Can you run to the moon?
I did the math! The answer is yes.
Every now and then I check in on my Strava lifetime stats and I am left feeling disenchanted with my progress. "Must do more!" I say! Inevitably I then set some unrealistic weekly distance goals and a month later I am back feeling disenchanted. Why do I crave overall distance as a metric? And what is a good metric to obtain? This then got me thinking about how far I could actually run in my lifetime, and what would be a real milestone.
The Moon! I thought, is it possible? Turns out, in theory - yes. After a quick Google, I discovered that the moon is around 384,400 km away. If we did some simple math, and divide this by 10 to count the number of times you would need to run a 10k - we get 38,400 10k runs. We live (on average) 27,375 days. So, yes, it's possible. But that's a lot of 10k's! After a bit more googling, I learnt about Yiannis Kouros - who, it turns out is quite the famous ultra-runner/poet and all-around rad dude. And, according to this article has achieved the distance of the moon in his lifetime.
So there you go. For most of us, the moon will be out of reach but I wonder how far along I will get in my lifetime. I might need to aim for something a bit closer to home before I leave orbit! By using this tool, I have worked out that I have even left Europe... but I am only a few 100k from entering the continent of Africa - which is pretty cool. So my next goal is the equator.
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