Aggie duo sets Guinness World Record
Not many people can say they’re number one in the world in something, but that doesn’t apply to Casey Williams and Mike Price.
The duo wrote themselves into the record books by setting a Guinness World Record for fastest three-legged mile with a time of 7 minutes and 50 seconds on Saturday at the Utah State track.
“It feels pretty good,” said Williams, a USU business marketing senior. “Number one in the world in one thing, at least. We’ll take it.”
Price, a 2013 USU graduate in economics, said they figured if they spent the first three laps on pace to tie the record, they could go hard over the final lap and rely on adrenaline to break the record.
“We were five seconds ahead of the pace on the first lap, two seconds ahead on the second lap and the third lap we came in right on pace, maybe half a second ahead,” Price said. “So when we went into that last lap, I felt like we’d run like five miles at a very fast pace.”
Originally the plan was to do 400 meters, but Guinness said it wasn’t specific enough and proposed a mile.
So the duo put careful thought into how to approach their record-setting attempt, including putting Price, who is taller than Williams, on the outside of the track to account for his longer stride.
“There’s a lot more to it than I originally thought,” Price said. “We’ve run a lot together, and so I knew it was do-able, but as we started training, it ended up being a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”
The idea began when Williams was working at an elementary school reading books to children. One of the children opted for Williams to read from the Guinness Book of World Records, and Williams decided to take a shot.
“I kind of thought some of them were a joke, but it was always a goal when I was a little kid to get into the world record book,” Williams said. “I looked at a few records and felt the record for the three-legged mile was attainable.”
That was back in March, and Williams registered for a Guinness account, filled out a cover letter application and sent it in. Having approached Price to be his partner in crime, the duo heard back from Guinness in June, but Price had taken a summer job that took him to New York for the summer after graduating from USU last May.
But with Price planning to be in Logan for the BYU-USU football game over the weekend, they decided to make their attempt. After reading 29 pages of paperwork regarding rules to follow, the duo made arrangements and set the record in front of 10-15 friends at the Utah State track on Saturday.
Price and Williams will create a DVD containing video, photography and paperwork to finalize their record and send it to Guinness offices in London. Pending review, it will take five to seven weeks, and the duo will officially go on the books as the world record holders for the fastest three-legged mile.
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