Chinese social network Weibo for his photographs running marathons with a cigarette in the mouth or in the hand. And she not only runs them, but she finishes them. On November 6, it took 3 hours, 28 minutes and 45 seconds to reach the finish line in the Xin’anjiang Marathon, in the Jiande region, where he placed 574th out of some 1,500 runners.

This 50-year-old man from Guangzhou (China) is not the first time he has accumulated kilometers while smoking cigarettes, since photos have come out of him smoking in the marathons of his city in 2018 and Xiamen in 2019where he also finished the test in times of 3h36 and 3h32, respectively, according to the Canadian magazine Running Canadian.

Uncle Chen not only regularly runs marathons, but also goes ultra-distance from 50 kilometers to 12-hour events.

Obviously, tobacco is highly detrimental to health, especially for runners, and even more so if one cigarette runs out while you run. Runners who smoke will notice that they have less oxygen and need more effort to pump blood to the heart, but it is also that the consumption of nicotine causes the loss of flexibility and strength in the muscles.