Runners have squeezed in miles in some strange places — parking garages, hotel hallways, airport terminals before a gate change. But Dom Stroh, founder of the travel-run community RETREATURE, has taken it further than most would dare, or frankly consider: he ran a 5K inside an airplane bathroom at 35,000 feet.
The video, posted to Instagram with the caption “MILES high club,” shows Stroh setting up a camera in the corner of the lavatory, flashing his Strava watch to start the timer, then looping around the tiny space — stepping up onto the toilet seat and circling repeatedly — until he hit 5.53 kilometers. The flight was roughly 11 hours long. His finishing time: 59 minutes and 32 seconds, at a 10:46 per kilometer pace.
Seems fake because the GPS trace shows all the running happening in one place. But the plane is in motion. Most of the distance traveled would come from the plane’s movement, creating a mostly straight GPS trace.
Any runner who has accidentally not stopped a run and gotten into a car has seen this happen.
I did laps once on a cruise ship at sea that had a running track. The GPS data was a series of loops, it was pretty amusing.