Thursday, November 2, 2023

It's official! Fastest mile on a climbing wall (male) record

 Guinness has just approved my record from July for fastest mile on an indoor climbing wall (male), officially at 1:42:57.95. For technical details and links to video, see my writeup from July.

Thinking about this made me realize just how much this was a team effort. I am grateful to everyone who made this possible, especially:

  • My family for encouragement and patience with me over the summer as I trained for this.
  • Benjamin Sadler doing the official measurements of the route, correcting for the angle of inclination.
  • Mitchell Minyard and Libby Regnerus for being witnesses for the route measurement.
  • Madelyn Hayden, Dominic Pruss and Gabriella Williams for being in charge of my safety during the attempt and/or outside-of-regular-Rock-hours training sessions.
  • Rock staff for watching out for my safety during regular hours, for extending the route so that 112 climbs would be enough for a mile, and constant encouragement.
  • Rich Eva and Libby Regnerus for spending 1¾ hours of their Saturday holding stopwatches to provide an official time.
  • Mitchell Minyard and Gabriella Williams for witnessing the attempt and working hard to log the start and end times of each of 112 climbs. 
  • Gym management staff Rachel Burduroglu, Zac Huston and Cody Schrank for much encouragement, practical help, patience with many requests, and especially allowing me to use the facility outside of hours.
  • The audience (notably including President Linda Livingstone and First Gentleman Brad Livingstone) for their great encouragement.
  • All the members of the Baylor rock climbing community for being such a welcoming community over the past eight years, and having taught me pretty much all I know about climbing.
  • Baylor Moody Media Lab for lending me equipment for recording the attempt.
  • And Guinness World Records for patiently answering all my nitpicking questions and taking the time to review a massive amount of evidence in a fair and trustworthy way.

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