iStockphoto / IgorBukhlin
I try my hardest to avoid the treadmill whenever I can. I hate it. Running in place for short or long stretches of time, even with the TV on in front of me, is the most monotonous type of exercise I can think of. I need constant changes and sensory overload and the treadmill’s the exact opposite of that for me.
But for ‘Adventureman’ Jamie McDonald who has raised over $1 million for charity in the past five years the treadmill is apparently his happy place. He just ran his way into the Guinness World Record book by running an absolutely unfathomable 524.4 MILES ON THE TREADMILL in one week to set a new world record.
For this Guinness World Record, Jamie McDonald set up ‘a purpose-built marquee in Gloucester Quays’ according to Joe.ie where he had a week to complete the 524.4 miles. That’s 74.914 miles per day or almost 75 miles a day that he was running on the treadmill and he did it all for a truly great cause. A rare medical condition that kept him in the hospitial for much of his childhood has driven him to smash these records:
The fundraising adventurer, who has a rare spinal condition that kept him in and out of the hospital as a child, has raised more than $1 million (€894,854) for sick children over the last five years and has raised a further £50,000 (€58,413) with his latest World Record attempt.
Gloucester man McDonald spent the first nine years of his life in and out of the hospital with syringomyelia, a rare spinal condition.
Combined with a weak immune system and epilepsy, his health was poor.At nine years old, and against the odds, ‘Adventureman’ McDonald’s symptoms eased, allowing him to slowly become more active.
In 2018, he completed a 5,500-mile, coast-to-coast fundraising run across the United States, raising more than £162,000 (€189,259) in the process.
This distance was the equivalent of 210 marathons, and he did it all solo without a support crew.
(via Joe.ie)
He’s bagged a new Guinness World Record AND raised a lot of money for charity.
This isn’t Jamie McDonald’s first world record. In 2012, he set the Guinness World Record for ‘Marathon Static Cycling’ where he stayed on the exercise bike for ELEVEN DAYS (268 hours) which broke the previous record of 224 hours and 24 minutes. I have questions about this record…For instance, how did he relieve himself if he was on the bike for 268 hours straight?
If you have 11+ hours and want to queue up footage of the Adventureman running on the treadmill in his world record attempt you can hit play on this clip from his YouTube channel:
I’d wager that most of the human population hasn’t ever run 520 miles throughout the entire course of their lives. The average life expectancy in America is around 78 years. Running 520 miles would mean you would need to average 6.66 miles-per-year throughout your entire life. Let’s account for the fact that you’re probably not running any actual ‘miles’ until you’re 13-years-old and then you probably aren’t running miles after 65. So that’s ~52 years of your life (on average) where you might hit the track to run a mile and you’d need to average 10 miles/year for all 52 years.
Did you run 10 miles this year? We’re almost halfway through the year, have you run 5 miles yet? I know I haven’t. I’ve cycled 637.7 miles in the past month and have averaged between 550-650 miles for the past five months but I haven’t run a single mile.