Sumit Kumar Singh, a youth from Odisha’s Rourkela scripted history by entering the Guinness Book of World Records by running a long distance on a manual treadmill in 12 hours.
After the unique achievement, Sumit spoke to OTV and shared what inspired him and how the moment of glory happened that has now made the people of Odisha proud.
“I am happy as it is the first time in Rourkela for an athlete to enter the Guinness Book of Records. Last year, I attempted to set a record by conducting 30 marathons in 30 days and the people of Rourkela supported me. But it has not been approved it. Since then, I made up my mind to enter the record book,” said Sumit.
According to Sumit, he found that there was a scope to enter the record books in 12 hours after going through the documents and others verifying the records. However, there were some additional rules for this and hence he picked a manual treadmill this time. As per the rules, one need to have run for 65 kms in 12 hours and one cannot touch the machine when in motion. The rules also stated that there was scope to take break for food and water if you don’t get down the treadmill every one hour, said Sumit.
“So we were taking break every two hours. We had to take some judges as the Guinness Book of Records wanted every minute details for which we provided 12 hours video. Only after going through the video and other aspects, finally the moment of glory came,” he added.