Getting into Guinness: One man’s longest, fastest, highest journey inside the world’s most famous record book

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Someone who could not walk in a straight line for 30 seconds to a place that had become a second home had some serious issues. At the moment, my most serious issue was sleep, or rather lack thereof. It had been nearly 70 hours since I had last closed my eyes. That might not sound like so long until you think of it as two full days, meaning days and nights, plus another half-day tacked on for good measure. Then add seven more hours. If you are reading this on Sunday evening, think about staying up until midday Wednesday. And you would still not be done. But you would be tired, confused and probably hallucinating as well. I was.

I had begun playing poker at the Foxwoods Casino in Mashuntucket, Connecticut, at 1 PM on Thursday 10 June, 2004. I had already been up for more than six hours when I first started playing, because I had gone into Hartford to appear on the local morning television news show. After returning to the casino I had played all day Thursday, through Thursday night, then all day Friday and Friday night, and then all day Saturday. It was now somewhere around four in the morning on Saturday night, or Sunday morning depending on your perspective, and I was tired, more tired than I could imagine anyone has ever been. I was beyond any measure of exhaustion I had ever known or even conceived of, not just physically but also mentally. To put it in the simplest terms, my brain had stopped working.

I once did a 24-hour mountain bike ride, an arduous physical feat through an entire night in the woods. On many of my trips as a journalist, such as flying to and from Asia, I have been severely jet lagged and sleep deprived. On several occasions, I have flown overnight to Europe without sleep after a full day of work, and then worked through another long day and late until the following night. I pulled college all-nighters, and in those years also had a bit of practise with booze and the occasional mind-altering substance. But none of those experiences could even remotely compare to the state of disconnect I achieved at Foxwoods simply by staying awake. I avoided alcohol altogether, drank ample water, and lots of coffee, but by hour 48, I started to have visual distortions, and by the time I got lost en route from the toilets, I had progressed to full-blown hallucinations of the mirage-in-the-desert variety. That was hour 70 without sleep and hour 64 of poker playing, with just over eight remaining. The past 12 hours had been the worst: every time I glanced up from the table, things looked markedly different. The room itself changed size and shape with alarming frequency, the walls expanding and contracting, alternatingly creating a space so vast it seemed to go on forever and so small I seemed to be playing cards in someone’s garage. Ditto for the table and its surroundings, which began morphing by the minute. At one point I became absolutely convinced that the table was set in a white gazebo elevated above all the other gaming tables on the casino floor. The players, many of whom had been by my side for eight hours or more, suddenly were unfamiliar and unrecognizable. At one point I looked around at their faces and abruptly became convinced I was at the wrong table, because everyone and everything looked so alien. Panicked, I stood up and tried to leave, desperate to get to where I felt I should be, but the dealer begged me to stay, knowing I was in the right place - or at least where I was supposed to be. The truly right place was probably a psychiatric hospital. Mentally, I did not think it could get any worse. But I had yet to hit bottom.

How did I get to this point? What madness compelled me to risk my physical and mental health? Why would I - or anyone - think playing poker for days without a break was a good idea? The answer is simple: to set a Guinness World Record.

2005, LONDON, FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS

When the Guinness record book reached its half-century mark, its editors celebrated with parties, TV specials, record-breaking events and a special edition of the book, covered in shiny metallic gold. My name is in that book, and will be, forever. Fittingly, this was the result of a 2003 visit to Ireland, the birthplace of all things Guinness: it was an article in a local newspaper that first rekindled my boyhood interest in the record book. I knew the book, of course, everyone does, but I had no idea it had such a rich history. Most impressive was its unique status as the world’s all-time number one copyrighted best seller, having sold well over 100 million copies in 37 different languages. The article described a book that became a phenomenon, and spawned a global entertainment empire of television shows, literally hundreds of spin-off book titles, a widely syndicated cartoon of records and a global collection of museums. In addition, records were plastered on paper cups, greeting cards, T-shirts, even a boardgame. Record mania, according to the article, showed no signs of slowing down: every single year, like clockwork, the book sells more than a million copies in the US, and 3.5 million worldwide, annually making the best-seller lists here and abroad.

Surely, I thought, as the freelance journalist inside me pondered the ramifications, there has to be something worth writing about in all this. There was, and fewer than two years later, I would be reading about myself in the pages of Guinness World Records. But I still had a lot to learn.

