Day 17 - The Number's (are) up.

August 12th

And just like that we're done. All the figures are in and we can answer the question.

How far exactly?

Before we get there though I'd like to take a moment to make...


An Apology.

In the original posting of Day 15 I mixed up Rachael Hodges of the BBC and Rachel Burden of the BBC. I could offer a reason for this (I'm guessing an auto-complete issue) but not an excuse. It was my responsibility to check my work before clicking publish and I didn't do this thoroughly enough.

This then is a heartfelt and genuine apology to Rachael and Rachel, both of whom I think are great at their jobs.

I'm sorry for any distress or upset and I regret my error.

I'd also like to thank Nicky Campbell and George Riley both also of the BBC for pointing out my mistake to me so that I could correct it.

He's right you know, it WAS Rachel Burden.

He's right too, Rachael Hodges is someone else entirely.

I'd also like to apologise to Mr. Campbell.

During my comments on his coverage of these games I failed to mention that he had basically the exact same gig at Euro 2012 as well.

He performed just as "admirably" there and I did not reflect this. I hope this concludes the issue.

Numbers

These are the last ones mind; this is all the counting done. I'm not looking at another spreadsheet for at least a week.

Quick rule recap: swimming, running, jumping and throwing only. If you don't finish you don't count (sorry).

First up are today's figures:

Swimming: 7,200m
Running: 3,691,575m
Jumping: 0m
Throwing: 0m

Today's Total: 3,698,775m

Which added to what we had gives us...


What we did this Summer


Most productive day

The busiest single day of the games was August 5th when thanks mainly to the 107 Women finishing the Marathon 4,628,099.92m was covered.


First to last, smallest to biggest.

The very first metres we counted were given us by Bradley Ally, winner of the first heat in the Men's 400m Swimming Individual Medley.

The very last came from Narumi Kurosu in the Women's Modern Pentathlon Combined Event.

The Smallest measure counted was 1.56m jointly recorded by Chantae McMillan, Sofia Ifadidou  and Louise Hazel in the Women's Heptathlon High Jump.

The greatest distance comes from any of the finishers in the Men's 50km Race Walk but I'm going to pick out Jared Tallent as it was his finish that got our cumulative total through 10 million metres.


Jumping up and jumping along.

In the vertical jumping events 2,290.06m was cleared in total which is enough to clear 464 new London Route-master buses placed on top of each other.

Or

We could take The Burj Khalifa

828m

Bolt Taipei 101 to the top of it

509m

Plonk the Eiffel Tower on there

324m

Glue The Shard to all of this

310m

Add The Gherkin to keep it company

180m

Weld  Rodina-Mat' zovyot!  atop that

85m

And give her Nelson's Column on the tip of her sword

51.6m

And our total would still be enough to comfortably clear the top of Nelson's head.

The horizontal distance jumped by the athletes comes in at 5,431.56m.

That is over 483 of our faithful friend the Route-master buses bumper to bumper. (And also spookily near to the number cleared vertically).

Oh Hai!

Throwing it about.

Combining all of the successful throws throughout the games gives us 63,256.68m.

Now I know it's a bit of a cop out but I'm just going to go back to my very first comaprison.

Bonjour!

The distance covered is just about enough to throw something over the English Channel and leave enough for our oldest friends to return the gift


Going for a quick dip.

The total distance swam by the Women and Men at the 2012 games is 1,059,900m

That works out to 21,198 lengths of an Olympic pool.

You may have seen one recently.

In the Men's 50m Freestyle final Florent Manaudou took gold in a time of 21.34 seconds.

If he was able to maintain that pace for the full distance it would still take him 5 days, 10 hours, 23 minutes and 57.32 seconds.

He'd probably need a bit of a rest afterwards too.


Just run it off.

The total distance ran at these games is 16,351,990m

That works out to 40,880 Laps of a 400m track. (Technically 40,879.975 but come on, I'll be lax this once).

This may also seem familiar

Last night the Jamaica Men's 4x100m squad covered that in 36.84 seconds.

This deja vu is driving me crazy

If we gave them the job of covering our running distance, even at that World Record speed it would take them 2 weeks, 3 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 19.2 seconds.



So finally then. How far exactly?

17,482,868.30m

Which is:

10,863.35 miles -ish

Which is:

1,556,800.383 of 

Hello again!

bumper to bumper.

Goodbye

Well there we go. Question asked and question answered. Before I go I'd like to thank everyone who has read and enjoyed this; especially those of you have shared this through Facebook and Twitter. I genuinely appreciate it, really, thanks. Please continue to do so (I make no money from this, would just like as many as possible to see it).

If you read it and didn't like it well thanks anyway for trying it out I guess.

If anyone wants to use any of the numbers on here then feel free but I would appreciate a link back for it.

If anyone is especially interested in the spreadsheet then e mail me on howfarexactly@gmail.com and I'll happily send you a copy.

And that's it. We now know something we didn't 2 weeks ago. Be good. I need a pint.

Richard

You can follow me on Twitter at @Le_Paien_Roux