My engineering hobby… February 2016

...Running the marathon in fancy dress

Engineer Bob Johnson is a strong believer in keeping fit in his spare time, but sometimes that collides with his other hobby, making things. “In 2005 I ran the London Marathon and just scraped in under three hours. Due to lack of quality training that race hurt me, and I vowed not to try for a quick time in 2006 but to try my hand at fancy-dress construction.” 

Johnson’s chosen fancy-dress outfit was a Dalek. It took six months of evenings and weekends to make, but it was done just in time for the 2006 race. It took him 7 hours 28 minutes to complete the 26.2-mile course. 

“The Dalek taught me that the main thing to keep in mind when designing such costumes is to have ample space for the legs to move unhindered,” he says. “It looked great but it was very difficult to stride out properly inside it. The other aspects to keep in mind are to make the costume as light as possible, resilient and as life-like as possible.” 

The following year, Johnson’s costume was an ostrich, which captured the Guinness world record for the fastest marathon run as a three-dimensional bird. “I didn’t want to do the ‘man riding on top of an ostrich’ thing – I wanted to be totally enclosed so that nobody could see my face,” he explains. It took him about three weeks to construct the ostrich, which consisted of a wooden frame with 90m of metre-wide bubble-wrap cut into feathers and attached to it. 

Johnson completed the marathon in 5 hours 50 minutes and 8 seconds.

“I thoroughly enjoy the challenge that a costume becomes – it’s a challenge to make a life-like costume,” he says. “It’s a challenge to get it safely transported from my home in Scotland to the start of the race in London and it’s a definite challenge to run 26 miles with it strapped to your back – remember there are no wheels allowed! 

“I love to hear the London crowds shouting encouragement – so much so that I’ve made a two-man fake canoe ready for another world record attempt on 24 April 2016.”

Johnson says his hobby has helped his career. “People certainly know who I am – it pays to be a little different.”