JUNE 2006, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, USA

“HE is in the Guinness Book of World Records!” a slightly tipsy reveller tells her date, just a bit too loudly. I’m at a dinner party and wine is flowing freely. I know what’s coming next. A hush descends around the table and ignoring it will not end the silence. I am not going to get out of this room without recounting at least one of my Guinness record-setting endeavours and answering the identical questions that inevitably follow. Did you get paid? What was the record before? How did you do that? Why did you do that? How did you think of that? Why poker? Why golf? Why Australia? Why 72 hours? What’s next? Were you on TV? Does it have anything to do with the beer?

People of every age and background have an insatiable thirst for all things Guinness, and I’ve learned that once the topic of world records comes up, the genie is out of the bottle: like it or not, I become the centre of undivided attention. The bottom line is that the book has a glorifying effect on all its record holders, which is why people are so eager to get into it. Guinness World Records is a collection of celebrities, famous and also paradoxically anonymous, promising its most dedicated readers a moment in the sun. It offers otherwise unknowns like me the opportunity to grab 15 minutes of fame and achieve a glimmer of so-called ‘greatness’, joining the ranks of elite athletes, scientists, world leaders, explorers and adventurers who comprise its lengthy list of record holders. On the cocktail circuit, a Guinness World Record makes you an instant celebrity in a culture that has never been more obsessed with celebrity, and for many of us it is the only such path. I can most assuredly say that I will never be the first man on the moon, become the world’s longest-serving head of state, its most syndicated columnist or set the lifetime mark for most bones broken, highest box office take, PGA Tour earnings, career batting average or most Tour de France titles, but I did manage to join Neil Armstrong, Fidel Castro, Ann Landers, Evel Knievel, Harrison Ford, Tiger Woods, Ty Cobb and Lance Armstrong in the pages of Guinness. Hell, I’ve set more records than some of them.

My records are odd, offbeat and arguably pointless, but compared to many of my peers they are totally mundane. When I first wrote the proposal for this book, my agent asked me to make it more colourful, specifically suggesting that I select half a dozen really outlandish records that would shock, amaze and/or cause rib-breaking laughter among the editors considering buying my work. Surprisingly, this turned out to be the most difficult component of my proposal. Because singling out six Guinness World Records as especially absurd is like being asked to pick six famous people to illustrate the history of civilization. Is the attempt to break the elapsed time record for wearing a full suit of armour - while riding in an aeroplane - more illustrative of odd nuances than the creative loophole used by the mayor of a Spanish city, which, after coming up literally miles short in its attempt to create the world’s largest sausage, set about convincing the book’s staff to create a special category just for ‘largest chorizo sausage’? Is stuffing one’s mouth with ten large, poisonous and very much alive rattlesnakes more shocking than eating an entire aeroplane ground into metal filings? Which is more impressive: growing the world’s longest beard, which took years, or growing the longest ‘beard of bees’, done in just minutes by a 68-year-old Ohio beekeeper who used a queen in a tiny box strapped below his jaw to attract a staggering 17,500 bees onto his chin? Bringing to mind the timeless debate of quantity versus quality, did the 14,718 Japanese record holders all drinking tea together outdo the largest gathering of people dressed as gorillas, a scant 637 participants in London’s Great Gorilla Fun Run? Perhaps my only easy choice was Germany’s Rudy Horn, who won me over with his panache. When Horn set the record for Most Teacups Caught On Head While Unicycling, he threw six teacups and saucers - with his feet - catching and balancing them on his head and, lest we forget, all while riding a unicycle. But the stylish Horn was not done: after finishing his successful record, his toes emphatically added a teaspoon and a lump of sugar to the collection on his head. If his was the only feat involving multiple esoteric skills put together in a seemingly impossible combination, my choices would have been easy, but there are dozens, or hundreds, in each ever-changing edition of the book.

How did it ever come to this? How did the Guinness book, which started life as a stoic academic work intended to be as sexy as a dictionary or encyclopaedia, suddenly become, much to the surprise of its authors, a runaway best seller and eventually THE runaway best seller of all time? How did it morph from reference almanac into an interactive cultural icon that tens of thousands of people would devote enormous amounts of energy, time, money and sometimes even their lives to ‘get into’? Why did it spawn myriad television shows, museums, copycats and spin-offs? Why is it so universally beloved, its appeal effortlessly crossing linguistic, religious and cultural borders? Why is the world of record breaking so fascinating to readers and so obsessive for record breakers? These are the questions that fuelled my journey inside the world’s most famous record book, bringing me face to face with some of its greatest personalities, and I will share the answers I found in the upcoming pages.

