VIDEO: UNH Senior to 'Joggle' Boston Marathon

Some people would be content just to finish the Boston Marathon.

Thomas Gounley isn't one of those people.

Having finished the marathon in under three hours (2:56:05) last year, he's looking for more of a challenge. This year, he's going to run the Boston Marathon while juggling the entire time.

Gounley, 21, a senior at the University of New Hampshire, has been joggling – the official name for the combined sport of running and juggling – for a little over a year now. An avid runner, he stumbled upon the sport in December of 2010 while looking for a Guinness World Record he could try to set.

"I decided it would  be cool if I could set a Guinness World Record before graduation," he said. "I came across the sport of joggling."

Gounley had learned to juggle proficiently in middle school, and has been running marathons and half marathons since he started college.

"I thought if I combined them I might actually have a shot," he said.

Gounley will attempt to set the Guinness World Record for fastest time to joggle 50 miles in a race on May 12 in New Jersey. The April 16 Boston Marathon will serve as his training run.

"I'm pretty good with it as long as I keep paying attention and don't let my mind wander," he said. "A couple drops are always inevitable. I'm trying to keep the numbers as low as possible."

Gounley's still not entirely sure how it's all going to work when he's running and juggling in the middle of a big crowd. He joggled for 26.2 miles during a solo training run in January and only dropped the balls a half dozen times. But doing it during the crowded Boston Marathon is an entirely different animal.

"That's going to be probably the hardest thing or the thing I'll pay most attention to in Boston," he said. "You just start out with so many people."

To avoid getting bumped too much while juggling, he's hoping to start near the front of one of the later waves so he can stay clear of the masses.

Gounley is doing a marketing internship with The Meat House, and they've agreed to sponsor him in the Boston Marathon. He'll joggle the entire race with the Twitter hashtag #MeatHouseJoggler on his shirt, hoping to generate some social media buzz.

"I've had this plan to run with a hashtag on me, just because Boston's the ninth most social media savvy city in the country," said Gounley, whose Twitter handle is @tgounley. "There are tons of spectators, and people tend to tweet about the weird guy juggling while running."

He also put together a YouTube video that shows him joggling around the UNH campus, while making just about every possible juggling related pun.

Gounley knows it's going to be a challenge, but he's confident that he can accomplish his goals.

"It's not as taxing as you'd think," he said of joggling. "It's still the same running motion. It's definitely more taxing on the arms and your core area, the upper body. It will be interesting in the later stages of the marathon."