Boot-wearing Brit sets world record for fastest half-marathon in wellies

A British mom gave conventional race footwear the boot on Sunday, opting instead to run Sunday’s Royal Parks Half Marathon in London in a pair of Wellington boots in a bid to set a Guinness World Record.

Aileen Raynos, who lives in the village of Cowfold in West Sussex, endured an agonizing slog to the finish line at Hyde Park, completing the course in one hour, 55 minutes and four seconds, allowing her to claim the first official Guinness World Record for the fastest half-marathon run in a pair of rubber boots.

Raynos’s time falls safely within the two-hour-cutoff Guinness World Record officials told her she would have to beat to establish the new race record.

While Guinness World Records has never had an official speed record on the books for running the distance in wellies, it did recently record the fastest marathon time run by a woman in the footwear. That record was set by fellow Brit Becky Lafford at this year’s TCS London Marathon, who became the first person to hold that title after crossing the finish line in 3:59:57.

Guinness World Records is reviewing Raynos’s half-marathon attempt as part of the standard process for ratifying her record.

Proud as she is to be blazing a new trail in the weighty wellies, Raynos told the Independent she’s not about to do a victory lap in the footwear.

“I’m not going to be wearing wellies for a long time. My little toe is quite blistered,” said Raynos, who works in marketing at pet food company Purina. “Normally the legs would hurt more, because you push the muscles more, but my feet have been in pain. I don’t usually get blisters from running shoes.”

Raynos said she was told by Guinness World Records that to qualify for the record, the rain boots she wore would have to be made of rubber or PVC and not altered in any way for the race.

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She said in addition to the extreme pain they inflicted on her toes, the boots made her feet very hot, due to their lack of breathability, and their lack of cushioning made for some painful shins.

Despite these challenges, Raynos finished the half-marathon in a time that would have been respectable even in conventional footwear. Her 1:55:04 landed her in 152nd place among 1,123 runners in the F40 division, and she finished in the top 27 per cent of the race’s field of 16,000 runners.