Recently, a 50-year-old man known as “Uncle Chen” ran the Xin’anjiang Marathon while chain-smoking cigarettes. That’s both impressive and awful.

My least favorite part about this story is that my own current best marathon time is a full 10 minutes slower than Chen’s 3 hours and 28 minutes. That’s a little disheartening!

But my favorite part of the story is this line from CBS Sports:

While some users on Weibo were frustrated that Uncle Chen was permitted to smoke while competing in the marathon, there are no rules that state runners can’t smoke while competing.

Of course there aren’t! No one knew we needed a rule about this!

Previously in smoking during marathons: Assorted Notes from the 2014 Boston Marathon