1 Meet Ashrita, Record Breaker for God (#ulink_296c6bb2-37b8-5366-93be-5f71de60f997)

Some things in life are best left unexplained. Ashrita Furman is one of them. This man is an athletic phenomenon whose ability is exceeded only by his imagination.

- JUST FOR THE RECORD (AUSTRALIAN TELEVISION)

I’m trying to show others that our human capacity is unlimited if we can believe in ourselves. I hope that after reading this you are inspired to attempt some feat of your own. The particular event is unimportant as long as it gives you the opportunity to dance on the edge of your capacity. But be prepared - the benefits could be both illuminating and far reaching.

- ASHRITA FURMAN, IN HIS ONLINE BLOG

For proof of the old adage ‘truth is stranger than fiction’, one need look no further than Ashrita Furman. If Ashrita did not exist, the marketing folks at Guinness World Records would have to invent him - but even the most imaginative ad person could not conjure up a character like Ashrita, who has now been intimately involved with the book for far longer than any of its staff. In the 30 years since he began breaking Guinness World Records, the men who invented the book have all passed away, its editors have come and gone, the book itself has been bought and sold and sold again, and throughout all of these changes, during the Age of Ashrita it has become the best-selling copyrighted book in world history, and by some accounts the second most widely read book (#litres_trial_promo) of all time - behind only the Bible.

Fortunately for the more than 110 million readers who have purchased a copy of the Guinness World Records, Ashrita does exist, and no one in the book’s half-century has had the kind of impact on its pages that he has or has done more to spread its gospel. Furman was once just like the millions of other adolescents who buy the book every year and have made it an annual New York Times best seller for decades. Like his peers, Ashrita studied its pages, and pored over images that are now iconic to generations of readers: pictures of the tallest and shortest and fattest men and women, those with the longest beards, moustaches and fingernails. Like most kids, Ashrita dreamt of being in its pages, but unlike most kids he has lived out that dream to epic proportions. After a life-changing revelation, Ashrita got his own picture into the book in 1979 and has never slowed down since, continuing to get into Guinness at a frenetic pace with increasingly bizarre feats of stamina, strength and creativity. Ashrita Furman is ‘The Book’ taken to its logical, if such a word can used in the same breath as Guinness World Records, extreme, the mother of all record breakers. Paradoxically, he began as a contemporary reflection of the book, part of its target audience, and 30 years later, the book has become a contemporary reflection of Ashrita: its focus has dramatically turned towards him and his kin, featuring more and more self-invented records, which in many cases seem as difficult to think up as to execute. More than anyone else, Ashrita helped turn the Guinness World Records book from something people simply read to something tens of thousands of people each year strive to get into, and he has done so with his own unique and appealing style. By taking every child’s fascination with the book and marrying this passion to the fervour of a religious zealot, then sprinkling in his sense of humour and showmanship, this soft-spoken man from Queens, New York, has become nothing less than the greatest Guinness record holder of all time.

Yet despite all his success, he remains a humble servant of God. “ People magazine called me (#litres_trial_promo) to be on their ‘50 most eligible bachelors’ list,” Ashrita, who has taken a pledge of celibacy, told the New York Times. “I told them, ‘There’s only one problem: I don’t date.’” The celibate vegetarian has also never driven a car (though he holds a record for pushing one). He has lived in the same apartment, with few possessions, for most of the last 30 years. Even his stack of Guinness World Records certificates, the largest such collection outside of the company’s headquarters, sits on the floor of his wardrobe in a modest pile. The only one he has on display is his 100th, a special certificate the book made him to honour the accomplishment, the only one of its kind ever printed.

“Ashrita is by far (#litres_trial_promo) the most prolific record breaker,” Stewart Newport told the New York Times. Newport is the book’s long-time Keeper of the Records, the lofty title the English concern bestows upon its top rules official. As of January 2008 (#litres_trial_promo), Furman held 72 current records, his most recent being part of a group effort: he and an international team with members from 15 different countries, all motivated by their extreme religious devotion, spent two weeks constructing the world’s largest pencil. They shaped 8000 board feet of wood and 4500 pounds of graphite into a 75-foot-long, ten-and-a-half-ton writing instrument, an anachronism in this increasingly digital age. “It wasn’t easy,” Ashrita wrote, not on a giant legal pad but on his blog. “We had to make the pencil to scale, it had to look precisely like a normal pencil and it had to be made out of the same materials…we even manufactured a 250-pound eraser.” Those 72 records are just the ones he still claims, but overall Ashrita has set or broken 177 Guinness World Records in his lifetime, far more than anyone in history. More than twice as many, in fact: in 2003 he reached one of his many Guinness milestones when he passed legendary Russian weightlifter (#litres_trial_promo) Vasily Alekseyev, the previous champion of champions, who had set 80 records in his vaunted career. To match Alekseyev’s (#litres_trial_promo) lifelong tally, Ashrita demonstrated patience, stamina and, above all, stability, when he stood balanced on an inflatable exercise ball for two hours, 16 minutes, and two seconds at Stonehenge. Shortly thereafter, he moved into uncharted territory with his eighty-first world record, this one for the fastest full marathon ever completed by someone skipping the entire way, covering the 41-kilometre (26.2-mile) course in five hours and 55 minutes - and in decidedly child-like fashion. For the five years since he passed Alekseyev, Ashrita has stood alone atop the record world.

