200 Solves During Half-Marathon (2:00:09) UWR?

[PhillipEspinoza]

So because I've been upping my mileage lately to about 100 miles a week, I usually do 15 miles training runs and today I decided to bring my cube along and see how many solves I could do. I ended up just going for however many I could do in a half-marathon distance (13.1 miles) and so I ended up doing 200 solves in this time/distance. The way I did it was I just brought one cube and used that that whole time after hand scrambling it myself for anywhere between 10-20 seconds. I had about 3 POPS (2 of which landed in dirt/sand) and only stopped once to get a drink of water. This was also in 95 degree weather which also affected the speed. I pretty much kept consistently solving the whole time until I reached 200 solves around 12 miles (1:52:00) then just ran the last mile at about 7min pace without solving.

So I was wondering, is it safe to say this is a UWR? Has anyone else ever attempted something like this?

 

[Angel Lim]

Dang, either way, that's crazy! I wonder what the people who saw you running were thinking.

 

[CubeRoots]

if i was to 'beat' this... which bit do i need to beat? number of cubes - 10*number of hours for run sound ok?

i will do an attempt next week.

 

[PhillipEspinoza]

if i was to 'beat' this... which bit do i need to beat? number of cubes - 10*number of hours for run sound ok?

i will do an attempt next week.

I would say if you could do 200 (or more) solves and a half marathon under 2 hours then it would beat my record. For the record it's actually a lot harder than you would think. But I imagine if I had someone coming along with me and scrambling cubes for me the whole time then this number would be closer to 300. My record half time is around 1:33:00 just for reference.

I also imagine you don't necessarily have to run while solving but just get 200 solves done and a half marathon all under 2 hours. So technically if you could do a 1:10 half you would just have to be able to solve 200 cubes in ~49 minutes or less. But it's more realistic to do it while running. But probably also less safe to do so..

 

[tx789]

You know in the Guinness World Records 2012 it lists most "Rubik Cubes solved while running a marathon as 100 the guy completed the marathon in 4 hr 45min 43 sec".

 

[Funicular]

it surely is!

im a marathon runner myself and i gave several times the thought of breaking the GWR.

The 26.2 should be covered in less than 5 hours to make the attempt legal, though. And the guiness certification was simply out of my reach.

Although, it does not specify whether you can get almost to the finish line and start some heavy speedcubing without moving.

Id say go for it, provided you can afford it!

 

[qqwref]

I don't know if this is super unreasonable, but how about having two cubes? You'd solve one OH while doing random moves on the other with the other hand, then swap them. The bonus is that you don't have to keep your hands together, which could improve your ability to actually do the run.

And yeah, I have no clue how we'd want to score this. Setting any fixed time limit isn't the best solution because someone who is really fast might be able to hang out for a while and just do solves, but someone who is slow might not even be able to do a successful attempt.

 

[Bhargav777]

This makes me want to get back to running again awesome job!

 

[PhillipEspinoza]

I don't know if this is super unreasonable, but how about having two cubes? You'd solve one OH while doing random moves on the other with the other hand, then swap them. The bonus is that you don't have to keep your hands together, which could improve your ability to actually do the run.

And yeah, I have no clue how we'd want to score this. Setting any fixed time limit isn't the best solution because someone who is really fast might be able to hang out for a while and just do solves, but someone who is slow might not even be able to do a successful attempt.

I actually thought about solving the cube one-handed while running and thought if it might actually make things easier, I know I scrambled OH sometimes but I think OH Half Marathon solving might be a little extreme lol. It certainly does make it more natural feeling when you don't have to run with your hands directly in front of you.

I think I can get this amount of solves down to about a 1:40 time but probably not much lower given how much cubing distracts from actual running.

I would say if you could beat the amount of solves done AND the time it was done in then you would have beaten the record. For example, that Guinness WR I would say if I did 99 solves and the marathon time was 3:15, it wouldn't count as WR. But if I did >100 solves in a marathon time of <4hours 45min, that would count as a new WR. I would say it would be similar to how Multi-BLD records work.

 

[qqwref]

That's not really similar to multiBLD at all though. And then you run into a problem that you have to keep running faster to get a new record. If the current marathon WR holder solved a single cube at any point during a good run, by your rules, it would be pretty much impossible to beat his "most solves during a marathon" record - you might be able to beat the number of cubes, but you certainly couldn't beat the time. Obviously if you beat the time AND the number of cubes you beat the record, but the real question is about people who beat one but not the other.

 

[Stefan]

That's not really similar to multiBLD at all though.

In both, you have two values to optimize:

In multiblind, more cubes and faster time.
In marathon, more cubes and faster time.

 

[qqwref]

Yes, but I was referring to the differences in how we choose when a record beats another. MultiBLD says "better cubes, or same cubes and better time"; Phillip says "better cubes AND better time". They're very different beasts. But of course taking the multiBLD scoring system directly won't work either since we don't want people casually walking 13 miles while solving hundreds of cubes. If there's a scrambler helping, it would be possible to do at least 240 cubes per hour while walking around a track... if we walk at 3 mph, that's a lot of cubes.

 

[PhillipEspinoza]

Oh I see what you're saying. I was only concerned with what it takes to break the record, whereas you were concerned with ranking in a WCA-style fashion. Like obviously someone who did 200 cubes but at a slower time than me would be behind me but would they be ahead of the person who got a faster time than I did but solved less cubes? I think it does get rather confusing.

Not that this kind of talk means anything cuz it's not like it's going to be a WCA event anytime soon, but would it make sense then to pose a time limit? Like 2 hours, or 3 hours? That would make it more like MBLD and allow for easier record keeping. But it would still have the problem of how to rank those who have a faster half marathon time but solved less cubes? Would this just not encourage a WR to be of a faster half marathon time but instead focus on solving a certain amount of cubes in a given time (say 2 hours) while running a half marathon? How does time play a role in a record like this I guess is the question.

I guess the Guinness record refers to the record as "most cubes solved during a marathon" so technically I could have stopped cubing around mile 5 (as I had reached 101 or so by then) then just finish the marathon in whatever time and still have a record? I wonder how they would judge it...

 

[Stefan]

MultiBLD says "better cubes, or same cubes and better time"; Phillip says "better cubes AND better time".

I was pretty certain he meant that as an example, not as the definition. As definition it makes sense that one result is better than another iff it's better in one of the two aspects and not worse in the other aspect (just like your multiblind table). And two results are equal iff both aspects match. And they're not comparable otherwise (if one result is better in time and the other is better in number of cubes), unless we invent an inherently arbitrary way to rank them.

One result is better, equal, worse, or not comparable to another if:

                 #cubes
            <      =      >
        +---------------------+
      < |  n.c. [COLOR="#00CC00"]better better[/COLOR] |
time  = | [COLOR="#CC0000"]worse[/COLOR] [COLOR="#CCCC00"]equal[/COLOR]  [COLOR="#00CC00"]better[/COLOR] |
      > | [COLOR="#CC0000"]worse worse[/COLOR]   n.c.  |
        +---------------------+

 

[CubeRoots]

I quite like the idea of just doing the event "solve 200 rubiks cubes and run half a marathon in the quickest time possible". That way everyone is doing the same thing making it simple to rank. Also i think it assesses both abilities together fairly well

edit: also it fits in well with the fact that phil stopped at 200 solves to complete the run

 

[Rocky0701]

If you were to solve while running, you could have a car or person next to you scrambling cubes while you solve so then you would have an endless amount of unsolved cubes. I say you should go for it!