USA TODAY June 10, 2002

The following was taken from the USA Today, interview.

''WORLD FITNESS CHAMPION SEEKS BIGGER CLASSROOM''

Rob Powell, is certified as The Guinness World Record Holder and World Fitness Champion. His goals are now even loftier-- he wants to make the country fit.

Powell a Texas, Teacher/Coach, had many ideas about diet and fitness. He presented these ideas to a few of the accepted establishments, and all the responses were basically the same. 'You are probably a genius, but you don't have Ph.D. or M.D. behind your name, your not one of the boys, so forget it.'

So he did something better, he proved his ideas, by shattering the Guinness World Record for fitness, by adding much more to the previous mark, and lowered the time by 2 hours, previously held by Joe Decker. He has plans to lower his own World Record in October.

His latest endeavor gets rolling today. Powell starts a cycling trip today along the 450 Mile Natchez Trace, one of the oldest roads in the nation, running from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. He is doing this to bring awareness to the fitness problem in America, stopping along the way for interviews. He also hopes to find a publisher for his ideas on fitness.

'Obviously, I am a very driven person,' he says. 'They say, if you can reach one person, you changed the world. I say, if I reach one person, I failed miserably. As a Coach, and Teacher, it is my job to help, everyone that comes to my team, or through my classroom door. I approach the fitness crises the same way.

My classroom just stretches from coast to coast now.' ''