
Turing as a Runner (1999) - benbreen
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Turing_running.html
======
alangpierce
> His time was 2 hours 46.03 minutes which by modern marathon times does not
> look so great but was good at that time.

This made me laugh a little. I guess at the _Olympic level_ it "does not look
so great", but that's a fantastic time: in the last SF marathon he would have
gotten 20th place out of 5000. I had no idea he was such a good runner.

~~~
js2
Runners are both much faster and much slower today. That time would get you
into wave 1 corral 1 at Boston this year along with 999 other runners (just
barely). And obviously the world record marathon time has dropped
dramatically.

At the same time, there are a lot more runners today and most of them are a
lot slower than in the 1980s running boom. You can look at winning times in
almost any local race between the 80s and today and those 80s runners would
easily trounce today's winners.

So Turing could probably win strategically picked small local marathons here
and there, but at Boston he would've done better in his time than today.

~~~
dmckeon
There were only 193 entrants at Boston in 1948, with a winning time of 2:31,
and the entrants count did not break 1000 until 1968 with 1014.

------
EliRivers
Related history; a great many mathematicians who intended to sit the Tripos at
Cambridge (as Turing did) took up athleticism as part of their preparation.
The exams were intended to be a grueling test of endurance as well as pure
mathematical ability; the high scorers made physical fitness part of their
preparations.

Back in the 1820s, eight days of examinations, five and a half hours a day,
roughly 25% "pass rate" (i.e. 25% achieved wrangler status).

------
z-tech
Can anyone comment on the credibility of this article?

~~~
jdietrich
[https://www.turing.org.uk/book/update/part6.html](https://www.turing.org.uk/book/update/part6.html)

------
w8rbt
I wonder if he took up walking after the injury? A lot of people I know who
used to run walk now instead.

