A US Army explosive ordnance disposal officer has broken the world record for running a mile in a bomb suit by 20 seconds.
The Army said Wednesday that Capt. Travis G. Chewning-Kulick, wearing a heavy 62-pound bomb suit, ran the mile in an impressive seven minutes and four seconds last week at Phantom Warrior Stadium at Fort Cavazos in Texas.
His run beat the previous record of 7:24:21 set by British soldier Mark Gibbs in 2017. Gibbs has also completed a half-marathon in a full bomb suit, running that in two hours and 23 minutes.
Chewning-Kulick’s Guinness World Record is currently pending official verification, which can take months, but his time was marked by multiple witnesses.
He said he was motivated to break the record by soldiers in his unit. Bomb suits, like the one he wore, are hot and heavy and designed to protect bomb-disposal technicians from explosive blasts.
Chewning-Kulick is currently the commander of the 752nd Ordnance Company, part of the US Department of Defense’s larger EOD formation and the 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives (CBRNE) Command focused on identifying and safely eliminating explosives and other hazards.
The physical fitness of EOD techs, he said, is critical for their roles.
“The EOD Soldier must be able to easily keep pace with the conventional and nonconventional units they support so they can rapidly and safety mitigate any explosive threat to enable the uninterrupted completion of the mission,” Chewning-Kulick said.
EOD techs have some of the most dangerous jobs in the military. The small, elite group tasked with disarming and disposing of explosives need to have immense technical knowledge and mental and physical fortitude.
“There’s a lot of steps,” an Air Force EOD technician previously told Business Insider. “When you mess one up, you die.”
Explosive ordnance disposal is an extremely tough job that requires both physical and mental fortitude.
Another EOD tech from the Marines previously told BI “there’s been times when I was standing over something that could kill me and I was there trying to picture all the choices I made in life that got me to that moment.”
Bomb suit runs are not uncommon, but it’s rare to set records.
In 2021, Army Capt. Kaitlyn Hernandez shattered the women’s record, wearing what was said to be a 96-pound bomb suit. She ran a mile in 10 minutes and 23 seconds. The previous women’s record was 11 minutes and six seconds in 2013.
At the time, Hernandez said that overcoming the challenges of the suit were largely mental. “It’s usually a split-second — any time I run and start feeling sorry for myself, I just have to get over it and say it’s not that bad,” she said.
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