Astronaut's run out of this world

April 17, 2007|Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- She traveled around the world almost three times and was harnessed to a treadmill so she wouldn't float away.

NASA astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams completed her version of the Boston Marathon yesterday -- more than 210 miles above Earth.

"I'm done! Woo hoo!" Williams told Mission Control in Houston after running 26.2 miles on a treadmill at the international space station.

Already traveling at 17,500 m.p.h., Williams started the race on time at 10 a.m. EDT with No. 14,000 taped to the front of the treadmill as the space station passed over the Pacific Ocean. She finished, unofficially, 4 hours 23 minutes 46 seconds later as the station traveled over Russia.

"No problems. No flaws. No nothing," said the Needham native, clad in Red Sox socks for her run, of her often temperamental treadmill. "It did everything I wanted it to do."

Periodically, she asked Mission Control for updates on her friends, including NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, and Williams's sister, Dina Pandya, who were running the marathon on the ground. Nyberg finished in 3:32:9 and Pandya in 4:14:30 on a day when the runners faced the remnants of a chilly northeaster. It was 78 degrees in the space station.

Williams, 41, who qualified for Boston by finishing the Houston Marathon in January in 3:29:57, got plenty of encouragement.

"Keep it up. I think you're over Heartbreak Hill," Mission Control radioed Williams after she reached the 20-mile mark.

"It's all downhill . . . and into the Prudential," Williams radioed back. "We're going to make it."