The runner had trained for months to attempt a world record, enduring calluses, rolled ankles and questions from friends who couldn’t understand why she pushed herself so hard.
Near the starting line on race day, Gabrielle Wall felt nervous as she stretched. After the starting pistol went off, Wall took her first step of the race, causing sharp pain in her left leg and a crunching sound.
Wall had begun her 100-meter barefoot sprint over thousands of Lego bricks.
After fearing she was going to die a few years ago – her symptoms included bleeding from her mouth, ears and nose – Wall decided she could no longer wait to complete her bucket list. One of her top tasks was to set a world record.
Wall landed on a feat that had never been done – but included a piercing pain. She knew other parents could relate.
She completed the run in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 24.75 seconds in January, leaving the track with a gash near her right big toe. Guinness World Records announced this month that Wall, 44, had set the first-ever record for the fastest barefoot 100-meter sprint – about the length of a football field – on Lego bricks.
Wall aspired to set a world record about a decade ago, adding it to her bucket list along with items like visiting Antarctica, completing a Rubik’s Cube and climbing Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro. Then in September 2022, Wall said, she reflected on her life when doctors informed her she might have blood cancer.
Wall was ultimately diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenia, a blood disorder that’s typically nonfatal and occurs when a person’s immune system mistakenly attacks platelets. That gave her a new gratitude for life.
She wanted to set a record that would interest her 13-year-old son, Archie, and 11-year-old daughter, Alfie, both of whom enjoy building Lego sets of Harry Potter, Batman and Marvel characters.
While multiple people have attempted world records for the farthest distance walking barefoot on Lego bricks, nobody had set a record for their speed over the hard, sharp-edged toys. She decided this could be it.
“I’d been tossing the idea around in my head, but probably more in the, ‘That would be funny, but I couldn’t actually do that’ way,” said Wall, an education consultant.
Still, she asked an employee at Imagination Station, a New Zealand charity that provides children learning opportunities with Lego bricks, in August 2024 if the group would lend her some Lego bricks.
“It might be actually just completely ridiculous,” Wall recalled saying in her pitch. “But what do you think?”
Imagination Station was on board. But Wall’s next steps would prove painful.
She inflated a blue children’s pool in her garage and filled it with Lego bricks. She jumped in it daily – sometimes on work calls with colleagues who wondered why she sounded so intense.
Wall ran intervals on the track and practiced landing on her toes – rather than on her heels – so her feet wouldn’t absorb as much pressure when landing on the bricks. Archie came along with a whistle he blew to push his mom.
Between November and the race, Wall went barefoot almost everywhere, including Christmas parties and her brother’s wedding at her Christchurch house near the start of January. She only wore shoes for important work meetings and slipped on high heels for family pictures at the wedding.
People often stared at her feet, Wall said, and some asked why she was barefoot.
“Training,” Wall would reply.
“What are you training for?” Wall said people would often ask.
When Wall told them about the run, she said, people inevitably asked: “Why would you do that?”
Wall soaked her callus-ridden feet in hot water and Epsom salt in a separate children’s pool. After drying her feet, she applied rubbing alcohol on them.
“I don’t think it was until I’d actually committed and sent away the paperwork and told a bunch of people I was going to do it,” Wall said, “that I went, ‘Oh gosh, I’m actually really going to have to do this now. I probably haven’t thought this through.’”
Despite her hesitation, Wall helped unload an Imagination Station van containing 660 pounds of Lego bricks at a blue Christchurch track Jan. 16. On a 100-meter stretch in lane six, Wall and more than a dozen family members and friends got on their knees to pick out bricks that were especially painful to step on – palm trees, doors and windows – for about an hour.
When the race began, Wall focused on her form more than the searing pain and said she felt optimistic halfway through. But the agony in her feet intensified, and she almost tripped with about 25 meters to go. She dug deep and imagined the relief she would feel upon finishing.
But when she crossed the finish line, the pain remained: A few bricks were stuck to the bottom of her feet.
Wall felt the triumph of victory, then realized there was still more work to do – she and Imagination Station employees had to transport the Lego bricks back into the van. They used a leaf blower to blast bricks into shovels and dumped the piles into boxes.
Wall was relieved when she finally put on pink fluffy slippers that her husband, David, had bought her weeks earlier as a balm. She said she ate spicy pork ramen – because “there’s not many things that ramen doesn’t fix” – and took a nap.
“It felt like such a treat to wear shoes for probably weeks,” Wall said.
Wall has turned to a new task on her bucket list – performing on aerial silks – but her family isn’t ready to throw away their Lego bricks. Wall said her son is determined to break her record when he’s older.