19 Things that Take Longer than Sam Watson’s Olympic Speed Climb

Even before Tuesday’s speed climbing seeding heats at the Paris Olympics, the sport regularly produced jaw-dropping video clips.

Two climbers stand at the base of a 49-foot wall and then rocket upward like Spider Man on a sugar high. The TV camera is stationed behind the climbers, so they look as though they are galloping on all fours across flat ground. But oh no, they’re ascending a sheer man-made rock wall, and boy do they make it look easy.

The latest speed climbing video clip is even more eye-popping than the rest. During the preliminary rounds, American wunderkind Sam Watson broke the world record in the event, reaching the top in 4.75 seconds. The time was 0.04 seconds faster than the previous world record, set by Watson himself back in April. The 18-year-old looks destined to battle for a medal when speed climbing holds its finals in Paris on Thursday, August 8.

Watson’s time boggles the mind: 4.75 seconds is a tiny duration of time for any physical task, let alone ascending a 50-foot wall.

To add context to Watson’s feat, we at Outside grabbed our stopwatches and set out to determine which banal everyday tasks take longer to complete than this amazing ascent.

1. Texting “What u feel like 4 dinner” to your spouse
2. Putting on a climbing harness
3. Tying both sneakers one sneaker
4. Logging into Peacock
5. Watching an Olympic kayaker paddle around an upstream gate
6. Washing one dirty dinner plate by hand
7. Scraping enough snow off your boot to click into your bindings after a hot chocolate break
8. Lubing your bike chain
9. Chalking up before a climb
10. Downloading the latest Chrome update
11. Explaining the saga of French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati and his unfortunate flop to your bewildered parent
12. Setting up a permanent “Do Not Disturb” status for your work Slack
13. Rocking out to the opening guitar riff of Live Wire by Mötley Crüe
14. Scanning a sweet potato in the self-checkout aisle at Whole Foods
15. Shotgunning a Coors Light La Croix
16. Getting on a chairlift
17. Getting off a chairlift
18. Googling “Simone Biles cute kid video”
19. Uploading the video of your own basic and unimpressive rock climb to Instagram