Astronaut will run marathon - in space
Zooming through low-Earth orbit at 17,500 mph, Suni Williams completes the standard marathon distance every 5.4 seconds. Good thing Rosie Ruiz never thought of that.Williams is registered for next month’s Boston Marathon, even though she’ll be stuck on the international space station when the rest of the field lines up for the 111th edition of the race. So the U.S. Navy commander will run the equivalent distance on a treadmill – 210 miles above Earth, and tethered to her track by bungee cords so she doesn’t float away.
Not since Ruiz hopped the ‘T’ to the finish line to accept the winner’s wreath in 1980 has a Boston Marathon competitor relied so heavily on public transportation.
“She thought it would be cool if she gave it a try,” said Williams’ sister, Dina Pandya, who will run the race the traditional way. “She said, ‘I’ll call you on Heartbreak Hill.’”
Another NASA astronaut, Karen Nyberg, will dodge the potholes from Hopkinton to Boston’s Back Bay on April 16 along with Pandya and almost 24,000 other runners. Although the race starts at 10 a.m. EDT on Earth, Williams might not be able to run contemporaneously because her sleep schedule – a fairly arbitrary matter in space – is set for the arrival of a Soyuz mission.