If running a marathon is challenging to you then try running one 250 miles above Earth.
British astronaut took ran the 26.2 miles of the London Marathon on Sunday and broke the Guinness World Record as the fastest marathon run in space with the time of three hours, 35 minutes according the The Guardian.
“His latest achievement is surely his greatest — running the fastest marathon in space, on the only day-off from his gruelling schedule is fantastic accomplishment,” says Marco Frigatti, head of records at Guinness World Records.
Peake used an iPad app to show the route of the marathon to make him feel like he was there with the other 36,000 people. Peake was intending to watch at least one movie for the duration of his run but was overtaken with watching the spirit of the other runners who all have personal and charitable reasons for running the iconic marathon.
Running on a COLBERT (Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill) and strapped to a harness that replaced the lack of gravitational pull, Peake ran at approximately 70 percent body weight – as close to a normal weight as possible in space. Although difficult, the exercise does actually help slow down the damaging effects of weightlessness on the crew such as hearts, muscles and bones from the weakening.
As a former officer in the British Army, Tim Peake is used to gruelling physical effort and ran the London marathon back on Earth in 1999 where he ran it in 3 hours 18 minutes.
Amazingly, although the marathon is 26.2 miles long, in the time Peake ran the course, the space station actually covered a distance of 60,000 miles.
“Tim is a true inspiration and someone we can all look up to. Literally.”say Frigatti
An out-of-this-world achievement that American astronaut, Sunita Williams of NASA also completed back in April 2007 for the Boston Marathon and ran in 4 hours and 24 minutes.