On Friday, a 20-year-old woman from Tampa set the new world-record for the most consecutive bounces on a pogo stick in Jacksonville.
Casie Merza got on her pogo stick at 6 a.m. and bounced 75,005 times in a row, beating the previous record by more than 4,000 bounces. She spent more than nine hours hopping up and down in Hemming Park.
“My knee started to hurt around two hours but then that went away,” she said. “Then my ankles were just kind of giving me the most trouble but it had a ‘standing on them too long’ feeling. It wasn’t like an ache that was unfamiliar which was good so it wasn’t like intimidating. I could keep going with the pain. Just pop an Aleve every couple of hours and keep going.”
Merza’s world-record was the opening event of Pogopalooza, which organizers say is the largest pogo stick event in the world. The two-day U.S. Open will be in Hemming Park. A world championship follows later this year in Philadelphia.
