On Sunday morning, British Astronaut Tim Peake will partake in the London Marathon, but he will do so 250 miles above the streets of London while aboard the International Space Station.
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The former track star clocked an unofficial time of 02:03:05, the second fastest run in history over the distance, just eight seconds shy of the world record set by fellow Kenyan Dennis Kimetto at the Berlin Marathon in September 2014. “Hello London! Fancy a run?”
A live video link was used to do this, at the European Astronaut Centre of ESA in Cologne. Peake had to be tethered to a state-of-the-art space treadmill with bungee cords, and doctors on Earth closely watched his physiological readouts throughout, The Guardian reported. Flight controllers monitored his progress from the ground, at one point noting that his pace was up to 8.7 miles per hour (14 km/h).
Peake is also not the first person to complete a marathon in space.
The Chichester-born astronaut ran the London Marathon in 1999, finishing in three hours, 18 minutes and 50 seconds.
The London Marathon recorded almost 38,000 runners competing yesterday and one among them ran in orbit 200 miles above our planet.
Peake said that it is unfortunate that the treadmill is not located by a window. They completed the race, but didn’t get the Guinness Record. RunSocial also tweeted moments during the astronaut’s running, including one where he crosses the Tower Bridge. As per the European Space Agency, Peake completed the journey in three hours 35 minutes 21 seconds. He is happy to run the marathon in it.
He said he did not think he would be setting any personal bests, but said he would aim to complete the course in under four hours.
He said: “As soon as I was assigned my mission to the International Space Station, I realised that it was a wonderful opportunity to run the Digital Virgin Money London Marathon from on board the ISS”.
“Without gravity to hold the runner to the surface of the treadmill, designers call on elastic straps that fit around the shoulders and waist to keep the runner from rocketing across the space station with the first hard step”, NASA said.
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Following through on a promise he made back in December shortly before arriving on the International Space Station, Peake donned his running gear and hopped aboard a treadmill to run the race virtually, and even provided the countdown to the start of the event for the 40,000 or so runners back on the ground in the United Kingdom capital. Kipchoge’s time was only seven seconds outside the world record.
