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dc - What is the Flash's normal or jogging speed?



It has already been established that the Flash can reach and surpass the speed of light. However, if has also been made explicit that such a feat is not easy for him, as it's not cheap in terms of possible consequences.


As such, I assume that could be considered like the top of his range, a sprint that he can perform but he'd rather not, as opposed to something he can do and maintain for an extended period of time (like jogging for a standard human).


However, some comics illustrate him performing feats such as moving around without people right beside him even perceiving he's gone, a feat that is only possible if he's gone for less than 1/50 seconds. This puts his his speed at a minimum of Mach X for each 5 meter radius, that is Mach 10 to affect something that is 50 meters away.


My question is, what is the standard speed (broadly speaking) that the Flash uses on a day-to-day basis (or the range of that speed) and what speed does it become an effort or strain for him to maintain?



Answer




Since his top speed varies so wildly from author to author and continuity to continuity, there's no way we're going to be able to pin down a "comfortable" run speed with 100% precision. It's hard to imagine why an author would bore a reader with his ho-hum speed. Usually, numbers are only going to be used when talking about a feat that's crazy fast, even by the Flash's standards.


All that being said, we should still be able to calculate something reasonable.



TL;DR


Normal Male



  • Top Speed: 15.9 mph

  • Jogging Speed: 8.3 mph (52.2% of top speed)


The Flash



Based on calculated speed:



  • Top Speed: 8,937,608,400,000,000,000,000 mph

  • Jogging Speed: 4,665,431,584,800,000,000,000 mph (52.2% of top speed)


Based on written speed:



  • Top Speed: 670,616,629 mph (speed of light)

  • Jogging Speed: 350,061,880.338 mph (52.2% of top speed)




Your question has 2 parts:



what is the standard speed (broadly speaking) that the Flash uses on a day-to-day basis (or the range of that speed)



and:



what speed does it become an effort or strain for him to maintain?



First we need to establish a baseline with a normal/average person. I've seen several exercise websites list a good treadmill jogging speed as between 5 and 6 miles per hour (such as this one and this one, for example). I tend to trust high-profile news sources more than I trust exercise recommendations from the internet so I found this article from The Telegraph that says:




The average man jogs at a speed of 8.3 mph



We'll go with that.


The same article gives us a sprinting speed of 15.9 mph.


So, we can use these numbers to say that an average male has a standard, maintainable speed of 52.2% of their top speed.


To extend this calculation for The Flash, we need to know his top speed. The fastest speed I've been able to find is from this image:


enter image description here


We have a discrepancy here because the author clearly notes the speed as just short of the speed of light but further inspection of the feat itself proves otherwise.


Based on the above calculation, The Flash can travel up to 2,482,669,000,000,000,000 miles per second. Converted to miles per hour, that's 8,937,608,400,000,000,000,000 mph. That's unimaginably fast...



Given that top speed, we can estimate his comfortable jogging speed at 4,665,431,584,800,000,000,000 mph, or 6,956,927,972,032.14 times the speed of light.


If we allow the author a little breathing room and place The Flash's top speed at the speed of light (670,616,629 mph), that puts his comfortable jogging speed at a much more modest 350,061,880.338 mph or 456,244 times the speed of sound.


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