i first learned about the sport of joggling – jogging while juggling – when i was about 12 years old and was reading the Guinness Book of World Records. my sister Moira and i used to flip through the book, dreaming of world records that we could try to break one day. i saw there was a record for “fastest joggling marathon,” and thought, ‘wow, that’s amazing! but how does running while juggling even work?’ i had just recently taught myself how to juggle three beanbags, so I went to a running trail near my house and tried joggling for the first time. to my surprise, the three-ball juggling pattern synchronized perfectly with the arm swing motion of running. every time you swing an arm forward during the running stride, you toss a ball up and over to the other hand. it was like magic.

fast-forward 20 years later and i had become a competitive marathon runner. i had won the Toronto Marathon in 2002 with a personal-best time of 2 hours 30 minutes, and was the top Canadian in the Boston Marathon that same year. i had dreams of representing Canada at the Olympics in the marathon, but never quite got fast enough. and then life happened.

"i am thrilled to be making my first visit to Maldives for the Coca-Cola runinaddu by Total Fitness Group”

my first daughter Annika was born in 2003, i was working two jobs and still marathon training. i began pushing Annika in a jogging stroller for most of my training runs and it became a great father-daughter bonding experience for us. in 2004, as i was training for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, i remembered back to those times when i read the Guinness Book, and decided to look up whether there was a Guinness World Record for fastest marathon pushing a baby in a stroller. it turned out there was! i ended up pushing Annika in a Baby Jogger stroller to the new stroller-pushing marathon Guinness World Record of 2 hours 49 minutes, and raised money for Toronto’s SickKids hospital, where Annika was treated for a heart condition when she was born. the people from the charity group asked what kind of world record i would try to set at the marathon the next year, and immediately blurted out: “i’m going to run the marathon while juggling! joggling!”

i hadn’t tried joggling in 20 years, but that didn’t stop me. the dream of setting the joggling marathon Guinness World Record had been bubbling in the back of my brain for all these years. now it was time to get to business and start training. I spent hours and hours dropping balls all over the place as i leaned how to combine running with juggling. slowly, i got better. in 2005, i first smashed the world record for the joggling marathon with a time of 3 hours 7 minutes. but soon after, I found out that a guy in the U.S. named Zach Warren has beaten my time by just 30 seconds. Zach and i traded the record back and forth several times over the next two years, before i joggled my way to the current joggling marathon Guinness World Record record time of 2 hours 50 minutes and 12 seconds. i also set the 10K 3-ball joggling world record of 36:27 and the half-marathon of 1:20:40, which has since been beaten.

people always ask me why I do this weird thing. the main reason i joggle is because it’s fun! it’s like a little moving circus that makes me smile and entertain other people. joggling is also great workout because it involved full-body endurance and intense hand-eye coordination, which is great for the brain. there’s no other physical activity that’s quite like it.

i’m thrilled to be making my first visit to Maldives for the Coca-Cola runinaddu by Total Fitness Group to become the first person to run a 10K while juggling five balls every step of the way. the scenic, flat race course looks perfect for this Guinness World Record. my wife Dianne will be running behind me to capture the record on video, and to make sure i don’t get in the way of other runners. five-ball joggling is really really tough, so i’ll likely be dropping a ball every minute or so. my goal is to break 1 hour for the 10K. part of the fun is doing something that’s never been done before, so it’s really exciting to be setting this world record in Addu. i think the five-ball joggling pattern looks beautiful, so what better place to showcase this sport than this beautiful part of the world! a huge thank-you to Visit Maldives for making this record attempt possible.

two days after the runinaddu 10K, on oct. 7, i’ll be going after another Guinness World Record, this one for “most consecutive stairs climbed while juggling three objects.” the rules for this record say you can run up and down a set of stairs, but only the “up” stairs will count towards the record. you are not allowed to stop or drop. the current record is 600 stairs. my plan is to try to hit 1,776 stairs – the height of the CN Tower in my hometown of Toronto, which until recently was the world’s tallest freestanding structure.

i want to show people that fitness can be fun, and that if you keep your imagination alive and believe in yourself, you can do things that once seemed impossible