I ran in the Venice marathon on Sunday, and on Saturday afternoon before the run it occurred to me for the first time that the distances wouldn't be marked out in miles. That was a bit of a shock (to say the least!) as I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do any sort of accurate Km/mile conversions in my head as I was running, and I began to panic that I'd have no real idea how fast I was running.
In the end it didn't matter much, as I tried to follow the 4 hour pacers round and so didn't really have to think about timings, but if I'd not been following the pacers I think the lack of mile markers would have worried me. Even as it was I found myself confused in the latter stages, when I was *really* tired, about just how far I had left to go.
The whole thing was very well organised indeed, but with the benefit of hindsight I wonder why the organisers of marathons don't mark distances along the route in both miles and kilometers. After all the organisation involved in putting on a marathon, sticking up markers must be a relatively minor matter?
Has anyone else who's run marathons in Europe/elsewhere encountered this?
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I ran a half marathon over here and despite writing my splits in km on my hand (really hard to write 21 different times on a small sweaty hand!) got totally confused at the end and picked up my speed when I still had 3 miles to go ...
I still write my running log in miles though, although I have converted my bike computer into km ... which makes me think that I'm going faster than I really am cos 32 km/hour sounds so much more impressive than 20 miles/hour ...
Anyone got any neat mental arithmetic tricks to enable us to do the conversions in our heads (esp. when knackered at the end of a race)?
It needs a bit of preparation beforehand obviously.
You can even print off wristbands.
SB
You could split the marathon into 4 * 10K, and watch your 5/10 K splits, then there's just another 2 km to go at the end.
I have worked out both mile and kilometre markers on all my training routes, and my tendency lately has been to use the mile ones, probably because I've been trying out the '4 runs a week' plan in last month's RW, and all the timings given are in miles.
But I agree it's all a bit erratic and inconsistent.
When talking about pace measurement, I find I tend to flip from "imperial" measurements like "minutes:secs per mile" to "seconds per 400m" (i.e. track lap) and back again.
For some reason though, I've never thought to try to convert these units to "minutes:secs per kilometere", and arguably it cost me at my last 10K at Chester Zoo.
I was aware that, for my target time (the 37 mins I woefully failed to achieve), I needed to hit something like "3:40 plus a bit" per km or "just under 6 mnute miling" to achieve it, but never thought of it in terms more precise than that.
When, in the race, I found I'd reached 2K in 7:08 or 3:34 per km I remember thinking "bit too fast" and just eased back a touch. If, however, I'd been able to translate that into "5:45 per mile" I'd have certainly got the message.
Doubt whether I'd have hit my target, but maybe I'd have avoided the disintegration that ensued over the second 5K.
It still never ceases to amaze me how the UK fudges its measurements e.g. if you buy a car they will tell you what the tank holds in litres but then quote a mpg figure!
Hey MartinH - how did Frankfurt go? I've run it before, but not in the horrible weather conditions we had over the weekend. Better pick a warm weather marathon for your 3rd one!
At this rate the Daily Mail will need to start a 'Hands off our Miles' campaign.