Meet Santa Clause
The legend that is Santa. Well known for his red suit, warm smile, little round belly and the excitement he brings to millions of children across the world. But have you ever stopped to consider the physical feat that St Nick pulls off on Christmas Eve?
To put it into perspective, and for the stato’s amongst you;
In just 31 hours…
- Santa visits 92 million homes (approximately)
- Delivers presents to about 378 million excited (and good!) children
- Doing the maths, this leaves Father C just 1/1000th of a second to park, jump down the chimney, deliver the presents, eat the snacks, get up the chimney and move on
- That means he has to travel at an average speed of at about 640 miles per second – but if you allow for acceleration and deceleration top speed is somewhat higher!
- And then there’s the food…let’s be conservative and take the average mince pie which contains 250 calories. You can work it out but there are a load of zeros!
“I obviously love what I do…and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being partial to the odd mince pie” beams Santa as we meet at his busy secret HQ in the North Pole. “And although it looks like I might be carrying a few extra pounds, getting the nutritional balance right on Christmas Eve is something I still struggle with – even after all these years.” “The year is spent building strength and stamina with regular workouts on my trusty Concept2 (I’ve been a user since the original Model A but I chipped up to a D with PM4 last year). I enjoy mixing it up through the year with some long endurance rows and then during the summer I put in the power and aim to beat my 2k PB. I’m a regular on the Challenge Series (using a pseudonym of course) and have even bought myself some RowPro software although I’ve really got to spend more time on this. I keep threatening Mrs Claus that I’m going to have a crack at BIRC but she just shrugs this off as fanciful dreaming from an old man. Who knows, maybe 2010 will be my year?!”
Christmas Eve without the mince pies would be like…well it would be like a 2k row without the pain…and where’s the fun in that?!
Santa
“It’s the food that is the constant battle though. I have a sweet tooth and there’s no escaping that. And I don’t exactly put much effort into suggesting people leave me fruit, cereal bars or healthy snacks. However I do need to consume a lot of calories on the night to get round. Unfortunately I end up with a night of sugar highs and sugar lows…and then I spend the rest of the year putting in the meters on the C2 to shift the pounds.”
Having said that, would I change anything?” ponders Santa. “Probably not”, he muses quietly. “Christmas Eve without the mince pies would be like…well it would be like a 2k row without the pain…and where’s the fun in that?!”
With that the great man is off, talking excitedly with his elves on his way to ready the reindeer for another training sortie.
