During an interview last week, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said that he ran a marathon. He said, “I had a two hour and fifty-something marathon. I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore.” Now, his campaign team is walking backwards with those comments from Ryan. The campaign has confirmed that Ryan has run just one marathon in his life, the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota. He completed that marathon in just over 4 hours.
“The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three,” Ryan said in a statement. “If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight.”
The reason that Ryan has made an admission of guilt here is that he originally exaggerated his time from the marathon. If you are able to run a marathon in under three hours it means that you are running a mile in just under six minutes per mile for the entire race.
Ryan came under fire for many of the claims he made during his speech at the Republican National Convention last week. Two of those claims included issues about Medicare and when a plant in Wisconsin closed back in 2008.
A 3 hour marathon is not faster than 6 minutes a mile. It’s 6:51.9 / mile.