Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
When is a mile not a mile ?
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
It's just a bit time-consuming, especially when you want to find a route of a specific length and have to spend ages measuring various routes only to find they're longer/shorter than you're looking for.
If you want an indication of mile markers I find marking the piece of paper with 1-mile intervals in a different colour before starting to measure the route is helpful.
But I'd much prefer some kind of electronic gadget that does this for me. John Lewis does one but I haven't been able to find it in-store and I'm not keen on the idea of buying on-line.
I'm all for metric! It's the best thing Napoleon ever did.
So you could be pottering along at a careful 30, and actually be doing 34.5. Which would be really bad news round our way as the speed cameras are multiplying like rabbits, and they're set to go off at 33mph......
I wonder if I got done if I could claim the costs back from the car manufacturer as they're bloody speedo wasn't accurate enough??
Actually, I could probably use speed cameras as mile markers, that's about how common they're becoming....
Invariably I guess from the time it takes.
So this morning did a warm up and some laps of the footy pitch as intervals and jogged home. All in all 51 minutes , so , ooooh , about 6.9 miles then......
Fatbutfit - yes we're metric here.On my road run I don't reacll seeing a single road sign marked in Kms.
BTW whats the speed limit on the motorway?
or more importantly isn't it 26 miles 385 yards ?
Duster , 6ft (183cms?), 12st 4 (80kgs?), size 11.5 (47)
I've no issue with those who want to keep using Imperial but it just seems archaic in my view!
As for 26 miles 385 yards - read on.
When the modern Olympic games were inaugurated in 1896 in Greece, the legend of Pheidippides (who ran from a battlefield at the site of the town of Marathon, Greece, to Athens in 490 B.C) was revived by a 24.85 mile (40km) run from Marathon Bridge to Olympic stadium in Athens. At the 1908 Olympic Games in London, the marathon distance was changed to 26 miles to cover the ground from Windsor Castle to White City Stadium, with 385 yards added on so the race could finish in front of royal family's viewing box. After 16 years of extremely heated discussion, this 26.2 mile distance was established at the 1924 Olympics in Paris as the official marathon distance and has stayed that way since.
So if you want to be historically correct, the correct modern marathon distance is 40km. And 26 miles 385 yards is pure Imperial bloody-mindedness!
I don't know really why I'm for metrication - it just seems much easier to use, logical and modern. (I won't even start on the pro/anti Europe/US stuff.)
Today: haul my 77kg, 1.855m body over approx 13k. Using the rule-of-thumb formula:
distance x bodyweight = kCal
=> 13 x 77 = 1000kCal used
Yippee! Time for a few more orange juices!
I'm doing the Brighton 10k on Sunday - be very interesting to see if they have mile markers as well as km markers for "head in sand" runners. I must say that when people ask me for my height/weight and I reply in metric they don't half give you a funny look!! Amazing consdiering that metric has been taught in schools for years. Years - is that metric? - just thought about that!!
Will have a pint after though or even a gill
This rant is more for my benefit than anything as I found myself with a calculator, map, piece of string and the car mileage - working out my times after finishing my run last night. If all tots up and mileage is accurate, I vary between 5.688 per mile and 7.6 depending on the distance I'm running. I even went into the Km calculations, some kind of sad!!!
My wife thinks I'm fast, I think she's fast but at the end of the day neither of us are going to set the world alight.
Just enjoy and mine's a pint of bitter or 8 with a few roll ups thrown in for good measure.
Plus if you're ever going to run a marathon or really any significant distance you'll probably want to follow someone else's training schedule and then you'll want to measure the distances run.
Dan. (Size 47)
Oh and a packet of peanuts please.
Totally DIY at the moment but might do the Chelmsford 10K so at least I can be sure that someone else has gone around with the wheely thing to measure it.
A Marathon, isn't that a Snickers now?
What about a half marathon, could that be a snack size? Does a 10K become a bite out of your mates marathon?
Additionally, perhaps this is new age-banding for races: Pre-Snickers.
Yes! The Pre-Snickers Fraternity. (We few, we happy few ...)
Suppose I'd better do some work.
"When its the mile you race over".
Those pesky course measurers will be trying their hardest to make sure the mile you race is 1761.76 yards +/- 1.76 yards (+/- 0.1%). They will also be making sure they measure the shortest possible route, they will cut all the legal corners as well. Only runners running in isolation will have a chance of running that route.
Have a look at Mike Sandford's course measurement section on the seaa.org.uk website.
Included on that site is John Jewell's seminal paper on course measurement which, I'm sorry SS, demonstrates that the wheel thingy you used is the least accurate of the "accurate methods". Depending on the speed you pushed it it will over estimate the distance by varying amounts - faster you push it the more it will spin when not in contact with the ground as goes over the bumps.
Don't get me wrong, course measurers have my admiration and they provide the guarantee that we don't less than the advertised distance.
Ye.
This thread reminds me of the aphorism:
"A man with one watch is certain of the time. A man with 2 is never sure".
It's often attributed to Confucious although I doubt they had watches in his day
Mikey