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PhD candidate Andrew Dahir of Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences is the proud record-holder of two new Guinness World Records for climbing. Here, he describes his successful attempts to break the records in September 2018—and how engineering and climbing have shown him the "ropes" for tackling any challenge.

There is a common string that runs through my life: I love challenges. The preparation, the execution and the final process of evaluating my efforts, always looking to surpass failures and achievements. This is what drew me to rock climbing and ultimately aerospace engineering. When climbing, I don’t look just at what’s in front of me; I look past to possible future moves, preparing and analyzing. If I fail a move, I think about it again, decide if my process was correct but the execution was poor, or come up with another way to complete the move. And then try again. In engineering, when working on a project, I follow the same iterative process, both requiring mental preparation.

Engineering a Guinness World Record

I chose to attempt the Guinness World Records at my undergraduate institution, Texas A&M University-Commerce, home to my rock climbing family. The campus rec center is where I previously broke two world records with my rock climbing team. The climbing wall there measures 41 feet, 2 inches from the floor to the top of the belay bar. This equates to 129 climbs before reaching one mile. The section of the wall for the record attempt is considered a slab type climbing wall, which is less steep than vertical, with the last 10 feet classified as a vertical climb.

The record guidelines do not specify the difficulty of the route used for climbing. Because of this, the most logical thing in my mind was to build a route that was specific to me. I’d done this before for the team climbing records but made it more general to accommodate the range of people on the team. My new route was designed with efficiency in mind, optimized for the least amount of time and the least amount of effort. Being able to easily move my arm and foot at the same time was important, because if I overstretched myself, it would cause fatigue over time.

I have always loved pushing myself to my limits and never enter into something thinking that I might fail. My mindset is that if I decide to do something with the utmost dedication and preparation, I will be successful. That’s what made these record attempts so bittersweet. I broke the first record, , in 1:51:37.50, beating the previous record by 24 minutes, 27.63 seconds. Then I beat the second record, , with 928.52 meters (3,046.34 feet), surpassing the previous record by 128.52 meters (421.67 feet).

I knew within the first hour of climbing that I would not be able to complete the final record. In the days leading up to the climb, I determined there was little air circulation around the wall, making the temperature grow higher as I made the ascent.The climbing wall staff set up industrial fans to run day and night leading up to the event, but as I climbed throughout the day, the heat made it impossible to climb continuously for up to nine hours to break the third record I was attempting, the fastest time to climb the height of Everest on an indoor climbing wall. I will continue to train for this record and one day hope to attempt it again.

Success requires a support network

The records took a lot of preparation. I joined a local CrossFit gym and worked on endurance for the year leading up to the attempt. The records themselves were also very time-consuming and came with a lot of paperwork, regulations and timeframes.

After concluding the attempts in just under two hours, it was good to high-five, hug and thank the people there supporting me through this challenge. But the faces I wanted to see the most were my wife and daughter’s. My wife, Rachel, and I married in 2014, and I’m so thankful to have had her by my side through this journey. In my career as a student, there have been a lot of late nights in the lab, class work and projects. There have been 80-hour weeks trying to get a cube satellite out the door when I only saw her for 30 minutes in the morning. But there have also been many board game nights with friends, traveling Europe together, and slow Saturday mornings.

Our lives changed again last March when we welcomed our little one, Olivia, to the world. This baby has changed our small world in the best way possible and has opened my mind to new hopes and fears.

It’s all in the balance

In my work and personal pursuits, I have always fought for balance, figuring out where I believe my limits are and working to push those limits to be successful. The rock climbing records were something I wanted to do for me, but they were so much sweeter because my family was there by my side. I look forward to sharing the stars with our little one and watching her mind grow with all the possibilities before her. Becoming a father has given me even more motivation to work harder and stronger, because I want to be a role model for her, someone she can be proud of.