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“It’s going to be amazing.”
Astronaut and Needham native Suni Williams was among the runners who suited up for the Falmouth Road Race on Sunday, running the race’s seven-mile distance from the International Space Station.
In a video posted on social media by race organizers, Williams began by sending off to the wheelchair section.
“You’re going to crush it,” she said.
The astronaut then navigated her way to a harness where she strapped on her bib number and prepared to run her race on a treadmill in space.
“It’s going to be a little crappy but I know it’s going to be hard for you guys, too,” Williams said. – That race is tough. There are many turns, many turns, a lot of ups and downs, then you are in the stove next to the coast. But it will be great. It’s going to be awesome.”
Williams called the Falmouth Road Race “fantastic” for the money it raises for the community and praised everyone who took part. Her sister, she said, works for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and lives in the area with her family.
“So we’ve been a part of the Falmouth community for a long time,” Williams said, adding that she was “just happy to be a part of all this stuff that’s going on.”
Williams is no stranger to running in space, having run in the past 2012 Falmouth Road Race and 2007 Boston Marathon from the International Space Station.
The Massachusetts native has been on the International Space Station since June, when she and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore were expected to stay a week after traveling into space as the first pilots aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. But problem with the capsule’s thruster has left his ability to safely return Williams and Wilmore to Earth in doubt.
NASA has said it is still being decided if the two astronauts will stay on the space station until next year.
A graduate of Needham High School, Williams has been on two other space missions since becoming a NASA astronaut in 1998 and until 2017 was the record holder for cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut.
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