Cuthbert and Leet talk Marathons at www.cultcomedy.net

THE GUIDE TO EVERYTHING

148 Sport/Stupid Sport/Marathons

October 13th, 2010

If a 

Marathon

 is so hard how come so many people complete them? 500 marathons are held world wide every year, with approximately 500,000 people running. About 1-2% of the world population will run a marathon in their lifetime. That is a lot of people compared to say the number of people who like football (see 144 Sports/Football/The Header).

The fastest marathon time is 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds – that’s about 13 miles per hour, or as fast as a squirrel – not as fast as my P-reg Saab, but almost.  

The average time for a Marathon is 4hours 30 for men, more of a brisk walk, not really running; a chicken does better than that at 9mph, a mobility scooter does 8mph.

The average time for women is 5 hours 10, a full 40 minutes behind the men. Paula Radcliffe is only 12 minutes behind Haile Gebrselassi’s world record so they are letting the side down a bit, and should cut back on the nattering and window shopping. 5hrs 10 works out as 5 mph – about as fast as a Hippo swimming in water. Again, it is not really proper running.

Proper running is running for your life, like when your dad finds the pages of his favourite jazz mag stuck together. (Razzle 1973 August edition, number 372, you know the 11 girl pileup, the stack, the bundle, the pile on, block of flaps. Ask your dad it’s a classic. See 133 Puzzles/Mysteries/The Jellygraph).

Proper running is over taking Usian Bolt as you hear the shout of ‘You little bastard!’

Usian Bolt runs at 28mph at his peak, 30 mph that’s what I’m talking, white-tailed deer, wart hog, kangaroo, grizzly bear or a lame cheetah, not the speed of a peacock with an erection.

Proper running is when your mother finds you wiping off Marvin PVA glue from a picture of your Grandma as a young lady, and gets the wrong end of the stick, also ironically thinking that her mother has too.  

It is not even a proper distance; 26.22 miles or 42.195 km. Not even a round number, it is not elegant. 42.195 is actually 2 – 23M, where M is the Madelung constant, but Erwin developed this constant after 1921 when the Marathon distance was standardised, and so this beauty was not intentional.  The distance in miles does a little better with 3+4/e+8e but only a loon would plump for that approximation.

So marathon runners, plenty of room for improvement, must try harder. And stop asking for money for charity, you are as bad as those people who ask to go on an all expenses paid biking holiday to China.

PVA Glue for all your Bukkake japes.