Is Paul Ryan the fastest politician to run a Marathon?

He is not if you disqualify his made-up time.  Slate.com has a feature that allows users to see how long various famous politicians took to run a marathon.  Paul Ryan's actual finish time in the 1990 Grandma's Marathon puts him in fifth place. Who had the fastest marathon time?  John Edwards ran the 1983 Marine Corps Marathon in 3:30:18.  The fastest Republican is George W. Bush.  He ran the 1993 Houston Marathon in 3:44:42.  Check out the site to see who had the slowest time and also see where Sarah Palin fits in the mix.  The results may surprise you.

Tommy Thompson can do more push-ups than you.

Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson is running for the Wisconsin's United States Senate seat.  I tend to doubt that he will win the Republican nomination because Republicans today really are not interested in furthering the ambitions of career politicians.  Also Governor Thompson is a well-known advocate of government spending money on trains and Wisconsin republicans no longer like trains.

However, I am pretty sure that Governor Thompson can out push-up any of his opponents in the election.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has footage of Governor Thompson dropping and doing 50 push-ups at a reporter's request.  The footage is here.  The story notes that Governor Thompson placed his feat against the wall to get some support.  However, anecdotal evidence (in the form of me doing push-ups with my feet against a wall and not against a wall) suggests that the benefit derived from the wall is less than 10 percent.  At a minimum, Governor Thompson can do 45 unaided push-ups.

To put this in perspective, Governor Thompson, at the age of 70, can do almost double the average number push-ups a 40-year-old man can do according to Livestrong.com.  If fitness in elected officials is important to you, than maybe Governor Thompson deserves your vote.