I’m not a runner, but Boston Marathon winner Geoffrey Mutai’s time of 2:03 sounded so ridiculously amazing to me that I wanted to break it down into terms that non-runners could understand. Bear with me, and please, double-check my math.
There are 1760 yards in a mile, which means that in running one mile you run 17.6 consecutive 100 yard dashes. Stretch it out to a marathon, and you run 457(ish) consecutive 100 yard dashes.
Mutai ran it in 2 hours and 3 minutes, which means 123 minutes, which means 7380 seconds.
So, in the course of running 457 100 yard dashes in a row, he averaged a 100 yard dash time of (put down your s’mores flavored pop tart and brace yourself) 16.1 seconds.
(The current world record for the 100 yard dash is 9.07 seconds. By some underachiever who only runs 100 yards at a time.)
Now, my questions is, how many of us could go outside, warm up a little bit, and run 100 yards in 16 seconds once? Geoffrey Mutai did it four hundred and fifty-seven times! In a row! And then he gave interviews! That, my friends, is reeee-diculous.