Like his many incredible feats, Ashrita himself defies generalization. On one level he is reminiscent of a ski bum, except that he gets his adrenaline rush from breaking and setting records. Like the ski bum, Ashrita has structured his life and work in large part around breaking and setting Guinness World Records, and this enthusiasm has taken him not just to Stonehenge but to all corners of the globe.

On another level, one could argue quite seriously that Ashrita is among the world’s greatest athletes. Among Olympians, the decathlon is viewed as the premier athletic event, and the best decathlete is widely touted as the world’s greatest athlete. If excelling in just ten disciplines warrants such respect, why not give credit to a man who is the very best in dozens of them? Ashrita has been called many things in his illustrious career, but the one nickname that has stuck is Mr Versatility, the superhero alter ego that many fans know him by (yes, he does have fans). Even if you throw out some of Ashrita’s more ridiculous specialities, like finger snapping, frog hopping or egg balancing, he has more than enough records that are truly astonishing feats of strength, speed and endurance to put the best decathlete to shame. Ashrita sternly maintains that while some of his records may draw more laughter than respect, each and every one requires a commitment to excellence and a great deal of determination, concentration and fitness. At age 54, when almost all competitive athletes are retired, Ashrita is at the height of his game, still breaking records at a staggering pace: he bagged more than three dozen in 2006 alone, his best year ever. Despite his frenetic pace over the past two years, averaging one record every ten days, Ashrita’s passion has never waned, and he says, “What I love about the Guinness Book is that I can just go through it and choose something that I’ve never done before, train for it, and become the best in the world at that event.”

By any standards, Ashrita Furman is an incredible man. But unless he is wearing one of his many singlets in the midst of a record attempt, you wouldn’t notice his taut muscles. Nondescript, he is of average height and average build, with short hair and spectacles, not thin or fat but rather solid, and if you had to guess what kind of an athlete he was, gymnast would come to mind. He certainly does not look like the best in the world at anything, but in fact he is the best in the world at many things; he has come to define the upper limits of what Guinness World Records has made possible. He is living proof of the American Dream version of the Guinness story, the one often mouthed by the book’s staffers: if you try hard enough and dedicate yourself, anything is possible. He has also demonstrated the media side of record breaking, that if you do it enough you will get on TV and in magazines, over and over again. After all of this, his most prized paraphernalia are not the official certificates that sit on his wardrobe floor, but rather his scrapbooks, with a page for each and every record attempt he has ever made, illustrated with his own snapshots, alongside the occasional postcard and local news clipping. These are more like photo albums of a summer trip to the continent than the main documentation of a life’s purpose, and as he eagerly flips the pages, holding the book upside down to show me, the memories of various attempts and places come flooding back. It is a journey that has now spanned almost 30 years.

The story of almost every serial record breaker and Guinness devotee begins with a childhood spent thumbing the book’s pages until well worn, and Furman is no exception. Born Keith Furman in New York City’s borough of Brooklyn, he grew up in a Jewish household of extreme religious devotion. His father was the president of a Zionist organization, and young Keith attended synagogue regularly and was educated at a yeshiva (rabbinical school), where he described himself as ‘bookwormish’ (#litres_trial_promo), becoming valedictorian. In between his studies, he found time to fall in love with The Guinness Book of World Records, at least vicariously. “I had this fascination about the book (#litres_trial_promo),” he told me, “but it was totally theoretical. I had no interest or ability in any sport.” That changed, and in the years since he has given the matter a lot of reflection.

