I can’t quite believe I actually did this. Out of the 130 Guinness World Records I’ve broken, this one seems the most impossible to me.
In the last 6 years of tracking my runs on Runkeeper when I started training to break a Guinness World Record, I have run nearly 4,000 miles. About 3,000 of that has been while juggling. The first record I was training for was the fastest half-mile juggling. I injured myself and pivoted to longest duration blindfolded juggling which ended up being my first Guinness World Record’s Title Broken. That was 4 years ago. Today I ran one more mile combining the sills and this time I did it while not just juggling, I was also blindfolded. The final result: 7 minutes 54.22 seconds. I also broke a second Guinness World Record during the attempt – details below.
No one has ever been able to complete a mile juggling blindfolded before but Guinness set the minimum mark to beat at 8 minutes 35 seconds to recognize it as a record. The rules require juggling to happen during all forward progress. If you drop a ball or catch two in the same hand, you have to go back and start juggling again.
I was running about 6:45 mile pace and dropped a ball in four different spots: 0.15 miles, 0.25 miles, 0.6 miles, and 0.75 miles. The hardest part is accelerating after a drop so I ended up with 10 total drops because I had 3 and 0.25 miles and 5(!) at 0.6 miles. I completed the first half-mile in 3:45 (on pace for 7:30) so the 5 drops hurt my time.
I had 2 runners, Dusty and Jonathan, on either side videoing (and providing footstep sounds to keep me on track) and Chris was behind me calling out numbers 1-5 letting me know where I was on the road. Three meant the middle, 2 a little left, 4 a little right and 1 and 5 were extreme left and right and I needed to adjust quickly.
Running blind is highly disorienting. In practice, I got to blink every 10-20 steps which let me reorient myself. On the treadmill, I would keep my eyes closed longer but I had my belly up against the bar so I had a physical guide.
I took one warmup mile to get the cameras and cars and guides some practice and get my body ready for the attempt and it took a little over 10 minutes. Then I went for the real thing. It went about a well as I could have hoped but I know I could do a lot better (sub 7 on a great day).
The 2nd Guinness World Record I broke was for the furthest distance traveled on foot while juggling blindfolded. It’s a record I currently hold at 100 yards. I went between .25 and .6 miles without a drop covering .35 miles, or over 600 yards beating this one by a factor of 6.
