First of all: we did not think such a specialty even existed. We knew of people dressed weirdly who maybe made crazy times in races. We knew of other people running pushing wheelchairs in order to let those who cannot experience the joy and excitement that only a marathon can generate. Running a whole one solving Rubik’s cubes, though, is something we never imagined.
Instead, it happened: Japan’s Kei Suga ran the Kashiwa City Marathon in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture by solving an inordinate number of Rubik’s cubes. And I don’t know if you’ve ever done any, if you’ve tried, or if maybe you’ve won some world championships in the genre, but we’re talking about something beyond imagination here: running with a crew of friends who hand you a Rubik’s cube to solve every time you’ve solved the previous one. Which Kei Suga did with military precision to solve-at the end of the 42 km and 197 meters-as many as 420 Rubik’s cubes, a performance that will probably earn him the Guinness World Record officially in early 2023. Exactly: one every 100 meters. That allowed him to bury the previous record of New Zealander Blair Williamson, who in 2017 participated in doing so at the Christchurch International Marathon but solving “only” 254.
Suga was a member of Japan’s World Cube Association from 2012 to 2019, and in those years he participated in numerous competitions, setting personal records (but standing still) with times that ranged from 30 to 50 seconds. The world record (again standing still) is 3.47 seconds. Certainly while running is a little more difficult.