NASA Astronaut Completes Boston Marathon in Space

What an achievement! International Space Station Expedition 14/15 flight engineer Suni Williams is running the Boston Marathon on a station treadmill. Credit: NASA TV.

"After more than four hours of running in place, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams completed the Boston Marathon while orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

“Hooyah, I’m done,” Williams cheered as she passed the orbital finish line on the space station’s treadmill.

Williams, 41, began running the marathon at 10:00 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) as the race kicked off in Boston and the ISS circled Earth at some 17,500 miles (28,163 kilometers) per hour.

“It’s coming up on 9.5 miles and it looks like we’ve gone around the world,” Williams said about 90 minutes into the 26.2-mile (42-kilometer) race. “So that’s pretty cool. A nice statistic.”

At about 2:24 p.m. EDT (1824 GMT) she radioed to Mission Control that she’d completed the race with an unofficial time of about four hours, 24 minutes, marking the first time an entrant has competed from orbit.

A native of Needham, Massachusetts, Williams grew up in the Boston area and participated in Boston Marathon once before as a teenager. She qualified for this year’s race during the 2006 Houston Marathon with a time of three hours, 29 minutes and 57 seconds. The Boston Athletic Association issued her the bib number 14,000, which Williams taped to the front of her treadmill, for Monday’s event.

“I think the idea came up because I’m a big proponent of physical fitness and I just wanted to make kids aware that it is a necessary part of your life,” Williams told reporters last week during a video interview broadcast on NASA TV. “I think if I could do something up here to show kids that it’s fun and it’s important, than maybe somebody will get off the couch and start working out.”

High and dry

Unlike her terrestrial counterparts, who braved strong winds and rain to complete the course in Boston, Williams stayed high and dry. She ran a steady six-mile (9.6-kilometer) per hour pace on a treadmill inside the outpost’s Russian-built Zvezda service module while orbiting about 210 miles (337 kilometers) above Earth.

The astronaut lauded Kenya’s Robert Cheruiyot and Russia’s Lidiya Grigoryeva, who won the Boston Marathon’s Men and Women divisions, respectively. Cheruiyot finished with a time of two hours, 14 minutes and 13 seconds, while Grigoryeva completed the race in two hours, 29 minutes and 18 seconds, according to the Boston Athletic Association.

“Incredible, congratulations to all those folks,” Williams said of the marathon winners. “[Those were] pretty horrific conditions and those are some great times.”

Williams said that while she wouldn’t experience some of the tougher parts of the marathon’s terrestrial course, such as Heartbreak Hill, running on the space station’s treadmill – known technically as the Treadmill Vibration Isolation System (TVIS) – is no picnic either.

The exercise equipment features a bulky harness and bungee cords to hold weightless astronauts in place while running, and can prove painful on the shoulders and hips during long treks, she said before Monday’s race. It has also experienced technical problems in the past, but performed admirably during Williams’ four-hour run.

“The thing held out like a champ, no problems, no faults, no nothing,” Williams said of the station’s treadmill, which has acted up in the past. “It’s a great piece of gear.”

Boston support

On Earth, Williams’ fellow NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg completed the Boston Marathon in three hours, 32 minutes and nine seconds. Also running the race in Boston were Williams’ sister Dina Pandya, flight surgeon Steve Hart and long-time friend Ronnie Harris.

Other friends and supporters were expected to cheer Williams and her fellow marathon runners from a vantage point between the race’s Mile 14 and Mile 15 markers, signifying the space station’s ongoing crew change between Expedition 14 and Expedition 15, the astronaut has said. Williams joined the space station’s Expedition 14 crew in December 2006, and will stay on for the first stage of the Expedition 15 mission.

Williams ran the Boston Marathon as many of her fellow crewmembers slumbered aboard the station, though Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Expedition 15 flight engineer Oleg Kotov prepared drink pouches and orange slices for her during the race.

“She has my undying respect,” Lopez-Alegria said after Williams completed the marathon."

