The man with the most world records
Ashrita Furman is a record-breaking record-breaker: He has set more records than anyone else in the world! In the last 40 years, he has established more than 600 records! As a child, Ashrita loved reading the Guinness Book of World Records. He wanted to be in it too. But he thought people had to be good at sports to be in the book. He wasn’t a good athlete. He felt his dream would never come true. But later in life, Ashrita learned meditation, and with this, he learned that nothing is impossible. He tested this idea in 1978 by entering a 24-hour bike race in New York. Without any training, Ashrita came third! After that, he started thinking about breaking records again. First, he tried to break the record for the most jumping jacks. He failed at first, but, remembering that ‘anything is possible’, he trained, meditated, and tried again. This time, he did 27,000 jumping jacks in 6 hours 45 minutes and became the new record holder. His achievement appeared in the 1980 Guinness Book of Records. Today, Ashrita has a long list of records, including: walking the furthest distance with a bike on his chin, cycling the longest distance with a bottle on his head and lighting the most candles on a birthday cake. He says: “I choose ideas which are challenging, fun and childish! I enjoy practising and seeing my progress.” He says his favourite record was “the longest distance on a pogo stick”. While he was on holiday in Japan, he saw Mount Fuji and thought it was beautiful, so he decided to try to break a record there. He did 11.5 miles. The most difficult record was “the most forward rolls”. In 10 hours, 30 minutes, he did 8,341 of them, travelling 12 miles! If you want to break a world record too, Ashrita gives this advice. “Choose something you enjoy because you will need to practise. And don’t give up. Your mind will tell you that something is impossible, but it isn’t. If someone else has done something, and you work hard, you can do it too!
