Gatineau, Que. man runs 21.1 km into the record-books while wearing Crocs

A Gatineau man ran a half-marathon in rubber Crocs at Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend in record time. CTV’s Joshua Marano reports.

A Gatineau, Que. man running in Crocs crossed the finish line of the half marathon and into the record-books at Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend.

Radwan Makboul wore a pair of Crocs while running the full 21.1-kilometre route through Ottawa and Gatineau Sunday morning.

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His time of 1:57:59 smashed the previous record in the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest half marathon ever completed in Crocs, which was 2:01:52.

“Honestly, it wasn’t so bad. I kind of trained with them a bit before. I had some running socks, so that kind of helped with the blisters,” Makboul told Newstalk 580 CFRA’s Ottawa at Work with Patricia Boal.

“With the energy and the crowd and the support from everybody, my family we were able to get it done.”

Makboul says he started to get some pain in the back of his foot around the 18 km mark.

“We just kept running; pain is temporary,” he said Monday morning.

“Thank God, everything went as planned and we were able to get that done.”

Makboul told CTV News Ottawa’s Dave Charbonneau last week that he trained for the marathon in traditional running shoes but switched to Crocs for test runs.

“I do put like some good miles in on the Crocs just to kind of get used to it. But the majority of my training is just like with regular runners,” Makboul said.

“And then I’ll run in Crocs to see if that’s kind of translating and if I’m trying to meet my goal.”

According to the Crocs website, it’s an “innovative casual footwear” that combined “comfort and style with a value that our incredible fans know and love.”

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