VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – On the day in 2012 Lt. Daniel Glenn graduated from Explosive Ordinance Disposal school he set a world record., — Feb. 28, 2012 — he did something no one had ever done before.
He ran a mile in eight minutes and thirty seconds — while wearing an 85-pound bomb disposal suit — a time which stood for two years as a Guinness World Record.
The event was a personal victory for the 28-year old Naval Academy graduate who says he’d dreamed of setting the bomb suit mile record while still a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, by breaking the 10 minutes and 13 seconds pace set by Navy Lieutenant Lt.Jonathan Kehoe first establishing the record in Iraq in 2009 at 10 minutes and 13 seconds.
Now, he's set got his sights set even higher.
Glenn will don the suit again Sunday to run —this time donning the suit again to run the 13.1-mile Marine Corps Half Marathon on Sunday in Fredericksburg, Va. His goal is to raise money for charity — but it’s not a world record he’s after this time — and simply surviving the ordeal. And it’s all for charity, he says.
"Attempting 13.1 miles in a bomb suit isn't a race, it's an endurance event," he told Navy Times in the days before the race. "At the end of the day, you have to put your mind to the task and suffer through with maximum effort — It's a survival evolution that will require controlling body temperature and pacing myself."
The weather looks to be in the mid-60s on race day. And conditions are forecast to be favorable for Glenn. As of Thursday, the forecast for Fredericksburg, Va won’t get higher than 66-degrees.
He’ll have a support team that will give him fluids and will lower won’t only provide him with fluids for himself, they’ll also be putting ice packs into down his bomb suit to help keep him from overheating.
Though He wants the personal satisfaction of completing the longest known run in a bomb suit. But even more, he's seeking donations to — what he’s hoping is that to get people to donate to help his fallen shipmates through donations to the EOD Warrior Foundation, which helps wounded EOD techs recover from wounds and injuries on the job.
He says he's Though his command supports his fund raising activities, they stress the work is something he’s doing on his own time and he’s not using any official U.S. government gear for the run, either.
"It's about helping my EOD brethren and their families," he said. "It's about honoring their sacrifices for this country and our Navy, sometimes at the cost of their lives — you can't underestimate what they have done and the value they brought to our freedom."
'Hard headed' training
Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, Lt. Daniel Glenn is the former world record holder for running a mile in an 85-pound bomb disposal Suit. Glen is attempting to run a half marathon -- 13.1 miles -- wearing this suit on May 15.
Photo Credit: Mark D. Faram/Staff
Hailing from Jupiter, Fla., Glenn was an two-sport athlete in high school — cross country and soccer — before being accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy. He graduated in 2010 and after some extra schooling, he attended Navy dive school and EOD school in Florida.
Currently, he’s the operations officer at Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 in Little Creek, Va. and has deployed overseas to Afghanistan since his 2012 graduation from school.
"At the academy, I grew up on the lore of my predecessors in EOD — and their accomplishments and bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan," Glenn said. "So when I heard about the bomb suit mile while still a midshipman, it became something I felt I just wanted to accomplish."
On Feb. 28, 2012, the day he graduated from EOD class, he attempted the bomb suit mile record graduation day for his EOD class he attempted the record with the help of his classmates, and smashed the Keno’s record by a minute and 43 seconds.
"It's quite amazing how much effort is put into establishing a world record for Guinness," Glenn said. "They leave nothing to chance with timers, they verify the course and require continuous video of the event — it's very detailed and accurate and they require statements from ten witnesses."
Most of the timers clocked Glenn finishing in eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds, but a sole timer had his time at eight minutes, thirty seconds.
"So for the sake of accuracy, they went with the longest clocked time," he said. "It's just how it works, but in retrospect, I do wish that I had the tenth of a second back, now."
That because nearly exactly two years laterafter he broke the record, it was broken again. This time in Budapest, Hungary by Hungarian EOD tech Zoltán Mészáros, who finished in, you guessed it, eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds in 2014. on Mar. 27, 2014.
"Yup, it was that close, but the rules are the rules and he's got the record, now," Glenn said. "But we'll get the record back one of these days."
For now, he’s focused on the half-marathon in Fredericksburg and the efforts to raise money for the EOD Warrior Foundation. He’s set up a CrowdRise fund raising page that had raised nearly and set a goal to raise $10,000 for the foundation — at last count on May 12, he was nearly to $8,000 by May 13.
Glenn's efforts have been derailed once before. He was first slated to attempt the feat at Virginia Beaches Shamrock event that offers both a marathon and half-marathon length races.
"But real world missions got in the way and I was sent on a short deployment, so we reset and set our sites on the Marine Corps Half," he said.
Even with his deployment, he has continued training. But , but he rarely trains in the suit itself, he says.
"I don't train wearing the full 85 pounds," he said. "Instead, I use a 45-pound weight vest and carry five-pound dumbbells in each hand. That gets me to 55 pounds and I believe that's close enough for training."
Really, he says, Physically, you can only train so much, he says, noting that on race day, the largest factor in finishing is really mental preparation.
"You have to be hard headed to attempt something like this for sure," he said. "The Germans have a good word for it — they call it dummkopf."
Glenn's fundraising page can be found at https://www.crowdrise.com/eodbombsuitmile.
Mark D. Faram is a former reporter for Navy Times. He was a senior writer covering personnel, cultural and historical issues. A nine-year active duty Navy veteran, Faram served from 1978 to 1987 as a Navy Diver and photographer.
