What's all this km's lark ?

PhilofCas

For those people who were born in this country (and still live here), i want to ask why km's are so often used to describe speeds and distances on this forum (and elsewhere), don't we live in a country that still uses good old Miles ??.
:?

Garybee

Because it sounds like you're faster than you really are.

PhilofCas

i honestly think that could be one rather silly reason

Smeggers

... and to pretend we're all trendy European cyclists.

(If thats not a contradiction in itself!).

ddraver

cos when your map reading each square is 1km across...thus for navigation, kph is significantly easier

untill maps get the distances between points on UK maps...which no reasnoble fold up maps do yet. I started (seriously) in France where eveything's in km and have nt yet seen any reason to switch back yet

AndyGates

Maps do it. My races - triathlon - do it.

What's wrong with rods and chains, eh?

pneumatic

Cos all the really exciting riding I do each year is abroad (France/Spain) and it is:

a. a pain to keep changing the computer over
b. easier to compare rides in one set of units
c. my choice, really.

I'd go for Kms and Euros, but I don't imagine you would agree with me there.

And yes, I was born here, yes I live here, yes I pay tax and yes I know most of the rules of cricket (although I can't stand the game, personally).

voila!

ddraver

plus i'm not all that young (23) and i ve never done any significant work in imperial measurements

miles mean nothing to me, couldnt tell you how many yards in a mile or feet in a yard (is it 3, i swear theres a rolf harris song with it in somewhere) pounds ounces, stones....etc etc no idea

CarlosFerreiro

I'm a civil engineeer and can change most distances and areas measurements in my head without much hassles, but metric units my "native" quantities, and are so much easier to work with for any calculation (except miles per gallon <> lites per100km)

Eat My Dust

pneumatic wrote:

a. a pain to keep changing the computer over

Really!! it's a pain to push a button, geez what a hard life you must have!!!

pneumatic

it's not the physical effort of pushing the button, it's knowing which one to push without causing some dreadful chain reaction that results in the odometer being wiped clean, the wheel settings being doubled, all the fuses in the house blowing and the local substation going up like a fireworks display.

Ok, I exaggerate, but I did once shut down 68 computer workstations all over Europe by failing to log out of mine with the correct sequence of keystrokes. (It was a long time ago, but the fear never leaves you!)

PhilofCas

so how many people speak in km's and how many speak in this country's unit of measure, what's the ratio ?, as you've probably guessed, i'm a mile man ! , it just seems a bit alien to me to use km's, though before anyone says it (!) i can convert them quite well

PhilofCas

ddraver wrote:

plus i'm not all that young (23) and i ve never done any significant work in imperial measurements

miles mean nothing to me, couldnt tell you how many yards in a mile or feet in a yard (is it 3, i swear theres a rolf harris song with it in somewhere) pounds ounces, stones....etc etc no idea

I'm not trying to wind you up, just purely want an understanding of your reasoning on this, my question is, 'when you first started using speeds/distances, i don't know, say as a teen riding your bike, did you really say 'i did 30 kmh today' or 'how far is it to such and such, i reckon it must be 100km', i'm genuinely puzzled why miles weren't and aren't your choice, someone needs to educate me where miles went !!!!.

Buggi

it's great to say your riding at xxx kph or you've ridden xxx amount of km, but it also means you have to ride further if you haven't started your journey. so for this reason i tell people i've ridden/got to ride 25km commute because it impresses them more but i tell myself i only have 17 miles to go because it's less painful

but i keep my computer on miles so when i pass a sign that says for example "Warwick 8 miles", then i know by my computer how far i've got left when i've ridden on a bit.

redrobbo

I like miles.. they're so rustic.

Big Red S

I work in:
mm
metres
miles
lbs

I use milimetres and metres because that's what I used all through school and uni. I use miles because that's what's on road signs, so that's what I know.
I use lbs for no apparent reason.

For many people who've gone to school recently, it's not true to say they 'should' be used to inches and furlongs - they'll have been taught in metric, with the occasional mention of these funny units that come in sixteenths.
Also, metric's much easier to teach, since, by definition, it's all powers of ten. Imperial was designed to be easy to maipulate in your head (hence the overuse of 12), but that's not needed now that most of the time you need to, there's something electronic doing it for you.

nwallace

When I'm driving I use miles cos thats what my Speedo and the signs read in

When I'm hiking I use km because thats what maps are set up in (1km squares)
When I'm cycling I use km because
1) I used it to learn the covnersions for each 10 miles and each 10 km to a useful point
2) When watching a race I can see the impossibility of me managing to average 50kmh I managed half that last night over 27k but reckon it was a fluke

I learnt the metric system at school, and I don't know the 12 or 16 times tables

When I weigh my self i use Kilos because it's easier to understand (see above)

When I measure my self i use Feet because everyone else does

I'm off to ireland in a couple of weeks and was lookngi at the AA road atlas, it's rather anoying that it uses KM in ROI and Miles in NI, for the effort required to have BOTH systems so you could easily count the distance on cross border journeys!

