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Meet the man who pushed his quintuplets to a stroller marathon world record

Chad Kempel was featured in a recent Guinness World Records video as he discussed pushing his five babies for 42.2K

Photo by: YouTube/Guinness World Records

Running a marathon is a tough endeavour, but an American man named Chad Kempel made it even harder on himself when he decided to push his babies in a stroller for a full 42.2K race. You read that right — babies, as in multiple children. He doesn’t have twins, or even triplets — no, Kempel and his wife have quintuplets, and he pushed all five of them to a Guinness World Record at the Modesto Marathon in California in 2019, finishing in 4:42:49. 

Kempel and his big family (he and his wife, Amy, already had two kids before their quintuplets were born) were featured in a recent video produced by Guinness. “We had had a long journey of infertility struggles, lots of heartache,” Kempel says in the video. He and Amy had twin boys, but they were born premature, and both passed away shortly after their birth.

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After that, they had a daughter, Savannah. Amy got pregnant again, but miscarried. Not long after, she got pregnant once more, and the couple’s second daughter, Avery, was born. Kempel and Amy agreed they wanted more children, and although they had endured so much loss already, they took a chance. Undergoing a medical process called intrauterine insemination, Amy became pregnant again, this time with five babies. In January 2018, she gave birth to quintuplets. 

Life with seven young children is, as one might imagine, hectic, but Kempel always found time to run, whether that was early in the morning or at night after the kids went to sleep. “Running is my thing,” he says. “That’s my antidepressant, that’s my feel-good, that’s my celebration.” Kempel says he never expected to take all five babies out for a run with him at the same time, but then he stumbled upon a five-seat jogging stroller. 

“At some point close to their first birthday, I decided that I wanted to do something to kind of celebrate how far we had come to now be this family,” Kempel says. “So I had the idea that I would complete a full marathon pushing the quintuplets.” Although it wasn’t the original purpose of the run, Kempel decided to shoot for a Guinness World Record with the run. 

RELATED: Calum Neff sets his third stroller-pushing world record

“When Chad told me he wanted to attempt a Guinness World Records title,” Amy says, “I thought he was crazy.” Kempel succeeded, though, and he crossed the finish line of the Modesto Marathon just south of five hours, setting the official record for fastest marathon while pushing a quintuple stroller. Since then, Kempel has also pushed his quintuplets to a 10K world record, which he set at 1:04:52.

“Doing things like this with the kids is the kind of stuff that I had hoped that I would do as a parent,” he says. “One of my ultimate goals? If the entire family could complete a marathon together, [that] would be awesome.” To follow along in the Kempels’ journey and to see more of their running challenges, head over to their YouTube page

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