It’s not every day you come across a man with a refrigerator stuck to his back. A man using a fridge to train for a marathon was stopped by police in England after they assumed he was fleeing from the scene of a crime.
Daniel Fairbrother said he was practicing running with a fridge strapped to his back in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, when he was stopped by officers. “They put their blue lights on, held up the traffic and stopped me to find out what on earth was going on. Understandably they had not seen anything like it before,” Fairbrother said.
He added: “One police officer wound down his window and said: ‘You understand we’ve got to stop you, is that a fridge on your back?'”
Fairbrother said he explained the fridge to the officers. He told them that the kitchen appliance was helping him or the London Marathon, where he will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon carrying a household appliance (white goods).
The current record was set by Sam Hammond in February 2023 and stands at 2 hours, 4 minutes and 13 seconds.
Fairbrother said it was “embarrassing” to be stopped by police but added that he understood why he seemed suspicious. “I would expect the police to do their job and check on someone running about with a fridge. If I got pulled over another 10 times I wouldn’t be annoyed,” Fairbrother said.
The world record attempt is also going to raise money for charity group Diabetes UK. “It’s in support of my best mate Sam, who’s a Type 1 diabetic. I tried to undertake a challenge last year which didn’t go as planned, and I promised to come back bigger and stronger,” Fairbrother said.