Record Challenge That Never Happened

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I was reading a post today from @gooddream about a guy who broke the world record for doing the most sit ups. Not many people knew that he held the World Record as he was an average Joe who just liked to challenge himself. This reminded me of a story I have to tell about someone who thought they would challenge for a World Record running on a treadmill over a 36 hour period.

I used to work for a gym equipment/health supplier that did entry level gym equipment into the retail market. There is a reason they are certain prices as they are not for commercial use and are for the likes of you and me to use at home. This guy had approached one of out major customers with his "brain wave" idea and thought it would be good publicity for our brand and the store.

He would need more than one treadmill as our treadmills were good for maybe 90 minutes at a time and then needed to cool down. This guy was going to use 3 and we now needed a support crew to stay with him making sure our equipment out lasted his running. We have found our equipment in commercial gyms with holes drilled in the motor covers so they can be used for longer but in all honesty they were never designed for that and people need to spend more if they want that type of machine.

The way this guy acted was as though he had already broken the World record and was a superstar. He had a list of demands including our standby crew he had a masseuse to rub his legs periodically and every health bar,nourishment item he could get his hands on. He was a royal pain in the ass and I just didn't like him and what I would call just a dick.

He was starting late on Friday night and the aim was to finish when the shopping centre was busy on the Sunday morning . This guy was on the radio doing his publicity making sure everyone knew about his stunt. Advertising banners were all over the place and we were going to get little sleep as we had to be on standby.

We dropped the night crew off who would be around for anything just in case. It wouldn't look good if he failed the challenge because of us or our equipment. At around 4 am the phone rang and sleepily I answered it. I wasn't a Steemian then so late nights were not the norm for me. I couldn't believe what one of my guys was telling me as the challenge was now off.

The guy with the big mouth and all the publicity had collapsed after only 6 hours. Paramedics had arrived and taken him off to hospital as he was in a bad way. He had suffered cramping and dehydration and had pushed himself too hard to try and get some fame. I had never done any background checks on him and just assumed he was a seasoned runner. This was not my promotion, but we had been roped in anyway and not one of the retailers who owned the chain was there as expected I suppose. They would magically appear minutes before the record was broken as though they had been closely following what was going on for the full 36 hours.

We had to help with magically cleaning the place up as though it had never happened as this was now a total embarrassment. Banners and any advertising had to be quickly removed plus the treadmills needed to be loaded up and taken away. Actually we were quite ecstatic as our treadmills were perfectly fine and the idiot had broken down first. We had to listen to all of his demands and endure his comments for a good 6 weeks before this and he had vanished almost as quickly as he had arrived. Imagine what this guy would have been like if he had completed the record and I wasn't glad he became ill ,but was glad he failed miserably.