Source

Astronaut Will Run Boston Marathon from Space

If you have nothing else to do up there :)

"Zooming through low-Earth orbit at 17,500 mph, Suni Williams completes the standard marathon distance every 5.4 seconds. Good thing Rosie Ruiz never thought of that.

Williams is registered for next month's Boston Marathon, even though she'll be stuck on the international space station when the rest of the field lines up for the 111th edition of the race. So the U.S. Navy commander will run the equivalent distance on a treadmill -- 210 miles above Earth, and tethered to her track by bungee cords so she doesn't float away.

Not since Ruiz hopped the 'T' to the finish line to accept the winner's wreath in 1980 has a Boston Marathon competitor relied so heavily on public transportation.

"She thought it would be cool if she gave it a try,'' said Williams' sister, Dina Pandya, who will run the race the traditional way. "She said, 'I'll call you on Heartbreak Hill.'''

Another NASA astronaut, Karen Nyberg, will dodge the potholes from Hopkinton to Boston's Back Bay on April 16 along with Pandya and almost 24,000 other runners. Although the race starts at 10 a.m. EDT on Earth, Williams might not be able to run contemporaneously because her sleep schedule -- a fairly arbitrary matter in space -- is set for the arrival of a Soyuz mission.

"I'm not sure the timing will be that she'll be awake,'' Pandya said. "They're going to be on Russian time, so they're kind of sleep-shifting.''

Williams qualified for the Boston race by finishing last January's Houston Marathon in 3 hours, 29 minutes, 57 seconds. Pandya didn't sweat the logistics when she signed them both up, but on Dec. 9 Williams took off on the space shuttle Discovery and it became clear she wasn't going to make it to the starting line.

"I considered it a huge honor to qualify, and I didn't want my qualification to expire without giving it a shot,'' Williams told the Boston Athletic Association, which organizes the oldest of the world's annual marathons.

The BAA offered to send an official entrant's bib and a special finisher's medal -- made without lead, per NASA orders -- to the space station. But when this month's launch of the shuttle Atlantis was postponed, Williams had to be e-mailed a bib that she can print out; the other souvenirs will have to wait.

Race organizers have cooperated with far-flung endeavors like the "Boston Marathon in Iraq,'' sending extensive packages of trophies, water bottles and even a finish line tape to the Middle East for three years running. A similar shipment is headed for Kosovo this year.

But this is the first satellite race they've ever had on a satellite.

"The Boston Marathon is the pinnacle achievement for most runners,'' BAA spokesman Jack Fleming said. "For Suni to choose to run the 26.2 miles in space on Patriots Day is really a tribute to the thousands of marathoners who are running here on Earth. She is pioneering a new frontier in running and in sports with her run, which will truly be out of this world.''

Williams, 41, has run a handful of marathons, and she went through rigorous testing before being blasted into orbit. But three months with little gravity takes a toll on a human, and NASA requires all members of a station crew to exercise on the treadmill, a stationary bike and a resistance machine to maintain bone density and muscle mass.

"In microgravity, both of these things start to go away because we don't use our legs to walk around and don't need the bones and muscles to hold us up under the force of gravity,'' Williams told the BAA.

Gravity remains a problem for the world's top marathoners as they trudge up Heartbreak Hill.

But Williams has her own problems.

A "vibration isolation system'' built by a NASA engineer will keep her from shaking the entire space station as she runs, but the machinery puts a strain on the runner's hips and shoulders. She also has to be ready to abort her mission.

Running a marathon is a strain under normal conditions: the first person who ran one, according to Greek legend, dropped dead when he finished. Since then, thousands of runners have sought refuge from on-course aid stations and finish line medical tents to be treated for hypothermia and dehydration, blisters and broken bones and heart attacks.

Williams won't get so much as a mylar blanket when she's done.

"That harness gets hard on her back and her shoulders or her hips. Her foot was going numb because the strap was on her hip so much,'' Pandya said.

"She realizes that she has to be OK (after she's finished). She mentioned the other day, 'There's no hot bath.'''

Source