The target audience of the Guinness book is, I think, eight- to 12-year-old boys, and there are different theories as to why that is. Boys of that age group are trying to find their place in the world, or something like that, and whatever it is, I kind of fit into that pattern. Around that age I was just fascinated with the book. I used to scour it, I remember having it in camp and reading it under the covers with a flashlight [torch]. It’s not only the records, but the exotic places, like seeing the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids, because they are interspersed throughout the book, and that also became part of it, sort of fulfilling a dream of not only breaking records but doing it in exotic places.

Like Stonehenge.

The young Keith Furman may have been a successful student, but he was neither an athlete nor content with his place in the world. In high school, Furman considered sports “a complete waste of time”, and recalls getting “beaten up my first day of high school for being such a nerd”. Sports were not the only aspect of his youth that left him feeling alienated. Despite his upbringing, Furman never felt comfortable within the bounds of Judaism, and his continued search for meaning in his life led him to examine Eastern philosophy and begin studying yoga. This, in turn, led the teenager to attend a meditation class with guru Sri Chinmoy that forever changed his life.

Until his death in late 2007, Sri Chinmoy was the spiritual leader to thousands of devoted followers worldwide, espousing not an organized religion but rather a set of beliefs, an examination of the inner spirit and paradigms for living a just life. He was based in an enclave in Jamaica, in the borough of Queens in New York City, where he basically had his own neighbourhood, a miniature kingdom of reflective followers much like a faith-based Chinatown or Little Italy. I met Ashrita here, at one of many vegetarian restaurants run by and for Chinmoy’s followers, because eating meat is prohibited. Several other Chinmoy-associated businesses, including a florist and the health food shop Furman manages, give these few square miles a surreal pervasive spirituality.

Chinmoy’s way is not a religion per se, but rather a philosophy that emphasizes love for God, daily meditation and public service, with a broad religious tolerance and the Vedantic view that all faiths reflect divinity. An author, artist and athlete, Chinmoy gained fame for organizing vast public events, including concerts and races, to showcase inner peace and world harmony. Born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in 1931 in what is now Bangladesh, he studied for 20 years at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community in India where he meditated, exercised, wrote and painted. In 1964 he moved to New York, and according to his official biography, Chinmoy (#litres_trial_promo) “sees aspiration - the heart’s ceaseless yearning for ever higher and deeper realities - as the spiritual force behind all great advances in religion, culture, sports and science.” Chinmoy said, “Our goal is to go from bright to brighter to brightest, from high to higher to highest. And even in the highest, there is no end to our progress, for God Himself is inside each of us and God at every moment is transcending His own Reality.”

Chinmoy had a colourful athletic past of his own (#litres_trial_promo), and to demonstrate what the heart’s ceaseless yearning could achieve, he embarked on a series of Guinnessesque feats throughout his lifetime, minus the certificates and official recognition. An avid runner and weightlifter, he completed numerous marathons and ultramarathons, and in 2004, at age 73, bettered his personal record by lifting 66,647 kilograms (146,931 pounds) in one day. In 2002 he lifted 1000 lambs over his head during six days in New Zealand, and the following week hoisted 100 cows. In 1988 he launched a programme called ‘Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart’, to honour people he felt had made a notable contribution to the world or humanity. For the next six years he took the programme’s name quite literally, and lifted 7027 such honoured individuals over his head - always with one arm. It is easy to see where Ashrita gets his inspiration from, not just spiritually but also for creating wacky feats of strength. His teacher also organized a biannual World Harmony Run (#litres_trial_promo) to promote peace, a relay that spanned some 17,700 kilometres (11,000 miles) and 80 nations, undertaken to create goodwill between the people of the Earth. Chinmoy’s torch has been passed on during the run by the likes of Sting, Carl Lewis, Muhammad Ali, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.

Chinmoy was equally earnest about art and writing, and claimed to have completed more than 100,000 paintings in less than a year, including more than 16,000 in one day. Likewise, he is responsible for countless volumes of poems, essays and plays. To spread his message, Chinmoy hosted concerts, lectures and public meditation sessions, like the one Ashrita first attended, all free of charge.

Sri Chinmoy’s affect on Ashrita was profound, and even today, 30 years after his first taste of limitless physical and spiritual prowess, Furman prefaces almost every comment with ‘my teacher believes’, ‘my teacher showed me’ or ‘to honour my teacher’. In fact, the serial pursuit of Guinness World Records has been Ashrita’s platform to publicly promote Chinmoy’s spirituality and draw attention to his cause - and he has been very successful at it. He wears a Sri Chinmoy T-shirt or singlet for every record breaking attempt and rarely fails to give credit to his teacher. For this reason, his job is as a manager of a health food shop in Chinmoy’s domain, where he is given exceeding flexibility. For years he has moonlighted as the travel manager of his guru’s orchestra, organizing concert tours and travelling the world with them, slipping in record-breaking feats along the way, often at the same exotic locations he dreamt of as a young boy.

