For once Batman does smell and Robin didn’t just lay an egg.
Batman was recently upstaged in a world record-shattering time by his long time sidekick, Robin, at the Christchurch Marathon Sunday.
Robin, aka Nathan Aldridge, 30, charged over the line in two hours, 43 minutes and 35 seconds unofficially six minutes ahead of the world-record marathon time for an athlete dressed as a superhero.
“I gave up waiting for Batman,” Aldridge said. “Robin is the real superhero.”
Aldridge knew he could do his superhero costume justice because he had a personal best time of two hours and 32 minutes.
“I knew if I had done enough training, I could roughly run four-minute kilometres the whole way the big unknown was wearing a suit. I had no idea how I was going to go running in a suit,” Aldridge said.
Aldridge led in a troupe of 10 superheroes who finished the SBS marathon. According to Aldridge, this was just the second time he wore the Robin costume after picking it up before the race.
“It was actually pretty good. The only issue was the face mask. It held sweat, so it was a bit uncomfortable,” Aldridge said.
“It’s pretty hard to get out of it actually, without cramping up. It was a slow process.”
Each marathon runner had sponsors, raising money for the Life Education Trust, a non-profit organization that tours primary and intermediate schools teaching health and life skills.