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

Prove it that she didn't do it

I Did Your Mommy wrote:

I'm an idiot. I not so good at maths.

100 meters a day

Did the box have a toy inside? Or is WHEATIES too grown-up for that?

She have had to swim about 24 hours a day, including in her sleep, to achieve that

Los Angeles SUCKS wrote:

Janet Evans is another L.A. shit head

you cracked me up with this one. really!

Probably added a 0 by accident, she probably averaged 10 miles a day for 35 years.

She had a 35 year swimming career? That seems unlikely.

1/10

Well, she's competing as a masters swimmer at age 45, so count back 35 years from that.

Count Back wrote:

Well, she's competing as a masters swimmer at age 45, so count back 35 years from that.

Ok, let's see, carry the one...she started swimming at 19. Am I right?

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 may not have swum 100 miles per day, but we should give her some credit for her work ethic. She quit the Stanford swim team when the NCAA imposed the "weekly hours limits on athletic training time."

I am not faulting her. I just don't understand how no one involved for Wheaties ever noticed the impossibility of that number.

As I said, she was a truly great swimmer. I agree with another poster who suspects that a decimal place got moved. She might have averaged almost ten miles a day, though even that seems highly improbable - to average so much for 35 years, from her little kids start to her 40s. If a decimal place got moved it would still be 127,575 miles. How many elite marathoners run that many miles in a lifetime. Very few I suspect.

Gainesville/Miami guy wrote:

Giver of Credit wrote:

She may not have swum 100 miles per day, but we should give her some credit for her work ethic. She quit the Stanford swim team when the NCAA imposed the "weekly hours limits on athletic training time."

I am not faulting her. I just don't understand how no one involved for Wheaties ever noticed the impossibility of that number.

As I said, she was a truly great swimmer. I agree with another poster who suspects that a decimal place got moved. She might have averaged almost ten miles a day, though even that seems highly improbable - to average so much for 35 years, from her little kids start to her 40s. If a decimal place got moved it would still be 127,575 miles. How many elite marathoners run that many miles in a lifetime. Very few I suspect.

Swimming miles and running miles are not the same. I'm hoping you are not trying to compare the two.

For a runner to complete 127,575 miles in a "lifetime" I figured the following:

Begin running at age 15 and stop running at age 60. This is a round # of 45 years. 365 days in a year - I didn't compute leap years b/c I'm lazy.

Roughly 7.8 miles per day for those 45 years. Considering the number days per year many elite distance guys/gals run 15 or more I'd say that this is indeed possible by more than a few. Take into consideration that many will run marathons and what-not more frequently later in life - 3x+ daily mileage - it makes it even easier to hit this number.

Swimming on the other hand, I have no clue. Personally, I wouldn't want to be face down in the water with no scenery for all those years.

Gainesville/Miami guy wrote:

If a decimal place got moved it would still be 127,575 miles. How many elite marathoners run that many miles in a lifetime. Very few I suspect.

I would guess a lot. I'm pretty far from elite, in my late 30's, and I've run almost 75,000 miles. Roughly 2,000 in grade school, 8,000 in high school, 12,000 in college school. Highs and lows about 3,000 miles a year since.

Many elite marathoners do 5,000 miles a year. If they think they are elite for 20 years that would be 100,000 miles. Add another 20 years of hobby jogging in grade school, high school and after would get them the other 27,575 miles.

meters, not miles wrote:

100 meters a day

This has to be the right answer.

She raced 1,275,750 meters in her lifetime, so 100m a day, 3000m a month, 36,500m a year. That would be about 12 x 1500m, + 12 x 800m + 24 x 400m a year.

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.

Many runners have gone well over 127,000 miles in their lives. A handful have even gotten to 200,000. Ten miles a day for 30 or more years isn't that big a deal if you maintain interest and desire if you're a runner. But ten miles of swimming takes a lot more time than running does so I agree that even 10 miles day for that length of time seems unlikely for a swimmer.

10,000 meters per day is the correct answer.

10 kilometers a day is feasible. She'd have to do double sessions of 16km or more at times, and miss very few days. I doubt she averaged that for 35 years but maybe for short periods.