Who would guess that this record attempt would result in more bleeding than 98% of all my record attempts?

It also made practicing highly unpleasant and short-lived. Fortunately, we could also practice with other objects like marshmallows. Every time an apple hit me just on the side of the mouth from 15 feet away, it would smash my lips into my teeth. I would either get cut by my incisors or bicuspids or sometimes the inside of my mouth would be smashed between my front teeth so hard it wouldn’t come out without floss. Either way, I was left and bruised and bloodied mess after every practice and the final (fortunately successful) attempt.

The record was for the most apples caught in the mouth in one minute. No size was specified for the apples so I drove around Boise until we found an apple tree in someone’s front yard with small apples. We knocked and asked if we could pick some, and since they weren’t edible, they were more than happy for us to take them.

Jonathan threw 60 apples in the minute and despite missing the first one, we had a strong streak for the next 50 seconds before ending a little weak to catch 49 of them in the mouth in one minute beating the previous record of 47 by two.

I’m really excited about this record. Not because it’s particularly special by itself but because it’s my brother’s first Guinness World Record! My brother Jonathan has been an inspiration to me since I was a kid. He’s a year older and was always beating me at every sport we ever played in our childhood. He was also kind and gracious in victory (much more so than I ever was, but maybe that’s because I hardly ever won…). I write about our relationship in the opening of my book: Breaking Records: 21 Lessons from 21 Record Attempts

We teamed up with another first-time record-breaker Jon Morse to tackle the record for the most giant beach ball passes in 3 minutes.

The previous record was 345. We practiced, figured out the best technique (the teams could be up to 25 people but the minimum size of 3 appears to be much faster if you have the stamina), and we went at it several times. In the end, we nearly doubled the previous record with 673 passes in 3 minutes and Guinnes just approved the record this last week.

I did break a Guinness World Record this last week but I’m not ready to publish the video yet so I’m doing a throwback to never-before-seen footage of my 50th Guinness World Record for the fastest half marathon balancing a pool cue on the finger.

The MC announced at the beginning of the race some of the exciting marks being attempted at the race. There was one gal attempting her 33rd half marathon. She was 11… . Then there was the man attempting his 100th marathon.

It was a chilly morning in the 50s and felt colder with a strong, gusty wind. There was a false start countdown at 7 AM when the race was supposed to start since there were 2 busses of runners that hadn’t yet arrived. Fifteen minutes later the race began for real. I waited until the 1,100 runners from the half and full marathon all crossed the start line and then waited another minute and a half to start so the crowd could spread out before I needed to start passing them. I had to pass over 700 runners during the race but I still think it’s easier to weave through them during the race than fight with so many at the beginning and risk a serious pileup/injuty at the beginning.

I took off at about 7:16 AM and immediately ran into trouble. Gusts of over 35 MPH hit me from the side and it was all I could do to stretch my right hand all the way over to the left side of my body and have the cue lean right into the wind. I made it several steps but then lost the handle and the cue fell off. I slowed, retraced my steps, rebalanced the cue and took off again. Less than a minute later another strong gust knocked the cue off and the process repeated. In all I would lose the balance or hit a tree well over a dozen times and have to go back to restart where the incident occurred.

My splits were about 8:15-8:30 for the first 6 miles, then 9:30 for the 7th since I stopped for food and had a camera malfunction that took some time. I finished at sub 7:30 pace for the last 3 miles.

My finishing chip time was: 1:49:37. I broke my stretch goal of sub 1:50.

Big shout out to Patrick Harper and Kevin Everett who accompanied me the whole way as official witnesses and videographers. They were extremely helpful not only for making the record attempt official but letting me know about low-hanging tree branches (and especially the time I hit some pine needles I didn’t feel).

Records are made to be broken. Most table tennis balls caught in shaving foam on the head in 30 seconds is one of them. Jonathan “Hollywood” Hannon and I had a hard time trying to break this record the first time when it stood at 21. We practiced, got rules clarifications, and finally got 29.

A few months later our record was broken with a run of 32. We’d spent enough time practicing and working on the strategy that we had to defend this one. I spent a few weeks practicing throwing close to 60 table tennis balls from one hand into a target in 30 seconds. It’s harder than you might think to reload quickly and then only let one ball go at a time. I also spent 10 times as much time sculpting the shaving foam on Jonathan’s head as I did on the 30 seconds throwing the balls to stick on his head. The effort paid off and we have reclaimed this record as ours with 35 table tennis balls stuck on the head in shaving foam in 30 seconds.

I’ll be honest – I wasn’t sure we were going to break this one. Marshmallows have a useful life-and when we’re going through 60+ per attempt, there are only so many attempts you can make before you run out of marshmallows.

The previous record for the most marshmallows caught in the mouth in one minute (team of 2) was 56. This record has been broken several times through the years since I first applied for it: YouTube star Josh Horton, Japan team on Guinness TV, serial record breaker Ashrita Furman (current holder). I think when I first saw the record it was in the low 40s. Even then it was a stretch to think we could break it which is why it’s been on the back-burner for so long.

After several attempts from 15 feet away, our marshmallow supply was dwindling. Jonathan “Hollywood” Hannon stepped up to the plate and delivered an on-target throwing performance getting 63 marshmallows launched toward my face and we only missed 5 of them in the one minute for a final result of 58 marshmallows caught in one minute.

It took longer to find a container that met all the Guinness specifications than it did to practice to break this record. That’s not to say it didn’t take practice, it’s just hard to find a container large enough with a small enough opening to be able to break the record.

The previous mark was 2600ml of water moved with the hands in 30 seconds. I was able t get 3375ml from one container to the other in the allotted time.

I measured it 3 different ways: 1) with the markings on the final container itself (but these weren’t granular enough) 2) by weighing the container after carefully drying off the outside and subtracting the weight of the empty container. Did you know that the relationship between 1g of water and 1ml of water is exactly 1:1 (it’s not a coincidence) and 3) I poured the water from this container into one that had more granular markings. They were all pretty close but I used the smallest of them to be safe.