Alan Turing's 2:46 Marathon
Abstract
Alan Turing ran a 2:46:03 marathon in August 1947 at the AAA Championship marathon (held at Loughborough), finishing fifth. The race doubled as a qualifying event for the 1948 London Olympics, where the gold medal was won in 2:34:51. Turing (a member of Walton Athletic Club) was a genuine Olympic prospect, but a leg injury ended his serious running before the Games. He thought nothing of running long distances for transport: as a Cambridge fellow he routinely ran from Cambridge to Ely and back, roughly 50 km.
The Runner
Alan Turing discovered running at Sherborne School, where it provided solitary relief from a social environment he found painful. At Bletchley Park during the war he ran only occasionally, though one account has him running the 40 miles to London for meetings. He took it up seriously after moving to the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington in 1945, where J. F. Harding invited him to join Walton Athletic Club; he became the club’s best runner and won its three-mile title in 1946. He once ran the 9 miles or so from Teddington to a conference at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill rather than wait for public transport.
His last club event was a relay leg in the London to Brighton race in April 1950, after he had moved to Manchester.
Why He Ran
Turing told Harding that he ran because of the stress of his job: “It’s the only way I can get some release.”
What Was Happening in His Working Life
In the late 1940s Turing was at the height of his computing work. He had designed the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) at the National Physical Laboratory, and from 1948 he worked at Manchester on the Manchester Mark 1 computer. His 1948 report “Intelligent Machinery” was one of the first serious attempts to define what machine intelligence could mean, and led to the 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” which introduced the Turing Test. His work on mathematical biology (morphogenesis) came later, in the early 1950s. He was also managing the aftermath of the Bletchley work: still officially constrained in what he could discuss, operating in an environment where his wartime contributions remained classified.
The End
Turing was arrested in 1952 for “gross indecency” after disclosing a relationship with another man to police investigating a burglary at his home. He was convicted and subjected to chemical castration via synthetic estrogen injections rather than prison. He died on June 7, 1954, a cyanide-poisoned apple beside him. The coroner ruled suicide; some accounts have argued it may have been accidental. He was 41.
He was granted a royal pardon in December 2013. The Turing Award, given annually by the ACM for contributions to computing, bears his name.