Wheaties box says Janet Evans averaged 100 miles a day for 35 years

"Janet Evans was a natural-born swimmer who was swimming laps at the age of two"

thanks for the post wrote:

1,275,750 lifetime METERS dummy.

If you had looked at this link which someone else posted on p.2

you would have seen a photo of the Wheaties box. And it says miles. Check it out. And I'd suggest that you be a little more careful before you insult someone. It can come back to bite you.

Gainesville/Miami guy wrote:

Talk about the breakfast of champions! My Wheaties box (yeah, I like them) lists many of her accomplishments. Including, it says, swimming 1,275,750 miles in her 35 year career.

So.... 35 years times 365 days, plus 9 leap year days, equals 12,784 days. Divide that into 1,275,750 and you get just under 100 miles a day. Sure hope she didn't take any rest days. Or sleep.

Yes, she was a truly great swimmer, and, yes I am having a little fun with my remarks. But to be quite serious, I can't understand how no one caught this obvious error. The number of miles is clearly impossibly high and the arithmetic is something like 3rd grade level.

She really swam all that. Call Hannity, he'll tell you!

I didn't say that many folks have run 10 miles day for 30 years. I said that there are people who have done it. I agree that a few have done it and I don't know how many, aside from those on Burfoot's list, So you can't really say it's many, many, less than I think because even I don't know what that number is.

Do you have a point? I have no idea what you're going on about but logically if you've run over 100,000 miles in your life your life has likely been going on for a while.

After spending way too much time thinking about this, I have come to the conclusion that the number should be for 1,275,750 laps. This would be about 80,000 miles or 40,000 miles depending on whether she counts a lap as 100 or 50 meters. 40,000 miles seems the most believable to me.

She probably told General Mills she had been swimming about 100 laps per day for 35 years, and they pulled that 6 sig fig number out of their ass.

BigTimeRetiredCoach wrote:

After spending way too much time thinking about this, I have come to the conclusion that the number should be for 1,275,750 laps. This would be about 80,000 miles or 40,000 miles depending on whether she counts a lap as 100 or 50 meters. 40,000 miles seems the most believable to me.

She probably told General Mills she had been swimming about 100 laps per day for 35 years, and they pulled that 6 sig fig number out of their ass.

One problem with your reasoning: As someone else pointed out, Evans claims on hercwebsite that she was already swimming 12 miles a day in high school.

gilt wrote:

dude, really? wrote:

I've seen the Wheaties box and it says nothing about how many miles she swam.

http://imgur.com/gallery/WX43A

thank you for making my point

dude, really? wrote:

gilt wrote:http://imgur.com/gallery/WX43A

thank you for making my point

Seriously? Did you click on the link and look at BOTH photos? The front and BACK of the box. On the BACK it say "estimated miles swam during 35 year career".

Why would you ever trust a Wheaties box in the first place?

Maybe Trump/Hillary should start advertizing on them?

New kind of billboard wrote:

Why would you ever trust a Wheaties box in the first place?

Maybe Trump/Hillary should start advertizing on them?

I think his whole reason for starting this thread is that he doesn't trust the Wheaties box.

The Wheaties box is just another vast Russian conspiracy to keep Madam Hillary out of the white house.

Russians should NOT be involved with Wheaties box advertisements.

Was it written 1,275,750 m?

That would be meters not miles

Gainesville/Miami guy wrote:

thanks for the post wrote:

1,275,750 lifetime METERS dummy.

If you had looked at this link which someone else posted on p.2

http://m.imgur.com/gallery/WX43A

you would have seen a photo of the Wheaties box. And it says miles. Check it out. And I'd suggest that you be a little more careful before you insult someone. It can come back to bite you.

I was wondering when the (pics) would finally appear.

It could work out if it was meters raced instead of in training. That would only be an average of 1 1500 meter race every two weeks.

If you look at what people can handle day in and day out over many years, it's about 3 hours 40 minutes for cyclists and swimmers. That would be in the range of 16-18 km a day when she was very serious about training. If she somehow did that for 35 years straight, which is absurd, you're looking at about 10% of what the Wheaties box is guesstimating.

If they are off by that much with their marketing of Janet Evans, how much are they off by in their other marketing claims?

[quote]quickrunner789 wrote:

You're showing how little you know about swimming.

Even a short practice would usually be at least 2,000 meters. I highly doubt she did one short practice every three weeks. I think she swam a little more than that to get to a world-class level.[/quote

I'm a former swimmer, same sort of events as her. I wasn't at her level, but had many Olympians as teammates. 2000 meters would be a decent warm up. Our doubles were typically 12k in the AM and 10k in the PM. Doubles 5 days a week in summer. Still doesn't reach the mileage in the initial estimate....but a more accurate view than many are posting.

And to the poster who commented about hours face down in the pool... You, lots of hours staring at the black line. Does make it easy to do a long run without tunes though

I sent a note to Wheaties a few months ago with similar math and received the reply that the box should have read "Estimated Meters Swam During 35 Year Career". They thanked me for bringing it to their attention. Where I shop the boxes disappeared shortly thereafter and have never returned with a correction.