Tim Peake will run the full marathon on the ISS treadmill.
You know all those excuses you have for not training for a marathon? Your bad knee, your crazy work schedule, your inability to stop binge watching "The Office" on Netflix? Well I take your earthly excuses and raise you the way better excuse of being on the International Space Station. That's a really, really good reason not to run a marathon.
But it's not a good enough excuse for astronaut Tim Peake, a Brit on a mission. Two missions, actually, since his first mission is the whole being an astronaut who lives in space thing. The second mission is that he's running a marathon.
Peake will head to the ISS on Dec. 15, but he's scheduled to run the London Marathon in April. He'll strap into the station's treadmill - usually used for the two hours or so of daily exercise an astronaut needs to stay healthy in low gravity - and start right with the other runners. He's going to do the full 26 miles and change, though he doesn't expect to match the 3:18.50 time he made when he ran the marathon (on Earth, like a normal human) in 1999.
"I have to wear a harness system that's a bit similar to a rucksack," Peake said in a statement. Indeed, the ISS treadmill looks mighty uncomfy. "It has a waistbelt and shoulder straps. That has to provide quite a bit of downforce to get my body onto the treadmill so after about 40 minutes, that gets very uncomfortable. I don't think I'll be setting any personal bests. I've set myself a goal of anywhere between 3:30 to 4 hours," Peake said.
I'm pretty sure that's still faster than I could finish a marathon on Earth.
Peake won't be the first marathon runner on ISS. That honor belongs to NASA astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams, who ran the Boston Marathon in 2007. But until now, no other astronaut has attempted the feat.
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