Today in practical maths we found out that Usain Bolt ran at a speed of 10.44 m/s when he set the 100m sprint record. Eliud Kipchoge ran at a speed of 5.8 m/s for over 42 km to set a new marathon record. Sonia O Sullivan ran at a speed of 5.4 m/s to set an Irish 10km record of 30m 47 secs.
Our challenge was to time each other running over 5m and 10m distances and calculate our speed from this. We all beat Eliud Kipchoge's speed over 10m but we probably would struggle to keep this up for 42.2 km. Some of us almost reached Usain Bolt's speed with Joe just pipping Bolt over 10 metres.
We really enjoyed this practical maths and now can appreciate just how fast these athletes are.
