The Real Run for the White House: How active are the candidates?

The race for the White House just got a lot slower with Senator John Edwards shutting down his campaign. The most accomplished runner in the field - with a marathon PR of 3:30 - he could handily spank the rest of the candidates as well as our famously active current president, Bush, who has a respectable PR of 3:44.

So, when it comes to the best of the rest, which candidate would win in a real test of endurance? Check out where the candidates fall on Run Junkie's water bottle rating system (below). Hands down, it seems Mike Huckabee would take the victory. With four marathons under his ever shrinking belt, and Boston queued up for April (previous post), he gets four bottles, and no other candidate even really comes close. Hillary Clinton speed walks occasionally (one bottle). Barack Obama stays fit by regularly playing basketball and hitting the gym (two bottles). Mitt Romney runs three miles every other day or so (two bottles). John McCain does some hiking now and then (one bottle, with one extra for enduring the Hanoi Hilton.) Though not yet an official candidate, Mike Bloomberg doesn't seem to be a regular exerciser (data are hard to come by, though), but we give him one full bottle for his great policy work to advance the health of NYC's eight million citizens.