Skip to footer

Just another day on the ISS: Tim Peake runs marathon, breaks record

With a harness and bungee system that weighed him down and kept him strapped to the treadmill, the British astronaut completed the race in 3 hours, 35 minutes and 27 seconds, winning a world record.

|
ESA/AP
British astronaut Tim Peake in action running the London marathon while strapped to a treadmill at the International Space Station on Sunday. While the official 2016 London Marathon was being run in London, Major Peake ran 26.2 miles on a treadmill in three hours 35 minutes 21 seconds, 250 miles above the Earth.
  • By Lonnie Shekhtman Staff

Astronaut Tim Peake completed Sunday's London Marathon in 3 hours, 35 minutes and 21 seconds. However, he didn't wind through London's streets with 39,000 other runners, cheered on by hordes of observers. Instead, he ran in the tranquility of space, strapped into a harness and tethered to the treadmill aboard the International Space Station.

"Weightlessness, I think, is one of the perfect environments, because the moment you stop running, and the moment you get off that bungee system, your muscles are in a completely relaxed state," said Major Peake in a video.

The British astronaut is in month four of his six-month stint aboard the international science laboratory in orbit 250 miles above Earth.

He ran the 26.2-mile route while watching TV coverage of the race and with the help of an iPad app called RunSocial that simulated the marathon route from Shooters Hill in southeast London to Westminster. His started with a pace of 7.5 miles per hour, but 20 miles into the race sped up to nearly 9 m.p.h., as The Guardian reports.

Peake wore a harness that counteracted the effects of weightlessness by loading him with 70 percent of his Earth bodyweight; the bungee cord kept him grounded. But the system, though critical, is not perfect, as the straps of the harness, constantly shifting, cause abrasions on the skin.

"One of the biggest challenges is the harness system," said Peak, according to the BBC. "Obviously, my body weight has to be firmly attached to the treadmill by this harness, and that can rub on the shoulders and around the waist," he said.

But he persevered, finishing with a time that garnered him a Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon in orbit. Though it wasn't the first. American astronaut Sunita Williams ran the Boston Marathon from space in 2007 in 4 hours and 24 minutes. As The Guardian points out, it's impossible to compare their times because they ran with different harnesses and different loads.

The last time Peake ran a marathon was in London in 1999, reports The Guardian. He finished that race in three hours and 18 minutes.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Just another day on the ISS: Tim Peake runs marathon, breaks record
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0425/Just-another-day-on-the-ISS-Tim-Peake-runs-marathon-breaks-record
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe