This TED Talk features author Caroline Paul, recorded live at TED Women, 2016.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records, and I really wanted to set a world record myself.

But there was just one small problem.

I had absolutely no talents.

So I decided to set a world record in something that demanded absolutely no skill at all.

I decided to set a world record in something that demanded absolutely no skill at all. I decided to set a world record in crawling.

Now, the record of the time was 12.5 miles. And for some reason, this seemed totally manageable. I recruited my friend Anne, and together we

decided we didn't even need to train. And on the day of our record attempt, we put

furniture pads on the outside of our good luck

jeans and we set off.

And right away, we were in trouble.

Because the denim was against our skin and it began to chafe.

And soon our knees were being chewed up.

Hours in?

It began to rain.

Then, and dropped out.

Then, it got dark.

Now, by now, my knees were bleeding through my jeans,

and I was hallucinating from the cold and the pain and the monotony.

And to give you an idea of the suffer fest that I was undergoing, the first lap around the high school track took 10 minutes.

The last lap took almost 30.

After 12 hours of crawling, I stopped, and I had gone 8.5 miles. So I was short of the 12.5

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