HAMILTON -- Anyone who thought yesterday's soggy weather would prevent anything from crunching was in for a surprise.
A group of 19 women loudly crunched more than 100,000 times, and it took them only an hour to do it.
Surrounding these crunches -- which took place inside the Ladies Workout Express on Kuser Road -- were sounds that included laughter, groans and music as participants in the Ab Crunch Challenge completed 122,264 abdominal crunches collectively in the annual event that benefits St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. |
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| Kathy Clemency of Hamilton, front, groans as she flexes her rectus abdominus during the Ab Crunch Challenge benefit for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital at Ladies Workout Express in Hamilton Yesterday. |
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The crunch total from the Hamilton location will be added to documented numbers from 200 other Lady of America, Ladies Workout Express and Workout Express fitness centers nationwide and will be submitted to Guinness World Record officials. Tony Parziale, event founder and owner of the Hamilton Ladies Workout Express, hopes that the Guinness representatives will acknowledge the number as a world record for abdominal crunches done by a group within a one-hour time span.
The official number of crunches, as well as the dollar amount raised by participants who sought donations for St. Jude, will be compiled and released next month. Parziale, who initiated the event locally two years ago and pushed it to go national last year, hopes to generate a $10,000 donation from the Kuser Road site.
For Parziale, the event is a family affair. His daughter Jamie Parziale Burd nosed out Heather Walker as the top cruncher yesterday. His wife Donna, who co-owns the Hamilton center as well as the Ladies Workout Express in Lawrenceville, was a key organizer of the event as well as a member of the group fondly dubbed as the Crunchettes. Parziale's brother Mike videotaped the Ab Crunch Challenge, and other family members helped with fundraising efforts and the post-event party.
Burd, a former student-athlete at Nottingham High School, missed last year's event because she was pregnant. Yesterday she managed to keep tabs on both 6-month-old Jordan and her husband, Justin, while she completed 9,365 ab crunches from 11 a.m. to noon. "I think Justin's thumb is too slow," chided Burd, whose husband was her official crunch counter. Each Crunchette had someone click each crunch they completed on a hand-held counter.
Every few minutes, Parziale -- who has on multiple occasions been acknowledged by Guinness for his individual prowess in completing sit-ups in a set period of time -- would patrol the room, shouting out how much time remained in the hour for the crunchers to crunch. When he got near his daughter, he would gently stoke her up by telling her how she and Walker were in a dead-heat for first place. They were, too, as Walker finished with 9,353, just 12 behind Burd.
Burd knows that being the unofficial champion at the Ladies Workout Express in Hamilton is fun but not the primary reason for the event. "This is a big deal for us," she said. "It started with my dad. And for me personally, to follow-up in his footsteps means a lot. If you're going to do something, do it right. But, it's not even about how many crunches. Having a baby now, and if anything did happen, knowing that there are places like St. Jude makes it more meaningful."
Crunchette-in-training update: For those following the progress of this reporter's meager efforts in the Ab Crunch Challenge, to the surprise of nearly everyone in the room, especially me, my magic number was 4,563. Way more than I thought I could do, but well under the group average of nearly 6,435.
Donations will be accepted through April 15. Donation information is available online at abcrunchchallenge.com
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