SUNITA WILLIAMS TAKES ON MULTISPORT WHILE ORBITING EARTH BY RICH NORMAN
S unita Williams is used to
doing things others might consider to be a bit out of the ordinary — even by her fellow astronauts.
As a high school teenager in the early 1980s, she ran the final nine miles of the Boston Marathon barefoot, about 30 years before the publishing of Christopher McDougall’s “Born to Run” led to a barefoot-running craze. “Her shoes were bothering her,” her father, Deepak Pan- dya, said of the high-top men’s sneakers Williams discarded at about mile 18, near the Newton-Wellesley Hospital. In September, Williams continued to do the unusual when she became the first person to complete a triathlon in space. Williams, 47, used exercise equipment on the International Space Station to finish the Malibu Triathlon in 1:48:43, including “transitions” from the event’s “swim” portion to a stationary bike and then to a treadmill for the run.
As her fellow competitors swam, biked and ran along the coast of California, Williams did her best to simulate the three disciplines while 220 miles in the air, traveling at 17,500 miles an hour — or five miles per second. “The view is quick, but it’s beautiful,” she says. The feat didn’t come as a surprise to those who know
her best.
“It makes sense that she would do something like that,” Dina Pandya, Williams’ sister, said. “It’s a little different and really challenging.” Pulling it off was also a challenge for Williams, who has competed in triathlons on Earth for several years, according to her father, a noted neuroanatomist at Boston University’s School of Medicine.