Confined at home, avid runner jogs 66km in his flat
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Hangzhou resident Pan Shancu says he jogged 66km in his apartment, repeatedly circling his furniture, in six hours and 41 minutes. He had previously run 30km on the spot in his bathroom.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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HONG KONG • A fanatical runner jogged the equivalent of an ultra-marathon inside his small apartment as people in China desperately try to keep fit while cooped up indoors.
With much of the 1.4 billion population ordered to stay indoors and gyms closed because of the coronavirus outbreak, people are competing to outdo one another in how many bottles of water they can lift, how many push-ups they can do with their children on their backs, or how many flights of stairs they can scale in their tower blocks.
But Mr Pan Shancu has easily won the unofficial gold medal, claiming he jogged 66km in loops at home in six hours and 41 minutes.
He has the data tracker that he says proves it, and the 44-year-old's feat and a video of him repeatedly circling the furniture in his apartment went viral in China.
"I felt a little dizzy at first, but you get used to it after you circle many times," he said by telephone from the city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai. "Running is like an addiction. If you don't run for a long time, you get itchy feet."
On another occasion, Mr Pan ran 30km on the spot in his bathroom and live-streamed it to inspire others who have similarly been confined at home for the past two weeks.
China has launched a campaign featuring Olympic athletes to demonstrate how people can stay fit indoors. Tables, chairs and even door frames can all be used in one form or another to help exercise, according to one online pamphlet.
Bilibili, a popular video-sharing platform, said views of fitness-related content jumped nearly 50 per cent in the period from Jan 23 to Feb 5, compared with the two weeks before.
Mr Peter Gardner, a 61-year-old Briton in the north-east city of Tianjin, is one of hundreds of millions of people whose movements have been severely restricted by the Chinese authorities in a bid to stop the deadly virus from spreading.
The operations manager for an American firm runs up and down the emergency stairwell of his 17-storey apartment tower three times a day.
"I can't go out for beers and I've lost about three-quarters of a kilo," said Mr Gardner, whose family members have temporarily left China, leaving him with their two guinea pigs.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
