Photo: Lance Cpl. Jennifer J. Pirante via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Scottish vegan strongwoman Kim Best has carried a 350 kg (771lb) yoke for 10 meters in 24.42 seconds, the heaviest yoke ever carried by a female athlete, Great Vegan Athletes reports.
The yoke walk is a classic strongman event: a steel frame loaded with weight across the shoulders, carried as fast as you can. The best Best could find anywhere was 330 kg, carried in just under a minute. She took 20 kg more and finished in less than half the time.
The record has been building for a while. At Scotland's Strongest Woman last year she broke the national yoke record and held it for about two minutes before another athlete beat it with a 310 kg carry. That lit a fire. By November she was picking up 405 kg for holds and walking comfortably with 320 kg.
Record day came and that 350 kg was all I had my mind on. Adrenaline pumped through me and with the support of everyone behind me the walk was completed in half the time of the old record of 330 kg.
Best went vegan for Veganuary at the start of 2018. She had suffered from IBS since she was a teenager and found animal products were a major trigger. "So I changed for my health, and after that I learnt how bad the farming industry is so have stayed vegan," she said. She trains five times a week, every session built around strength, and has never had any negativity about her diet in the gym, her athlete profile says.
Strong vegan women keep smashing the old stereotypes. Hulda Waage set a 550 kg Icelandic powerlifting total record in 2018, and Pat Reeves broke her own world deadlift record in her seventies. As strongman Patrik Baboumian puts it, strength needs no victims.
350 kg on her shoulders. Powered by plants.