A 52-year-old marathon runner just went viral for doing something that defies just about everything we think we know about endurance sports.
Meet “Uncle Chen” — the chain-smoking ultramarathoner from Guangzhou, China, who just ran a full 26.2 miles in under three and a half hours while burning through an entire pack of cigarettes along the way.
His story exploded across Chinese social media platform Weibo after photos from the November 6 Xin’anjiang Marathon in Jiande, China, sent the internet into a full meltdown.
And here’s the kicker — this wasn’t even a one-time stunt.
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A Finish Time That Would Shame Most Non-Smokers
Chen didn’t just shuffle across the finish line puffing away for the novelty of it.
He finished 574th out of nearly 1,500 runners with an official time of 3:28:45 — a performance that puts him comfortably ahead of the majority of recreational marathon runners worldwide.
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For context, the average marathon finish time globally hovers around four and a half hours. Chen beat that — cigarette in hand — by over an hour.
The marathon organizers were so impressed, they publicly celebrated his achievement by sharing his official finishing certificate on social media. That post poured fuel on an already raging viral fire.
This Has Happened Before — Multiple Times
What makes Chen’s story even more jaw-dropping is the pattern behind it.
Photos of him smoking mid-race first surfaced from the 2018 Guangzhou Marathon, where he crossed the line in 3:36. He followed that up at the 2019 Xiamen Marathon with an improved time of 3:32 — apparently getting faster alongside the habit.
His 2024 Xin’anjiang time of 3:28:45 marks yet another improvement. The man is trending in the right direction.
According to one anecdotal report, Chen doesn’t smoke in everyday life — he apparently only lights up when he runs. Whether that detail makes this more or less baffling is entirely up to you.
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Not Just a Marathon Runner — An Ultramarathoner Too
If a sub-3:30 marathon while chain-smoking wasn’t enough, consider this: Chen is also an accomplished ultramarathoner.
He has tackled distances ranging from 50 kilometers to grueling 12-hour events — the kind of races that break seasoned athletes who aren’t also working through a pack of Marlboros.
It’s a résumé that commands a grudging kind of respect, regardless of where you stand on his methods.
The Internet Had Thoughts — And Not All of Them Were Impressed
Not everyone on Weibo was cheering Chen across the finish line.
The viral photos sparked a fierce debate, with many commenters expressing frustration that race officials allowed him to smoke during the event at all.
This type of behaviour should be banned from the race.
Others focused on the runners immediately surrounding him during the race.
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I feel bad for the runners around him.
It’s a fair point. Running a marathon is already a lung-burning exercise in suffering — having someone exhaling cigarette smoke beside you for nearly three and a half hours adds an entirely unwelcome layer to the experience.
So Why Wasn’t He Stopped?
Here’s where the rulebook gets interesting — or rather, where it runs out of pages.
Technically, no official marathon rules prohibit smoking during a race. The assumption has always been that the behavior is so counterproductive that no policy against it was ever needed.
Uncle Chen has single-handedly exposed a loophole that nobody ever thought to close.
Could There Be a World Record on the Horizon?
Despite his three documented performances, Chen wasn’t gunning for any official title at the Xin’anjiang Marathon.
But here’s an intriguing wrinkle — Guinness World Records currently holds no entry for the fastest marathon completed while chain-smoking. The category simply doesn’t exist yet.
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Given Chen’s improving trajectory across three marathons, a formal record attempt could be very much on the table. Whether Guinness would sanction such a category given the public health optics is another question entirely — but stranger records have made the books.
For now, Uncle Chen remains in a category of his own: undeniably fast, deeply controversial, and utterly unforgettable.
