![]() (The men’s record, set in 2007, is 23 minutes and 45 seconds.) Laura D’Asaro, world record holder in the mile crawl, along with her dog Meshka Laura D’Asaroĭ’Asaro started graduate school a few months later, and when she got her official certificate from Guinness World Records, she framed it and put it on a shelf above her computer in her dorm room. This time, D’Asaro crawled a mile in 21 minutes and 36 seconds to get the women’s record. Some friends came to watch, and her grandmother, parents, and other people who had seen her first attempt watched through livestreams. So she started crawling in earnest, and on June 24, 2020, she made her official attempt. “For the first time ever, there was nothing standing in my way,” D’Asaro says. And most of all, training gave her a purpose-something she could control during an otherwise uncertain and scary time. The biggest event on her social calendar was when people opened their windows to cheer for health care workers and first responders at 8 p.m. Suddenly, no one was inviting her to restaurants or parties. She always felt like it was “one extra box that didn’t get checked.” “I felt really embarrassed,” D’Asaro says. She’d train a little in January, maybe even February, and then life would get in the way. So each January for the last 10 years, D’Asaro added “breaking the record” to her list of New Year’s resolutions. Getting 99 percent of the way there wasn’t enough for D’Asaro. “I submitted the record, and it didn’t get approved.” “I didn’t realize at the time that four times around the inside of a track is only 99 percent of a mile,” D’Asaro says. She crawled four times around the inside of a track and thought she’d beaten the record. When it finally came time for the attempt, family members and kids from her high school showed up to watch and support her. “When you’re 17, you haven’t found a place in the world,” D’Asaro says. She even got a write-up in the local paper. Everyone at school knew her as the crawling girl. She crawled around her neighborhood and on beaches and trails while wearing a sign that said “World Record in Progress” so strangers would stop asking her questions. “My mom would ask me to take the dog for a walk after school, but instead of walking, I would crawl,” D’Asaro laughs. ![]() She first attempted it when she was 17 as a way to raise money for cancer research and honor her grandmother who’d recently died from the disease. Last year wasn’t the first time D’Asaro, 30, had tried to break this record. The answer? Training to break the Guinness world record for the fastest time to crawl a mile. “Then finally someone on the team stopped me and asked what I was doing.” “At first I got some weird looks,” D’Asaro says. “It was pretty comfortable,” she says.ĭ’Asaro often crawled on Wednesdays, when a San Francisco marathon training team ran at the same track. She even put extra knee pads over the front ends of her shoes so they wouldn’t get rubbed away from friction. She wrapped her knees in bubble wrap, then added hard knee pads on top. She put adhesive bandages on her palms, then covered those with bicycle gloves to keep from getting blisters. Twice a week for three months, D’Asaro would don a mask as well as some more unorthodox gear. While some people spent time baking, gardening, or raising poultry in 2020, Laura D’Asaro was on her hands and knees crawling around a track near her San Francisco home.
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