Why do we say "mile" when you mean 1600?

zzzz wrote:

imperial empire wrote:

No real good explanations here yet. Still waiting for a better philosophical, cultural, or linguistic theory for this common misusage.

I tend to precise to the annoyance of some. I mean the mile when I say the mile. If I do 5x1600 on the track for a workout, I write 1600 in my log (and on strava), not mile.

Me and many others too.

zzzz wrote:

I once raced a 2 mile intramural race at UCLA. They lined us up at the start/finish line of the 400 meter track - until I spoke up and reminded the official that we were supposed to race the 2 mile. They actually had curved start lines for the mile and 2 mile on that track, and 7 tick marks painted onto the track for 440 yard splits, so we backed up and raced the actual 2 mile.

Nice. This made me slightly smile and nod my head. I always look for the 2-mile waterfall on every track I run.

4815162342 wrote:

How about this:

Why do we say 5k/10k for cross country an road races but we magically have the energy to say 5000m/10000m on the track. (If not verbal then definitely on paper)

That question answers itself. 5000/10000 versus 5k/10k makes it immediately obvious whether we're talking about the track event.

I don't buy the energy/lazy theory. Being lazy and running 1600s, miles, 5000s, 10000s, 5Ks, 10Ks, etc. is a contradiction.

Being close enough, easier to say, and a standard unit of measure in the US are pretty decent reasons to call the 1600 the mile.[/quote]Is 1:40.91 close enough to 1:41.73? Rudisha's WR is close enough to Coe's to be interchangable? Webb's and Scott's mile ARs are close enough to say they are both the current AR?Is 110 yards close enough to 100 meters. Is 220 yards close enough to 200 meters? Is 440 yards close enough to 400 meters? Is 880 yards close enough to 800 meters?As track competitors and enthusiats, 1600 and 1609.34 are not close enough.

osdfsaa wrote:

One other hypothesis is that a lot of coaches are old, and when they ran the mile, it meant 1760yds. They call the 1600 the mile because they are set in their ways and 4 laps around an outdoor track will always be the "mile" to them. Their athletes are just repeating what a figure of authority is telling them.

This is interesting, simple. I'll leave at that for now.

Bob Schul Country wrote:

Why do we say "tempo" when we mean lactate threshold?

Why do we say "interval" when we mean repeat?

Why do we say "race pace" when we mean VO2?

1/3 for me. so, no, it is not the same thing.

just thought you should know wrote:

I don't think you are going to like this, but sometimes I call 400s "quarters". Not when talking about races, but still. I hope you aren't too mad.

I think this is totally acceptable! A 400m is a quarter of a 1600m. One is great training for the other. As long as you don't call them quarter miles then you're good to go.

Many New England states run the MILE not the 1600m sooooo

Eatingbetter? wrote:

Many New England states run the MILE not the 1600m sooooo

Many more states do NOT run the mile soooooo

imperial empire wrote:

Many do this. HS does not run the mile, but we say "mile" when referring to what we know is the 1600.

Why? We're not lazy. We run. We're not imprecise. A 4:09 and a 4:10 1600 are not the same.

We're not stupid.

Why can't we say "sixteen hundred" or just "sixteen" when we know that's what we mean?

Don't do it again.

I Dont'. When I say mile I mean the mile. When I say 1600 or 1500 that's what I mean.

For years the HS coaches were saying mile to their runners and most of those kids grew up not knowing better.

The answer appeared on the second page and nobody seems to have given it any thought. While it may be something of an exercise in futility, explaining your races to folks who don't run is done more easily using miles (at least in the US), and if you're concerned enough about the difference between 1600 and 1609.344 meters (or 1 vs. 0.99419 miles) to worry about whether or not they'll get it, I think using meters would be acceptable. That, however, seems an exceedingly unlikely scenario, since the average person would have a hard time remembering the difference between someone they don't know running 4:55 and 4:25.

For the most part, I would argue that it's to make your race distance comprehensible to a NARP without being pedantic.

Oops, sorry, meant the first page, about halfway down.

My understanding is that back in the day in England when the mile was the premier distance on the track it was run on quarter mile cinder tracks (402.3 m or whatever) so now that we have shifted to the metric system we have tracks that are slightly shorter and so four laps is still the natural distance which works out to 1600 m but it's still called the mile because we don't have true quarter mile tracks anymore.

All of the tracks in America are 402.something meters. It's not the metric system here. We base everything on inches, feet and the mile. We're all arguing over nothing.

rosebyanothername wrote:

The answer appeared on the second page and nobody seems to have given it any thought. While it may be something of an exercise in futility, explaining your races to folks who don't run is done more easily using miles (at least in the US), and if you're concerned enough about the difference between 1600 and 1609.344 meters (or 1 vs. 0.99419 miles) to worry about whether or not they'll get it, I think using meters would be acceptable. That, however, seems an exceedingly unlikely scenario, since the average person would have a hard time remembering the difference between someone they don't know running 4:55 and 4:25.

For the most part, I would argue that it's to make your race distance comprehensible to a NARP without being pedantic.

Apples and oranges. The question does not concern non-running people. Runners among themselves commonly refer to 1600 meters as a mile.

Back in the day the saying was "four laps to the mile". So now any race of four laps is a mile. Even indoors.