Shortly after attending that first meditation with Chinmoy, Furman became a devoted follower, eventually dropping out of both Judaism and Columbia University to pursue spiritual fulfillment. On his website, Ashrita recalls his early experiences. “Sri Chinmoy radically altered the way I looked at things…. My teacher’s philosophy of self-transcendence, of overcoming your limits and making daily progress spiritually, creatively and physically using the power of meditation, really thrilled me! However, I was a bit unsure about the physical part in my case due to my lifelong commitment to nerdiness!” Sensing Furman’s reluctance to use his mind to expand the limits of his body, in 1978 Chinmoy told him to enter a 24-hour bicycle race through New York’s Central Park. As Furman told me, “It was basically ‘just participate, you don’t have to do great.’ I was in my early twenties and I had never been athletic my entire life, so I figured okay, I’ll participate.” At 1.8 metres and 75 kilograms (five feet ten inches and 165 pounds (#litres_trial_promo)), and practising no physical activity, he had low expectations. Little did he know that fuelled by an inner spirit discovered during the race, he would complete a stunning 652 kilometres (405 miles), with no training, far more than most avid amateur cyclists could accomplish even with preparation and today’s much better equipment. In fact, while Ashrita had no idea, he had actually made a pretty impressive run at the 1978 Guinness World Record for all-day cycling, at just under 766 kilometres (476 miles).

My whole discovery of this revolved around that bicycle race. It was really a life-changing time for me, and I learned that it had nothing to do with my body. I learned that I could use the body as an instrument, as a way to express my spirit and also to make spiritual progress. The idea of using the spirituality to make progress at another level was just totally foreign to me, so this was a major breakthrough. That was the moment, when I kind of stumbled off the bicycle after being on the road for 24 hours, and I just remember making a commitment that I was going to break Guinness records, because it had always been a goal of mine as a kid but I never thought it was possible to do that. Not for my own ego, but to tell people about meditation, and that’s where it all started.

It did not take Ashrita long to make his mark on the book: with just his eleventh record, set in 1987, he earned a special and unique spot in the 1988 edition, a title he still holds that no one else ever has. His website reprints the original telegram from the book’s first editor, Norris McWhirter, congratulating him. It reads “ASHRITA FURMAN OF JAMAICA, NY HAS ESTABLISHED A VERSATILITY RECORD BY SIMULTANEOUSLY HOLDING GUINNESS RECORDS IN TEN UNRELATED CATEGORIES. WARM CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ELEVENTH RECORD.” This was his decathlon, a feat not lost on the media. In an article titled ‘In pursuit of excellence, sort of’ (#litres_trial_promo), Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper recognized the feat but noted, “On the other hand, we hear the nitpickers say querulously, this could turn out to be the dumbest decathlon of all time. Admittedly, it is difficult to think of any situation calling for any more than two of Mr Furman’s accomplishments at one time.”

Most of Ashrita’s copious press since has been more flattering. The Toronto Star called him the ‘King of World Records’ (#litres_trial_promo). The New York Times dubbed him Guinness’s ‘King of Strange Feats (#litres_trial_promo), All for Inner Peace’. It was the Christian Science Monitor that chose ‘Mr Versatility’ (#litres_trial_promo), the nickname that has stuck and continues to grow ever more accurate year after year.

If there is one thing the book’s weird history has demonstrated time and again, it is that no matter how eccentric the intent, getting into Guinness is never as easy as it sounds, even for Ashrita, who despite clearly being the best at it, still fails now and again. Like the time a shark crashed into him while he was attempting to break his own underwater juggling record - in full scuba gear. Cracking the pages of Guinness certainly was not easy at the outset, and despite his middle of the night inner-reflection while cycling and the ah-hah moment when he realized his calling, the book, for a time, would elude even his best efforts.

