Jason Bigonia Is Joggling For The World Record

Update from Jason with Results:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

I broke the 50 km (30.1 miles) world record with a time of 4:33:24. This broke the previous record by exactly 20 minutes. In the 6 hour, I broke the previous record of 38.114 miles by running 39.210 miles.

I am aiming to break the world record for running 50 miles while juggling. The current record is held by Rick Kwiatkowski at 7:53:55.56.

I live in South Bristol, Maine with my wife, Erica, and our two daughters. I am 47 and I’ve been running competitively since 7th grade. In college, I had to learn to juggle to pass a teaching class. “A teacher who can’t learn to juggle from a bunch of other teachers, shouldn’t be teaching,” my professor said. It took a lot of work in that first week, but I did learn to juggle. My whole class learned! I’ve been teaching 5th-8th graders at South Bristol School since I graduated college. I also coach a running club and a circus arts club at my school.

In 2012, I combined my juggling and running for the first time by running a 5k in Scarborough, Maine. A few years later, I ran a 1 mile race with my middle school running club. Last fall, I was at a world championship race (the winner ran 450 miles!) and ended up juggling with a new friend after my race was over (I ran 175 miles in 42 hours). We had a blast together. I later found out he has the world record for joggling (running while juggling) 50 miles. This is actually in the Guinness Book of World Records! I never knew there were world records for joggling. Here is the list: Joggling World Records (Joggling = Jogging plus Juggling)

I was looking to do some sort of fun and new race in 2024 and the 50 mile joggling world record kept nibbling at my brain. I don’t run nearly as fast as I used to, but the longer the distance, the better I usually do. In my best race ever, I made it 237.5 miles. After trying joggling again and thinking for a long, long time, I decided to go for 50 the mile record. I started by running 1/2 mile at a time and counting how many times I dropped a ball. I dropped one 15 times during one of my 1/2 mile runs. I have really improved since then and now I can run 15 miles and only drop the balls 3-9 times per mile. And my speed is pretty good. Every time I joggle, I feel like I am racing- it’s hard work to juggle and run at the same time!

When I am not running, I enjoy spending time with my family, reading, cross stitching, playing guitar, hiking, and camping.

While I prepare to try to break the world record on May 19th on the Wiscasset (Maine) High School track, I am trying to raise funds for Grahamtastic Connection, a really cool and generous Maine organization that helps kids stay connected to their school and their friends when they can’t actually be at school. Please consider donating today!

Want to learn how to juggle? I made an instructional video with my students: https://youtu.be/qBXMUSZQM9k?si=SfYGpaSDBf9z6Y1c