Jimmie Johnson accomplished no small feat on Monday when he completed his first attempt at the Boston Marathon.
Though he narrowly missed his personal goal of a sub 3-hour time, he capped off months of preparation for the 26.2-mile trek.
He finished the marathon in 3 hours, 9 minutes and 7 seconds at an average of 7:13 per mile.
On NASCAR America: Splash & Go, Dale Jarrett and Rick Allen, the latter a runner himself, discussed Johnson’s athletic feat.
“The performance was incredible, " Allen said. “That’s going around your track at your high school or whatever, the quarter-mile track, that’s going a little more than a minute-and-a-half, every single lap for 26.2 miles. That’s fast. That’s really fast.
“People have said drivers aren’t athletes and they’ve questioned it. I say if you look at how someone prepares for something, that’s what I consider an athlete. Drivers get prepared to get behind the wheel of a car. Jimmie prepared to run 26.2 miles. In my mind, no question that was an extremely athletic performance.”
Jarrett observed that Johnson is one of the “very best athletes that’s ever sat in a race car.”
“The great ones are the ones who continue to push themselves in different ways,” Jarrett said.
Watch the above video for the full discussion.
I’m finding the stairs quite challenging today, other than that I’m on cloud 9.@bostonmarathon pic.twitter.com/beQeuMXxnK
— Jimmie Johnson (@JimmieJohnson) April 16, 2019