Mar 24, 2004
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Photo: Ashrita hula hooping at Uluru, Australia in January 2003
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One of the advantages of breaking a Guinness record, as opposed to participating in other athletic competitions, is that you have the freedom to choose the date and venue of your event. The more creative you get with choosing the location, the more opportunity there is for fun and adventure, and the more challenging the event often becomes. The sky is literally the limit! I’ve been lucky enough to break records while soaring over Vermont in a hot air balloon (not advisable), juggling underwater in an aquarium in New Zealand (thrilling), doing step-ups in Howe Caverns (cool), and hula hooping in the Australian outback (hot).
Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy to get permission to follow your dreams, especially when it involves a large building. Once, I had the brilliant idea of attempting the high kick record at Radio City Music Hall, but I got politely turned down. When I approached the Burpee Seed Company about doing the squat record, also called “burpees,” at their headquarters, I was amazed that they seemed totally uninterested. But my best plan was to break the record for balancing on a Swiss ball in front of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I would dress up all in red, stand on the bright yellow ball, and call it performance art! The museum responded as if I was out of my mind.
Dec 29, 2003
I’m just hoping that my friend Durjaya Pliske doesn’t find out when or where my next record attempt is going to be. Don’t get me wrong – you can’t find a nicer guy, but whenever Durjaya shows up to one of my events, something unusual happens, and it invariably involves butterflies!
Durjaya is a professor of biology at a university in Florida, but his passion is butterflies. He even used to breed the winged creatures to help pay his way through college. In fact, he is so into butterflies, it almost seems like he attracts them wherever he goes.
The first time Durjaya came with me on an adventure was in Japan. We were both on a spiritual retreat with my meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy. I decided to take a break and attempt to set a new Guinness record by climbing 16 miles up and down the foothills of Mt. Fuji on a pogo stick! As we traveled on the bullet train from Tokyo to Gotemba, just to make conversation, I asked Durjaya about his butterfly collection. Mistake number one. For two hours, to be polite, I feigned interest in his stories. Mistake number two. Durjaya was convinced he had discovered a dormant lepidopterist.
Aug 29, 2003
The most continuous hours clapping.
You have to clap an average of 160 times a minute and the claps have to be audible to the official witnesses who are situated 120 yards away. You are allowed 5 minutes of rest after each hour of clapping.
This event is a challenge because you have to clap very fast and very loudly for more than 2 days!
The record at the time I spotted it was 42 hours and I had the “brilliant” idea of clapping for 50 hours in front of the Lincoln Center in New York City to honor my meditation teacher’s upcoming 50th birthday. Unfortunately, my choice of location was a disaster. I was in the middle of one of the noisiest cities in the world competing to be heard. After 15 hours of pounding my hands together I had to give up. I felt even worse the next day when I read the newspaper. The New York Times had never covered any of my successful record attempts and, of all times, they chose to report on my first flop.
Aug 29, 2003
The Most 20-ounce Glasses Balanced On Chin
The glasses stack one inside another forming an immense single tower of glass which you have to lift off from a rack, place on your chin, and keep balanced (without using your hands) for 10 seconds. Those 10 seconds can seem like an eternity! As you stack the glasses higher and higher, the tower curves in the middle, arching backwards over your head. If you aren’t extremely careful while you are lifting or balancing the glasses, the middle ones can shatter, and suddenly you are looking up at 40 or more pounds of glass about to fall directly on to your face. That is the moment when it is wise to run for your life!
I first attempted to break this existing record of 50 glasses while on the Dini Petty Show in Toronto, Canada. Just before going on the air, I was warming up with stacks of 45 and 48 glasses but for some strange reason the glasses were breaking before I even lifted them off the rack. I decided to make the attempt anyway, so I set up 51 glasses, placed them on my chin and immediately heard a distinct cracking noise. It must have been fun for the audience to watch me, Dini Petty, the timers and even the cameramen simultaneously sprinting out of the studio in a panic!
Aug 29, 2003
The Fastest Time for a Marathon (26.2 Miles) and 50 Miles
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In 1989, Ashrita set another record by joggling for 50 miles in the time of 8 hours 52 minutes and 7 seconds.
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No, I didn’t make this up! Joggling, which is juggling while jogging, is a well-established and highly competitive sport. In this case, the record is for juggling 3, balls but there are categories for 5 balls and even 7 balls. You are allowed to drop the balls but you have to scramble around and collect them and then go back to where you fumbled, thereby losing precious time. Obviously, the key to this discipline is concentration.
In 1988 I trained for 6 months for the marathon record which at the time was 3 hours and 29 minutes. Some acquaintances tried to discourage me from attempting the feat, saying it was too difficult. But, of course, that motivated me even more to go for it. Before the event I sent out notices to the media, and one of the New York daily newspapers covered my last practice session. On the day of the marathon, the article came out with a large headline proclaiming “Queens (NY) Man Goes for the Jugular.” Unfortunately, on that day in May in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, the temperature climbed unexpectedly into the high 80’s and I burned out around the 20-mile point. After all the publicity, which also included T.V. coverage, I felt pretty embarrassed.
Aug 29, 2003
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In Bali
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The idea for landrowing came to me during a boring training session on an indoor rowing machine. “Why not put wheels on this thing and tool around the neighborhood?” I wondered. So I called up my friend, who is a welder, and we went to work on transforming my brand new Concept II Ergometer into a road-worthy vehicle. Several weeks later, with much anticipation, I took my first lap around a nearby track and – the contraption disintegrated!
I was a little disappointed, but I figured that at least I sacrificed my rowing machine in the name of science. However, a short time later, in the spring of 1987 while visiting Germany, I spotted an aerodynamic version of my failed experiment in the window of a sports store. I got wildly excited, but finally calmed down enough to buy the machine from the startled shopkeeper. A couple of months later, I set the first “landrowing” record by traveling 68 miles from New York to Philadelphia along the New Jersey Turnpike with a police escort the entire way. The police really enjoyed the novelty of the event, and at one point started singing “row, row, row your boat” over their loudspeaker!
