Rutgers’ unsuccessful world record attempt was a joke

On October 11th Rutgers attempted to break the Guinness World Record for the largest number of people to hold the abdominal plank position simultaneously. Rutgers was hoping to get over 2,500 people to break the previous world record of 1,323 people which was set in Fuzhou, Fujian, China on November 8, 2015.

Instead, only 1,163 people came to High Point Solutions Stadium, meaning we fell just 160 people short of tying the World Record.

I guess it never occurred to me that so many people didn’t want to break a world record. After I got my first glossy copy of a Guinness World Record book when I was 7 years old, I was amazed by the woman with the longest hair, the woman with the smallest waist, the countries with the largest wealth, and the more bizarre ones, too. I decided from then on, that breaking a World Record would be something on my bucket list.

I soon realized I didn’t have some incredible talent or strange predisposition for me to win a world record on my own, so group world record attempts would be a tangible shot at bragging to everyone that “Yes, I am a world record holder,” even if it was just for a year until it was broken by some other group of people.

Me being smug thinking I was about to break a World Record

When Rutgers announced that they were going to make a group world record attempt for something I could actually do (hold a plank for 1 minute), I was ecstatic. Here it was, an opportunity for me to brag at parties and to cross something major off my bucket list, alongside fellow students and representing Rutgers. At the fitness classes, we would practice holding our planks every single day and perfect our form to ensure we would do it. I always thought we did this because they were scared that we wouldn’t have the strength to hold a plank for 60 seconds, it never occurred to me that we wouldn’t have enough people interested in breaking the record.

There is no shortage of people at Rutgers. You curse how many people go to RU when your face is in someone’s armpit on the LX bus; when a class you really need to take is full and you can’t register for it; when you can’t even find a seat at Club Alex to study.

Yesterday on the field of the football stadium, I was surprised by how many non-students there were. Adults (most likely alumni) were with their entire families and children to break the record, which means even fewer than 1,323 Rutgers students had the decency to show up to their own event.

A photo of a bunch of of people who wasted their time

All 1,163 of us, students and non-students alike, lined up at the yard lines to make history. Or so we thought. We held our damn planks for 60 seconds only to find out a few minutes later that it was all for naught. Had another 160 people suffered through that minute alongside us, we could have a glossy Guinness World Record page of our own. Instead, we walked away feeling like we wasted our time and wearing free shirts we got from the event that had “We came, We Planked, We Conquered!” printed on it. Funny how thousands of students came to see Rutgers get brutally murdered against Michigan 78-0 on Saturday, but didn’t want to break a world record. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry at that.

It’s okay, I’ll get over it. It was just a major thing on my bucket list that I’ll probably never accomplish. I’m not bitter at all.