Friday, April 23, 2010

250 Meters Down, 41,750 To Go

Michael Rand is a sports reporter and editor for the  Minneapolis Star Tribune.  And he is does a little marathoning on the side.   Jason Lehmkuhle's ninth place finish at Monday's Boston Marathon caught Mr. Rand's attention.  So for fun he tried to see if he could hold Jason's pace for a quarter mile.

Click here to see the story and the accompanying video to see if Rand could do it.

And now to dicuss the results.  Rand is your typical runner.  Running an all out quarter mile, he was able to finish within seconds of Jason's marathon pace.  And this begs the question, which is more impressive?  Running 168 consecutive hilly, asphalt laps in 75 seconds OR running one lap in world record time, 43.18 seconds?

It's an impossible question to answer, but it doesn't mean it can't be asked.  And it doesn't mean I can't try to answer it.  Sure I'm biased because I'm a distance runner, but I would have to say 168 laps at 5 minutes per mile is more impressive because of the mental fortitude and discipline it takes in addition to the physical impossibility of it all.

And finally I'd like to close by saying it's not often we get to name drop on the blog.  But I need to give an extra shout out to Jason because he is not only a professional runner but also a graphic designer.  The logo that is currently on our MDRA singlets with the ribbon is his design.  He also does the bulk of the graphic art you find in the magazine version of Run Minnesota.

1 comment:

Alyssa said...

Hey, Rocco!

Thank you so much for the explanation of the 13.3 distance on my blog! I figured it was something technical like tangents (just never knew how it was measured), and I really appreciate you taking the time to spell that out for me.

Thanks also for linking my blog to Run Minnesota. Super cool to get out there!

One question for you -- how did you stumble across my post?

Thanks again for your response!
A