George Scholey Claims the Rubik’s Cube Mile Record in Toronto

George Scholey, a British speedcuber who already holds Guinness World Records titles for solving cubes over 24 hours and on a skateboard, has added a mile to the list after running 5:09.25 in Toronto while solving four Rubik’s Cubes along the way.

He posted the result to Instagram, where he summed up the challenge as “Four cubes. One mile. Clock running the whole time.” That last part matters, because he couldn’t stop the watch to work on a puzzle, so every second he spent turning a cube went straight onto his mile time.

Scholey believes the time is a world record, but Guinness still has to confirm it. “Guinness World Records confirmation is still pending,” he wrote, explaining there is “a LOT of footage, witness statements and timing evidence to get together and submit for review.” Because this is a Guinness title rather than one of the running world records ratified by World Athletics, that paperwork is what decides it. He also thanked the friends who came down to pace, film and time the attempt.

Plenty of people go after odd records like this one, but very few of them can solve a cube as quickly as Scholey can. In official World Cube Association competition, his best single solve of a standard 3x3x3 cube is 4.91 seconds and his best average is 6.40, which puts him seventh and fourth in the U.K. He has been competing since 2015 and has 63 WCA events to his name.

He has taken the cubes running before. At the 2024 London Marathon he solved about 520 of them on the course and still finished in 4:25, according to the PA news agency, picking up fresh scrambled cubes from backpacks of 50 left at checkpoints every two miles. Guinness currently lists Spain’s Toti Moragas Pardell as the marathon record holder, with 561 solved in Barcelona in March 2024. London has long been a favorite stage for these attempts, and the 2026 race alone produced 38 Guinness titles.

The record he is best known for came in November 2022, when, at 20, he spent 24 hours in a London hotel room and solved 6,931 cubes. He averaged about 12 seconds a cube and beat the 5,800 that Canada’s Eric Limeback had set in 2013 by more than 1,100. He also holds the record for the most cubes solved on a skateboard, at 500.

Even without four puzzles to solve, 5:09 would be a good mile for most runners. The majority of people take somewhere between six and 10 minutes to run a mile, and getting anywhere near five usually takes months of structured speed work. The mile has plenty of offbeat variations with record books of their own, the best known being the beer mile, where Shelby Houlihan holds the women’s world record.

Scholey plans to share the full, uncut video of the run once it’s ready, and the time will only go down as a world record once Guinness has signed off on it.