Fastest marathon in a 40 person costume

The fastest marathon in a 40 person costume is 6 hour 31 min 16 sec and was achieved by Rat Race Marathon Marauders (UK) in York, North Yorkshire, UK on 14 October 2018.

York is a famous Viking city and was the central inspiration for the Viking Ship costume, given the Rat Race Marathon Marauders are predominantly a York-based group. They have an ongoing pledge to attempt to raise £1 million for the charity Children with Cancer and this activity was chosen to kickstart that endeavour.

'The ability to muster 40 runners to dress up as Vikings was seen as the easy bit. To convince them to then carry a 200kg ‘costume’ together was not quite so easy. But in all, it was the knowledge that folk would be ‘up for it’ and as the project breathed life, we were taken aback by the response from those keen to get on-board (bad pun - ahem). We knew we could make it happen once we saw the initial response to the concept from runners.'

The team dedicated certain set Sundays prior to the attempt for the crew to come to a small park in York and they trialled the costume and associated kit there, such as the harness system that attached runners to the boat costume. Firstly this was with small sub-groups of Vikings while they tweaked and modified the costume design; and then eventually with the full crew. 'We jogged around the football field in the park, doing laps, practising pacing, group instructions and commands (like how to stop 40 people all at the same time!) and also turning. Not easy when the costume is 25 metres long.'

'It was certainly challenging as a ‘rigid’ costume of this length really is not something that you come across every day. So it was very much a bespoke training and costume build project, all rolled up into one. The variety of crew shapes and sizes also coms into play massively with how the costume moves and how the crew needs to work together. Physically it is a clearly a challenge to move in the boat, but to move as one, as a team, was the real key to success.'

Doing a 3-point-turn in a 25m Viking boat costume was one of the biggest challenges of the day.

The boat also weighed around 200kg. This weight was distributed across 40 people through special harnesses attached to the runners. 'But when you have so many different height individuals, it is not easy to fully equalise and share that weight evenly between all crew members, all of the time as the boat goes up and down with each running stroke, as do the runners themselves.' This meant that some (particularly the taller members of the crew) were sometimes doing more than their fair share of the heavy lifting of the boat costume vs some of the shorter crew members. This all added to the challenge of this record attempt.

The team are currently researching other Viking-themed records to attempt in the future.

'It would be a very proud achievement for the entire crew and a fitting reward for their determination in this really memorable (and quite bizarre!) undertaking.'