I was thinking last night, just before I went to sleep, why are marathons and half marathons measured in miles but shorter runs are measured in Km.

Would it not make more sense to either do one or the other.

e.g.

13.1miles = 21km
26.2miles = 42km
or
5km = 3.1miles
10km = 6.2miles


O.

I ran a 5 mile race on Sunday.

Not 8k...............



.

Give me imperial any time!

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13 months to L2B!

It just seems odd that in the racing that we have two different measurements of distance, even running the full marathon there was a 10k and 30k marker!

O.

Just a thought on why this is so: All races were measured in Metres / KMs, and its only the marathon (and half) that is measured in miles, and I can only think its because the modern marathon distance was determined in the 1908 Olympics in the UK, and the imperial measurement system, as we all know, has always been alive and well in the UK....

Thats my idea behind it anyway.............



edit to add: I think that the 60 yard dashes are an American invention and come from their football and the measurements of the field.... I cuold be SO SO wrong on that though........

I will get my coat

so if you run else where do they only use Km's even for Marathons?

O.

10m races are measured in miles too...and isn't the 1m race so measured...1500m is a different distance.

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13 months to L2B!

Miles in USA I think.

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13 months to L2B!

I dont think so, my point was that my thinking is the 26.22 miles was set in the UK, and as a knock on the distance will always be 26.22 miles as we determined it and called it, and not 42.195 KMs... hell we did not even know what a KM was in 1908, shit, I still dont know what they are!

Someone of course will come along and shoot my theory down...... but hey, I think its a good theory!

I will get my coat

I tend to agree with you Base, it is a good theory and could well be correct

O.

I think that 10 miles and 1 mile are picked for the same reason as 10k is picked, the human love of round numbers in our base-10 decimal system (milestones in our lives always seem to occur with numbers ending in zero, double zero, treble zero) ... and not because of the measurement system... This would mean that if we used a base-8 octal numbering system, we would have 8 mile or 8k races...

again a theory to be shot down....

42.195 km seems a lot longer than 26.2 miles when you're running it...the k's seem to be neverending! so I'm happy to stay with miles thank you very much

Continental marathons are all marked in KM, and may or may not have mile markers, so if you can't get your head round the conversions or figure out your pace / target in km / hour it gets very confusing

tell me about it... I did Copenhagan marathon and Rome marathon in k's, I swear my poor results were due to using too much brain energy trying to convert pace all the way

that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it

I much prefer miles as I can visual the distance and easily place minutes per mile against that. Once races start stating distances in KM I just start guessing. Or maybe I'm just a bit thick!