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Joey's strategy for his first marathon (26.2 miles)was to run 2 miles, walk 1 mile, run 2 miles, walk 1 mile, and continue this pattern until he completed the race. Joey's average running pace is 8 minutes per mile, and his average walking pace is 16 minutes per mile. How many minutes will it take Joey to complete the marathon

User Evil Otto
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1 Answer

24 votes
24 votes

Answer: 275.2 minutes

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Step-by-step explanation:

We have this sequence

(2+1)+(2+1)+(2+1)...

Effectively, we're repeating "2+1" over and over.

We can see that

  • 2+1 = 3
  • (2+1)+(2+1) = 3+3 = 6
  • (2+1)+(2+1)+(2+1) = 3+3+3 = 9

Each time we add on another copy of (2+1), we're adding on 3

Dividing 26.2 over 3 gets us (26.2)/3 = 8.733 approximately

If we had 8 copies of (2+1) added together, then we would get

8*(2+1) = 8*3 = 24

This is 26.2-24 = 2.2 miles short of his goal.

He'll need to run 2 more miles, plus walk another 0.2 of a mile

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In summary so far, Joey will run 8+1 = 9 sections (two miles each) and walk 8 sections that are 1 mile each. At the very end, he'll walk 0.2 miles to finish the race. Each running and walking section is alternated of course.

Since he runs 9 sections, each 2 miles, that accounts for 9*2 = 18 miles.

His running pace is 8 minutes per mile, so this means he has run for 8*18 = 144 minutes. This is just the running part and not the walking part.

Let A = 144 so we can use it later.

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He walks 8 sections of 1 mile each. His walking pace is 16 minutes per mile. This must mean he spends 8*16 = 128 minutes on this walking portion.

Then for the last 0.2 mile section he walks, we can solve the proportion below

(1 mile)/(16 min) = (0.2 miles)/(x min)

1/16 = 0.2/x

1*x = 16*0.2

x = 3.2

He spends 3.2 minutes walking the remaining 0.2 of a mile at the end.

So his total walking time is 128+3.2 = 131.2 minutes.

Let B = 131.2

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To wrap things up, we'll add up the results of each of the previous two sections.

A = total running time = 144 min

B = total walking time = 131.2 min

C = total marathon time

C = A+B

C = 144+131.2

C = 275.2 minutes

This converts to 275 min, 12 sec.

This is also equivalent to 4 hrs, 35 min, 12 sec.

User Agua From Mars
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