补充阅读 how to get in the guinness book of world records.doc

How to Get in the Guinness Book of World RecordsChoose a Category If you invent your own category, Guinness probably won’t accept the record. They have only a certain amount of space, and if a new record goes in, another one has to come out. Look through the book until you find a category that appeals to you. That’s how I settled on trying to break the yodeling record. I’m not even a singer, and I drove my friends crazy trying to learn to yodel. Finally, I yodeled for 27 hours straight I set the record. It went into the Guinness book. Another time, however, I pogo-sticked up the stairs in the tallest tower in the world, the CN Tower in Toronto. British television filmed it, and we hoped that Guinness would accept the feat. But it did not because there was no category for it. So remember: Picking a category that’s already in the book gives you a much better chance. If you do have an idea for a new category be sure to write or telephone the Guinness office first. The editors will say whether they’ll consider it. If you tell them, “I’m going to see how many times I can stick out my tongue in ten hours” or “I’m going to bang my head against a wall one hundred thousand times”, they’ll probably say no. （Obviously, you shouldn’t do anything dangerous or harmful!）But when I telephoned to propose pogo-sticking for instance, they said：“Well, it sounds like a good category. We can’t promise to put it in the book, but go ahead and submit it. ” It helps if the stunt creates a lot of interest － which means competition from other challengers who submit claims in the same category. And there’s always a chance. Once I invented something called “land rowing,” when I mounted an indoor rowing machine on wheels. Today land rowing is a Guinness category, and the current record holder rowed across the entire United States! Recently I thought up “gluggling” or juggling underwater. I put on a scuba tank, climbed into a tank of water, and juggled for 57 minutes. It’s a new category, so I’m waiting to see whether Guinness will accept it. Find out a current record Records printed in the Guinness book may not be the very latest ones. Records are broken all the time, and claims come in after the book is published. Be sure to call the Guinness office the day before you try to break the record. As an example of what can happen if you don’t, I went for the record in the wall press category, which involves sitting against a wall as if you were sitting in a chair － but there’s no chair. It’s torture! Most people can do it for three to five minutes. The record was four hours and 45 minutes. I trained until I was ready to break it, but when I phoned the Guinness editors, they said they’d just received a claim from a man in India who had done the wall press for 10 1/2 hours. What if I hadn’t telephoned? I’d have done the wall press for maybe six grueling hours, and my record wouldn’t have counted. It would have been horrible. If the stunt won’t give you any joy, forget about it. A big part of setting a Guinness world record is to have a lot of fun!Train by actually doing the stunt If you plan to go for the record in jumping jacks, do a thousand of them, then two thousand the next time, then three thousand, and so on. It’s good to do other exercises to keep in shape, but be sure to concentrate on the event in which you’re trying to break the record. Plan ahead Prepare as much as you possibly can. Think of everything that can go wrong. Then go on a trial run. I should have done this when I went for the record for deep-knee bends. Doing them in a gym is so boring that I hatched the idea of going up in a hot-air balloon. It turned out that the whole balloon dipped whenever I did a knee-bend, so I was fighting the motion of the balloon every time. Breaking that record was really tough, I should have given it a try beforehand. Expect the unexpected Because things can never be planned perfectly, something will go wrong. When it does, you can’t think: “Well, this isn’t going to work. I didn’t expect this to happen, so I’ll have to stop and try again sometime. ”You have to go with the flow, as they say. Once I tried for the “joggling” record by running a marathon as I juggled. For the last seven miles I had a bug in my eye! There was no way to get it out, since I was juggling and didn’t have a flee hand. I just had to keep going. Another time, when I started out on my land rowing record, I crashed after a few minutes and the machine got stuck in gear, I couldn’t fix it, so I had to go the whole distance in the hardest gear. Actually, that setback inspired me somehow, because it was more of a challenge. There are times when you can turn an obstacle into an opportunity. Make things easier on yourself You can find ways to give yourself a break and still stay within the Guinness rules. In the hand clapping category, the claps have to be audible at 120 yards. I first trie。