He holds 122 Guinness World Records – and one of them is the official record for holding the most world records - New Yorker Ashrita Furman doesn’t pass up the chance of breaking a world record, no matter what he has to do.
Furman has walked 80 miles with a milk bottle balanced on his head,
performed 9,628 sit-ups in an hour, balanced a 93-pound stack of milk crates on his chin, and balanced 700 eggs on end simultaneously, reports The Sun.
His other feats include hula hooping for the fastest mile at Ayers Rock in Australia and completing the fastest mile on a pogo stick in Antarctica.
Born Keith Furman, he grew up obsessed with his yearly copy of the Guinness Book of World Records. At 15, he discovered yoga and meditation.
“I could make progress in every field if I meditated - in sports, mental agility, everything. I realised it wasn''t my body but my spirit that got me through - I could achieve anything if I put my mind to it. After that I knew I could achieve my childhood dream of breaking a Guinness World Record,” he said.
Furman broke his first record in 1979 performing 27,000 star jumps. And it was too much fun to stop. In 1986, he set the record for underwater pogo stick jumping and introduced it on US TV show Good Morning America on April Fool's Day.
That same year he began setting records at historic landmarks by doing forward rolls along the entire 12¼ mile route of Paul Revere''s Ride in Massachusetts and jumping 11½ miles up and down the foothills of Mount Fuji in Japan on a pogo stick.
"I think those are two of my favourite records," he recalled. Furman admitted his record breaking has become an obsession. "I would stay up until two or three in the morning, sifting through the 40,000 records on file for ones I had a shot at breaking - I came up with a list of about 1000,” he confessed.
"I've broken over 350 records in my life and it hurts when somebody breaks mine but I just think, 'Right, what would it take for me to win that one back?"
"I am always looking for the next challenge so I often train for about four or five records at once. There is no goal number in my head now, but lately I've been breaking about 50 records a year," Furman added.
So will he ever stop?
"Why would I when I'm having so much fun? Whether it's hopscotch, skipping ropes or hula hoops, I get to be a big kid every day. When it stops being fun, I'll stop. But until then there is always a new challenge to face, always another mountain to climb - I want to try Mt Fuji on stilts next!"
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