It wasn’t that easy. It took a few trials and errors before I actually got in. The first thing I tried was pogo-stick jumping because it was the one thing I was good at as a kid. But it was crazy because I had that incredible experience with the bicycle and figured ‘okay I can do that again with no training’. So a few months later I had found out the rules for pogo-stick jumping and got a bunch of pogo sticks and called the media and went out there with no training. The record was 100,000 jumps. It was crazy but I had so much faith in the system, the chanting, the visualization, all these things I had done on the bicycle, so I just went out there, and after three hours everything was hurting. I had decided to do 24 hours of pogo stick jumping because my teacher had done a 24-hour painting marathon and I wanted to honour that. It just shows you my faith, that I was going to go out there for 24 hours with no training. It worked. I did it, the record was 100,000 jumps in 15 hours and I passed that in just 13-and-a-half hours, and then I kept going, because at exactly the moment I broke the record, I started hearing these screams, very weird noises in the park. It turned out they were peacocks in the Central Park Zoo, and it was very eerie because in Indian mythology peacocks represent victory and at the exact moment I broke it they started. The peacocks weren’t anywhere near us, there is no way they could have heard us. It was like a cosmic moment. I was in a lot of pain but I kept going.

He did 131,000 jumps in those 24 hours, but afterwards record officials disallowed his attempt on a technicality. As with many marathon endeavours, rules stipulated that Ashrita was allowed a five-minute rest break after each hour. “Since I accomplished the record in an hour and half less than [the] guy before me, because I was jumping a lot faster, I took too much time off after I passed the record. I wasn’t aware of the way the rules were applied.”

His next attempt also met with rule-induced failure. “Then I did juggling. Sri Chinmoy had done 100,000 paintings and I wanted to juggle a 100,000 throws to honour him so I went to Grand Central Station and just started juggling, went all night and did 100,000 throws.” It was only after he submitted proof of the feat that Ashrita learnt there was no category for continuous juggling - and Guinness didn’t want one. “I still had no idea about the whole process, getting approval in advance, and in those days especially, they were very much less open about new categories. If you wanted to get in the book you kind of had to pick something that was already in there.”

The third time proved to be the charm, when Ashrita tried jumping jacks. “By that time I’d realized that ‘okay, you’ve got to pick something that’s in the book, you’ve got to train for it, find out all the rules and then do it.’ So I did.” In 1979 he completed 27,000 jumps. “I knew right away I was going to continue to do them. It gave me so much joy and I really saw it as such a positive experience. You’ve got to remember that for me, using my body to accomplish things was new. My whole childhood I grew up not doing sports so this was incredible, like, ‘I’m actually an athlete, I can do stuff.’ It was like a journey and basically there are no limits - pretty much anything that anyone else can do you can do if you have enough determination and spirituality.” It was his third attempt at a Guinness record, his first success, and from then on, he was totally hooked.

“I think most people, once they get one record or two, or whatever, they are pretty satisfied. There are people who are serial Guinness record holders, but for the most part people are satisfied with that one and the 15 minutes of fame or whatever. But for me it was a totally different reason, because I am really doing it as a way to sort of live out this philosophy of transcendence that Sri Chinmoy teaches. That’s the key and the whole reason I kept doing it.” But even Furman concedes there is more to it than inner peace. “I have to admit, when I first saw my photo in the Guinness book, right next to the awesome gymnast Nadia Comaneci, I got pretty excited.”

For the next few years he was lulled into a false sense of record-setting security by a series of feats that are now among his most mundane: team stretcher carrying, hand clapping, creating the most expensive floral wreath, and bettering his own jumping-jack mark (33,000). He was off to a good start, but it was not until 1983 and his seventh world record that his amazing athletic prowess would shine and the Golden Age of Ashrita began.

