A few friends and I want to bet our friend that he can't run a marathon. He is about 6'0 130 pounds and a celiac. He never exercises and isn't physically active. Was wondering with 3 months of training what would be good odds to give him and what time would he have to complete it in?

Friend is 2p2er rankmenow incase anyone knows of him

how long is the marathon?

A full marathon (26.2 miles).

25:1 to complete

I'd say 5 hours should be the max, maybe even a little bit lower

I've been running medium distances (8-12 miles) for the last 6 years.

Before making odds you need to know a few things;
-Is there a time limit he has to finish in
-Is he allowed to walk
-If he gets injured during the marathon is the bet void

Obviously if he is allowed to walk and there is no time limit, you should be getting about 3:1 to odds, however if he has to run the entire thing and has to finish in say under 6.5 hrs, a 15min/mile pace, there's pretty much no way you can lose, you can offer him 10:1, take 4 mortages out on your home, and make bank.

Trainers say that you can add no more than about 10% to running distances each week. To get from 2mi to a marathon rankmenow would have to pick up 25%.

That said, if nobody cares if rankmenow runs or walks, and given a time of 5 hours, I'd happily take some of Turntup74's 25-1 line, and I'd be willing to talk terms on Ded_Prez_Society's line. (Same time, regardless of stride)

Assuming you win if he doesn't complete the marathon for any reason including injury and he has a reasonable set time to finish it in that means he has to at least jog most of the way then you're basically a lock

If he's allowed to walk, the bet is stupid, since anyone can walk that far if there's no time limit.

Doable - some random radio DJ recently ran a marathon without any training:

http://www.wavy.com/dpps/news/strang...rathon_4083933