Idaho man runs marathon wearing 125 T-shirts in under 6 hours
Watch Idaho man runs marathon footage making the rounds online: David Rush, who holds the most concurrent Guinness World Records titles, finished the YMCA Famous Idaho Potato Marathon on May 16 while wearing 125 T-shirts. He crossed the line in 5 hours, 54 minutes, and 50 seconds—beating Guinness's six-hour cutoff and breaking the previous record of 100 shirts.
Rush is a serial record-breaker from Idaho who has spent years stacking endurance feats on top of one another. His latest stunt turned a hometown race into a global oddity, and Guinness World Records has now confirmed the result.
Key Takeaways
- David Rush ran the 2026 YMCA Famous Idaho Potato Marathon on May 16 wearing 125 T-shirts weighing about 43 pounds.
- He finished in 5:54:50, clearing Guinness World Records' six-hour time limit with only five minutes to spare.
- Rush nearly overheated mid-race and needed emergency ice from a golf course pro shop to keep going.
- He broke the previous men's marathon T-shirt record of 100 shirts after setting the half-marathon version with 137 shirts.
Why did David Rush attempt the 125-shirt marathon record?
Rush said he decided to chase the marathon title after setting the half-marathon version of the record with 137 T-shirts at the Famous Idaho Potato Half Marathon.
"In the heat of that victory, I felt invincible. I thought, 'If I can do this for 13 miles, I can easily double it.' That was a classic case of pride coming before a very painful fall," Rush wrote online.
He spent months preparing by running with heavy weights and thick layers of clothing. The marathon attempt was the logical—if punishing—next step for a man who bills himself as a serial Guinness World Record breaker.
How did he almost fail the Guinness World Records attempt?
The race did not go smoothly. Rush said he suffered one major health scare when he started to overheat and ran out of ice. He stopped at a golf course along the marathon route while support runner Patrick sprinted into the pro shop.
"Patrick, one of my support runners, sprinted into the pro shop to beg for emergency ice. That ice was the only reason I didn't end up in the hospital," Rush said.
That mid-race rescue kept him on course long enough to hit the finish before the clock ran out. Guinness World Records sets a six-hour cutoff for marathon attempts, and Rush beat it with only minutes to spare.
What happened after he crossed the finish line?
Rush finished with just five minutes left on the official cutoff. Then came the slow, painful process of removing every layer.
"The process of peeling 125 shirts off my body felt like an exorcism," he said. "My skin was red, raw and crisscrossed with bloody, five-inch-long chafing marks where the bottom of the shirts had ground against my skin for six hours. My back was indented from the constant pressure of 43 pounds of clothing."
Guinness has now verified that Rush officially broke the previous record of 100 T-shirts. Stories like this land squarely in Bizarre News & Florida Man territory—except this time the headline belongs to Idaho.
UPI published video of the attempt, documenting Rush's six-hour slog through Boise in a tower of shirts. For official confirmation, see the Guinness World Records entry for the men's marathon T-shirt title.