confined by virus, frenchman runs a marathon on  his balcony

 In the age of confinement, Elisha Nochomovitz figured out a way to run a marathon anyway – back and forth on his 23 foot balcony.

He saw it as a physical and mental challenge, but he also shared the images online as a way “to extend my support to the entire medical personnel who are doing an exceptional job. He didn’t exactly make record time. It took him six hours and 48 minutes. He got nauseous, and got worried the neighbors would complain about the pounding of his footsteps. But he did it.

Nochomovitz had been training for a marathon, and said “I needed to assure myself that I could still run 40 kilometers whatever the condition.” He lost track of how many laps he did, but his pedometer kept track while his mind wandered.

“I thought about many things, what’s going to happen, when I see that the world has stopped, sports, economy, finance,” he said. “We learned in history about wars between nations, men and weapons, but this is something that is beyond us.” He especially thought about medics, “the real everyday heroes.”

And he had a key helper. “I had my girlfriend here who was giving me drinks and M&Ms.”

Outside, some onlookers stared in confusion.

And his neighbors? “They were very understanding.”

—

“when you run the marathon, you run against the distance,

not against the other runners and not against the time.”

-haile gebrselassie