Milk-bottle balancing does not sound as sexy as, say, the javelin throw. But like many Guinness World Records, when the reader understands and appreciates the rules, the true difficulty begins to sink in. Milk-bottle balancing, according to Ashrita, requires use of an old-fashioned glass milk bottle, full of milk, balanced on your head while you walk continuously. As with most marathon-style endurance records, there are prescribed rest breaks, but while you can stop walking to rest or eat, the bottle can never leave your head, although you are allowed to adjust it twice an hour. For Ashrita’s seventh record, he kept that bottle on his head for 38.6 kilometres (24 miles) of endless loops on a high school track, wearing, as he always does for record attempts, a Sri Chinmoy singlet, while never letting the full glass bottle slip from his head. Ashrita himself concedes that the record, one of his all-time favourites, looks funny, but actually doing it for all those kilometres is no laughable accomplishment. With this, he raised the bar for weird endurance Guinness feats, both for himself and others. His record was soon surpassed, and like many of his specialities, milk-bottle balancing would go through a hotly contested period. As a result, he has held this particular record at ever increasing distances no less than seven different times. When competitors take on Ashrita’s records, they merely awaken a sleeping giant, often causing him to eventually take the standard to a point where no one can match it and thus giving it an air of permanence. At first this back-and-forth tug of wills moved in small increments, with Ashrita claiming a marathon-length, 42.1 kiloometre (26.2-mile) milk-bottle balance three years later, and 52.9-kilometres (32.9 miles) two years after that. But in 1998 he took milk bottle balancing to an entirely new level, one that has remained uncontested for a decade, when he walked 130.27 kilometres (80.95 miles) with that glass bottle on his head. The vast majority of people, even fit recreational athletes, cannot walk that many kilometres, full stop. “When I started, some clown [literally, a circus clown] had done it. This clown had done 18 miles, and I did 24, then 26, then someone did 30 and someone did 33 and it just kept going back and forth, 40, 44, up and up until I did almost 81 and no one has done it since. It is a major commitment and it is a gradual process. You don’t just go out and do 23 hours of milk-bottle balancing. It would be a pretty big jump for someone to go out and break that record.” Milk-bottle balancing is one of his favourite records, and one of mine as well, because it is every bit as absurdly difficult as it is absurd. It is also one of the oldest of the more than 70 records Ashrita currently holds, having stood for ten years.

The gradual competitive process he describes has become standard fare for Ashrita, especially as his growing fame has made his records more and more coveted by Guinness World Records devotees. The 24-miler marked the point at which Ashrita went from spur-of-the-moment, would-be record holder to serious athlete. He began a well-rounded fitness routine of aerobics, running and strength training, but has since come to realize that his specialities require event-specific training. To be good at things like long-distance milk-bottle balancing you have to practise them - often more complicated than it sounds - and this is one of the reasons he does much of his work on a local high school track, free of traffic and outside interference. He recounts the difficulty of training for the milk-bottle record on his website:

The reactions I get while walking through the streets practising for this record are precious. In Japan, people politely pretend that nothing is wrong, but once I pass them I often hear muffled giggling. In New York, bystanders openly laugh, cheer, jeer or even throw rocks to try to knock the bottle off my head. One kid even used a slingshot [catapult]! The most unique reactions were in Cancun, Mexico, as I walked along the main boulevard in the tourist district. Onlookers would frequently try to startle me into dropping the bottle…teenagers would drive by in their cars screaming and honking their horns. One imaginative fellow snuck up behind me and barked like a dog in my ear! But the best was the city bus driver who crossed over to my side of the road, charged his vehicle through a huge puddle and drenched me in a shower of warm muddy water.

None of this fazes Ashrita, because faith is on his side. He laughs such incidents off, and occasionally it takes such an encounter to make him remember that his lifelong passion is still odd to others. One of his many unusual records involves pushing an orange one mile with his nose, which at a world-record pace requires swatting it with your face so that it rolls as far as possible, and then scrambling after it and doing this again and again. This record is one that is almost harder to practise than to actually break, especially since when he broke the record, a long passageway in New York’s JFK airport had been cordoned off for his attempt, while his practice sessions took place in city parks. Over lunch he told me, “It sort of epitomizes the Guinness records: it’s nuts and if someone looked at you during it they’d think you really lost it. I remember when I went to the park to practise I’d look at everyone having picnics and think to myself ‘do I really have the guts to do this? To get down on my hands and knees and start smacking an orange with my nose?’ When you’re part of the regular world you see how crazy it must seem.”

The year 1983 began a watershed period for Ashrita, who would string together five defining records over a three-year period, beginning with the milk-bottle balancing, taking his quest into the realm of the extreme. As evidenced even in the 24-hour pogo-stick failure, his unique ability to ignore pain and do things for very long periods of time would become the backbone of many of his greatest achievements. He also carved out a niche with a handful of specialities that, when combined, account for the bulk of his records, which he describes under the umbrella category ‘child-like pursuits’.

Many of the records involve child-like activities such as juggling, hopscotch, unicycling, pogo-stick jumping, somersaulting, yodelling and balancing objects on my head or chin. You know how children are so close to their parents? That’s how my teacher Sri Chinmoy says we should be to God; you should feel like a child with affection and sweetness towards God. That fits in with the child-like nature. I like doing these things. When people ask me how I choose what record to do, I always say choose something that you love to do, something that gives you joy, because you are going to have to practise it for hours and hours. There’s a record for eating an onion. I’m good at it, I’m a fast eater and I am within a few seconds but I can’t stand doing it. I tried it and I’m not getting any joy, so forget it, I’m not going to deal with it. There are so many other things I can do.