A woman who fought her way back to health after beng hit by a car has used the treadmill that aided her recovery to smash a world record.
Sofie Skancke Krauss (Norway) had kicked off her goal to climb the Seven Summits by scaling Mount Kilimanjaro and was planning to tackle Mount Everest when disaster struck.
The 25-year-old was hit by a car in 2021 and had to halt her plans while she battled back to full health.
Turning tragedy into triumph, she used the exercise equipment that helped her regain her strength to claim the record for fastest time to climb the seven summits on a treadmill.
She completed her challenge in just 6 hours 16 minutes on 11 March 2023, proving that absolutely nothing could stop her being Officially Amazing.
Sofie went from being an active student to needing full-time care and after four months, her parents bought her a treadmill to further assist her recovery.
At the beginning, she was only allowed to walk on the treadmill for five minutes at a time and for the first time in five months, felt an enormous sense of freedom.
Slowly but surely, walking on the treadmill turned into running and 50 metres (164 ft) on the treadmill became 3.1 mi (5 km).
Due to her sustained head injuries, Sofie could not go ahead with her dream of climbing the summits because of the high altitudes but thought of the next best thing – doing it on her treadmill!
As per Guinness World Records guidelines, the seven summits are defined as:
- Denali (Alaska, North America)
- Mt Everest (Nepal/Tibet, Asia)
- Kilimanjaro (Tanzania, Africa)
- Puncak Jaya (Indonesia, Australasia/Oceania)
- Elbrus (Russia, Europe)
- Aconcagua (Argentina, South America)
- Vinson Massif (Antarctica)
For this brand new title, Sofie had to walk a total of 43,313 metres (14,210 ft), ending with an incline up Mount Everest.
To prepare, she spent many days in the gym walking on the treadmill.
“Lectures for class [played] on the iPad, homework and dinner, all took place on the treadmill,” Sofie recalls.
The record attempt took place in a gym on the outskirts of Oslo in Tromsø, called STERK (Norwegian for strong).
Alongside Adjudicator Jack Brockbank and witnesses, Sofie was also accompanied by her family and best friend to support her.
The maximum time allowance to set this record was 14 hours, with a minimum gradient of 8%. Rest breaks were allowed, but there was a continuous clock timing the attempt from start to finish.
In the end, Sofie ended up not taking any rest breaks and powered through the entire record attempt. Her sister cheering her on by holding up cards with the name of each summit as she reached the required distance, ending with the highest, Mount Everest.
Once the record was confirmed, Jack handed Sofie her Guinness World Records certificate.
The accident inspired Sofie to change her field of study, and she is now studying dentistry and medicine.
As such, the record attempt marked the start of a fundraising campaign for Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian charity that Sofie strongly supports.
“I hope that my record attempt can help inspire people to climb their own ‘mountain’.” – Sofie Skancke Krauss
Congratulations, Sofie on your amazing achievement!
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