To think that we were once impressed by Alan Shepard playing golf shots on the moon.

Incidentally, that was not just one small sand trap shot for man, it was also the first giant leap into space sports punditry as Shepard’s fellow moonwalker on the Apollo 14 mission, Edgar Mitchell, observed acidly: “That looked like a slice to me, Al…”

Now Peake plans to put into practice the phrase Shepard used as his six iron propelled what he called the “little white pellet that’s familiar to millions of Americans” across the dusty surface, by running “miles and miles and miles…”

Peake, will be literally up for it, and has been figuratively so from the word go.

“Tim wanted to do it, and he took it to the European Space Agency and said ‘Can I do this?’, a London Marathon spokeswoman told insidethegames.

“There were a huge amount of protocols to go through before the idea went ahead, but there were no big problems involved because it fits in so well with what the European Space Agency is trying to do in terms of maintaining astronaut fitness.

“The work is becoming particularly important as NASA and ESA start to look at the possibility of much longer missions involving two years or longer in space.”

Peake, who is running to raise awareness of The Prince’s Trust, will be monitored by the European Astronaut Centre in the German city Cologne to ensure he will maintain peak fitness for his return to Earth on June 5.

Dr Jonathan Scott, Medical Projects and Technology Team Lead in the ESA’s Space Medicine Office, told the London Marathon website: “It’s essential that astronauts stay fit and healthy to counter the effects of living in microgravity. If Tim did no exercise when he arrived on the ISS, he could lose as much as a quarter of his aerobic capacity after just two weeks of his mission.

“His heart, and his muscles and bones, would weaken, as they do not have to work as hard in microgravity to pump blood or support him.

“It’s the job of the Space Medicine Office Team to keep this ‘space adaptation’ to a minimum so that an astronaut’s health is not compromised when they return to Earth…

“Tim will run on the treadmill to train for the Digital Virgin Money London Marathon as part of this daily fitness routine.”

This projected Peake performance has become a possibility thanks to the development of the Digital Virgin Money London Marathon, an interactive virtual-reality video, which was created by London Marathon Events in partnership with the digital fitness technology company RunSocial.

The route was filmed in HD video during the 2013 and 2014 Virgin Money London Marathons and has been converted into an interactive "mixed reality" video, which runners watch as they run on a treadmill.

The video playback matches the running speed and runners can also see, and run with, virtual reality avatars of runners from around the world who are also using the download.

A special avatar has been created for Peake, showing the astronaut running in his natty blue ESA flight suit under the identification: Tim Peake – International Space Station.

As he labours, tethered to his distant treadmill to prevent him floating away, Peake will concentrate on projecting this image forward past myriad other more prosaic avatars making their way through the familiar route from Greenwich Park to The Mall.

“The thing I’m most looking forward to is that I can still interact with everybody down on Earth,” he said. “I’ll be running it with the iPad and watching myself running through the streets of London whilst orbiting the earth at 400km above the surface and going 27,000km per hour.”

There will be limits to Peake’s experience of the London Marathon actuality. He is not, for instance, going to see virtual rivals staggering to a halt with cramp or reeling off to puke into the nearest gutter.

Presumably there are no virtual brass bands en route, or virtual drinkers watching the passing tide of humanity from pub gardens with emotions ranging from active approval all the way through to scorn, via guilt and self-loathing.

Peake is not likely to trouble the elite end of the field, despite being a very respectable marathon performer who clocked three hours 18min 50sec over the London course in 1999.

“I don’t think I’ll be setting any personal bests,” he said. “I’ve set myself a goal of anywhere between 3 hours 30 minutes to four hours.”

Just as well in terms of anti-doping. While there would be no problem providing details of his whereabouts for UK Anti-Doping, testing could prove testing.