Man to push kids in stroller for Suffolk County Half Marathon

Runners at the upcoming Suffolk County Half Marathon will need to clear the way. A double-running stroller will be coming through.

If Chris Solarz pushes his double stroller for all 13.1 miles in less than one hour, 26 minutes and 37 seconds on Sunday, he will set his eighth Guinness World Record.

“It’s out there for anyone to do it,” Solarz said of the record. “It’s in the public domain, so it makes it fun.”

Solarz, 38, set his first Guinness World Record in 2009, when he and a friend stopped at every New York City subway station in 22:52:36. In the next six years, he set three records for marathon running, one for treadmill running, one for stair-climbing and another for visiting 250 pubs with a group of 12 others in 24 hours.

But this record will be different. Solarz, the managing director at Cliffwater LLC, an investment advisory firm, will have his son Sebastien, 4, and his daughter, Sophie, 2, strapped in for the ride.

Solarz, of Manhattan, runs 15 miles per day, alternating his training between running with his kids in the stroller and running on his own. During the week, he runs 10 miles before work and 5 miles afterward, in addition to walking 50 blocks to his office and usually climbing the stairs to his 15th-floor apartment.

On the weekends, he runs with his kids, sprinting and pacing himself through Central Park, stopping by the playgrounds and the Central Park Zoo along the way.

SEE PHOTOS50 LIers who've made us proud

“I try not to have them in a seat for more than an hour because I don’t ever want them to associate it with dread or boredom,” he said.

But when he is pushing his kids in the stroller, the weight can at times be problematic: Sebastien, Sophie and the stroller combine to weigh 75 pounds.

Sometimes, the stroller begins to drift. Other times, he has to push the stroller up a slope. Solarz chose the Suffolk County Half Marathon because the course is relatively flat, he said.

“Chris puts in the work, so he gets the results,” said Terence Gerchberg, 44, a friend who will film Solarz’s record-breaking attempt. “I’ve never seen him sweat anything.”

For Solarz’s wife, Beatriu Reig, 38, all the training is about time together as a family.

“This will certainly be a family bonding experience that we’ll share for years to come,” she said.

Solarz agrees. Come Sunday, his ultimate goal won’t just be to break another Guinness World Record. It’ll be the memories he will share with his kids.

“This is going to be such a little fun event that I get to talk about with my kids for the rest of our lives,” Solarz said. “If it ever wasn’t fun, then I would stop doing it.”

CORRECTION: The name of Chris Solarz’s daughter is Sophie. Her first name was incorrect in earlier versions of this article..