There are times when it is fun to take something fictional and let it have a go in the real world, as it sort of gives off a different way to look at things. For instance, Nick Greene of Mental Floss decided to harness the power of mathematics by coming up with a calculation which touts that Mario actually ran a total of 3.4 miles from World 1-1 all the way to World 8-4, which is roughly the equivalent of 5.47km. The kind of running taken into consideration are the straight lines that Mario covers on areas where it is pure solid ground, and it does not include the times required when one needs to backtrack, or to perform runs that allows one to skip ahead with bonus levels. This means it is a true, blue aerobic workout for Mario, who has to ascend and descend stairs, with plenty of stops and starts thrown into the mix to boot.
When one takes into consideration the water levels, those would include another 371 meters, which is over7 laps in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. All that Nintendo needs to throw into the mix in the near future would be for Mario to cycle, and we’ve for an Ironman Mario game to dream about.
Speed Demos Archive, claims that the fastest, no-warp, all-stages time for Super Mario Bros. stands at 19 minutes, 40 seconds, which means Mario is no pushover as a competitor, hitting an approximate 5:30 mile pace. This will not make Mario a world champion, however, since his 5K time would then be in the region of 17:15, which is still 4 minutes plus behind the existing 5,000 meters world record. Mario is obviously very fit then, but why does he retain his rotund outlook?