If you are a runner with young children, there’s a good chance that you’ve done a couple of stroller runs in your day. Perhaps you have even tried your hand at running a race pushing a jogging stroller.
But, can you imagine running a half marathon—13.1 miles—pushing your child in a stroller?
Perhaps surprisingly, there’s a fair number of competitive runners who run races pushing a stroller. In fact, there are world records for different distances running while pushing a jogging stroller.
The half marathon world record for pushing the jogging stroller has just recently been broken, with the new record holder running a blazing half marathon time of 1:08:04, all while pushing his child in a stroller.
Jacob Sommer Simonsen, a Danish father who ran the Aarhus Half Marathon in 1:08:04, is the new world record holder for a half marathon run with a stroller.
This works out to a pace of 5:12 per mile or 3:14 per kilometer, which is impressive for any runner, let alone one pushing a stroller!
While this is his first Guinness World Record for stroller running, father runner Jacob Sommer Simonsen also holds the Danish national record for the beer mile, with a time of 5:18.
Sommer Simonsen beat the previous half marathon world record run with a stroller, which was coincidentally held by another Danish runner, Andreas Lommer.
Lommer ran the half marathon in 1:08:30 on September 29, 2019, while pushing his then 1.5-year-old son in a jogging stroller. This means that Sommer Simonsen bested the world record by about 26 seconds.
So, what was Jacob Sommer Simonsen’s son’s chariot for the half marathon? Sommer Simonsen pushed a Thule stroller, a popular brand of jogging strollers.
You can follow the super fast dad from Denmark, Jacob Sommer Simonsen, on his Instagram account here.
Want some recommendations for running with a jogging stroller? Check out our article here.
To learn more about another runner aiming to break a running world record pushing a jogging stroller, check out our article on Neely Spence Gracey and her pursuit to break the jogging stroller 1-mile world record here.