Eurostar

Phil, it's simple really - the cycling club/audax/old codger/CTC culture is quite strong on this site, as in most road cycling places. Audax distances are always in kms because audax, like so many other cycling traditions, is a French thing. Also, road racing distances are often quoted in kms because we Brits tend to regard massed start races as a continental thing, and we tend to pay more attention to continental races than to our own. We don't have any top ranking pro teams here anyway - can't remember when we last did. Possibly ANC in the early '80s? Anyway, generally speaking Britain's been thought of as the place for amateur racers. When you take the decision to get serious you (traditionally) go to Belgium or France. So kms end up being somehow more pukka than miles.

On the other hand time trials, which are thought of as more of a British thing, are nearly always measured in miles! So if you go to a cycling club you find yourself talking in kms one minute and miles the next. This km/miles contradiction has been the same for donkey's years and has nothing to do with metrication.

PhilofCas

cheers Eurostar, nice little subject in't it !

Mike Healey

I mourn the passing of good, old, traditional English

Fahrenheit

ddraver

PhilofCas wrote:

ddraver wrote:

plus i'm not all that young (23) and i ve never done any significant work in imperial measurements

miles mean nothing to me, couldnt tell you how many yards in a mile or feet in a yard (is it 3, i swear theres a rolf harris song with it in somewhere) pounds ounces, stones....etc etc no idea

I'm not trying to wind you up, just purely want an understanding of your reasoning on this, my question is, 'when you first started using speeds/distances, i don't know, say as a teen riding your bike, did you really say 'i did 30 kmh today' or 'how far is it to such and such, i reckon it must be 100km', i'm genuinely puzzled why miles weren't and aren't your choice, someone needs to educate me where miles went !!!!.

when i started meaningfully working with speeds distances and other measurement (which was nt really till first year of secondary school with physics rather than doing maths calculations with some laregly meaningless letters afterwards - i cannot remember doing conversions at school at all (i'm sure we did do but...))

as far as cycling itself is concerned i started off road and navigated my way around (i did alot of walking so was reasnobly good at it) and the maps were in metric so computer went into metric..before that i'm not sure i ever owned a cycle computer or cared how fast i was going...all it is now is that ive smashed my (&%$%&£"") HRM/computer i can't change it..not that i would - i'm too used to it

John Stevenson

I'm 41 and I remember Imperial measurements vanishing from use in the school system when I was about 7 or 8 years old, so I'm not surprised that ddraver thinks in metric.

Like CarlosFerreiro I can use both systems fairly fluidly (does that make us bimensurate?), but I prefer metric. The kilometre in particular is a very bike-friendly unit.

PhilofCas

Hello John, i perhaps don't use a map as much as others, though the odd time i use http://www.mapmyrun.com which i set to miles, i suppose you just stick to what you're used to and it looks like i've been stuck in my own world with miles (and Fahrenhiet Mike H. !) it's just gradually dawning on me that people do use km's in this country quite seriously.
It's been an interesting subject to talk about, thanks all.
(and fair enough ddraver, you answered that one nicely)

mea00csf

I use miles in motorised vehicles and Km's for anything exercisey, running and cycling. Not sure why, just always have. Think it's because that's what other people do so is easier to compare things like times and speeds.

Garybee

I ride with two separate groups fairly often. The testers all seem to work in MPH and the roadies in KPH, neither of them look like changing any time soon either. I do both so am never really sure which is best.

MattBlackBigBoysBMX

I use both, depending on suitability.
Always use miles for travelling by car or bike (I don't use maps on the bike, just go where I feel like) and feet and inches for describing my height, but use millimetres for measuring bits of bike or if I'm knocking up a bit of furniture.

nwallace

Mike Healey wrote:

I mourn the passing of good, old, traditional English
Fahrenheit

German,

Isacc Newton's own scale apparently (well according to my interpretation of what is said on wikipedia) influences Celcius. Which shares it's division size with Kelvin's (Was Irish). Rankine (Scottish) used the Farenheit divisions in his scale based on Absoilute Zero.

Niall

Tourist Tony

I use Imperial, but as a trained engineer I can work in either. I find Imperial more "human" in that its units derive largely from human factors. Look how many people use a cubit to check the fit of their bike.....seriously. Saddle nose to stem.
Kms I see in use for audax, as above. If I am doing anything requiring precision in measurement/calculation, I will use metric. If I want to "feel" how big something is, Imperial.

nicklouse

at this point i would like to add another measurement of Distance.

Is is a really nasty one and can cause a lot of pain. it is the Swedish Mil ( sounds like Mile but a bit harder on the i).

Its great when you ask how far to the next town and the reply is 5 Mil. (50Km).

Mark Alexander

I'm a MPH guy. If I'd been a Km person a top speed of 85kph instead of 53mph would have scard the living crap out of me.

ddraver

fair play nick......