Marathon Where it Wasn't Raining: Space

The wet weather didn't deter marathon runners earlier today as they started their journey in Hopkinton. Suni Williams, as promised, hopped on the treadmill in the International Space Station and began her run to complete the 26.2 miles while circling the Earth. At about 9.5 miles she had already circled the globe once. Her pace was approximately 6 miles per-hour as she ran - but it's all relative. The space station was orbiting the earth at somewhere in the neighborhood of 18,000 miles per hour. With a break about two hours in she stopped to stretch a little bit and hopped back on. She completed her 26.2 in four hours, 23 minutes and 46 seconds. The AP tells us that she wore her Red Sox socks while she did it. Her finishing time was about an hour longer than she took to complete the Houston Marathon, her qualifiying race for competing in Boston. We don't blame her - most people only went from Hopkinton to Back Bay - she circled the earth a couple times.

The challenge for Williams required her to alter her sleep schedule a bit from the normal pattern of Russian time they keep in the ISS. Regular exercise is important to astronauts on the space station as weightlessness has a decremental effect on bone density and muscle mass. Suni Williams ran the marathon in space while her sister and fellow astronaut Karen Nyberg were getting soggy in the rain on the marathon course here in Massachusetts.

Picture from NASA TV of Williams running on board the International Space Station with her bib, number 14,000, pinned to the front of the treadmill to which she was tethered. More images here.