Km or miles? (Cidre not Cider) and is Strava where it's at?

[Jaco45er]

Hi

Ok bear with me, new to the road bikes, the one I bought doesn't even have suspension !!!!!

I have noticed that the vast majority of road bikers use Km instead of miles? Was just wondering why? I mean I know Km looks longer but is there another reason? Just curious.

Also, for the last few years been using Walkmeter and recently Bikebrain to record my trips. I see that Strava seems to be the overwhelmingly popular app for road bikes, is it more suited for this?

I particularly like the Walkmeter function as it records live via Facebook, which was really handy when I decided to hit the local tacks and after 11 miles ripped a tyre to shreds and had no repair kit or tools"cardinal since know". One call to the wife, she tracked me down and rescued me (surprising really, she can find a dot on the map 11 miles away, but struggles to find the kitchen most days!!!!).

All comments welcome, even if it's "stop asking stupid questions".

 

[Sambo24]

I pick my new road bike up tomorrow and I know that I'll definitely be using Strava. I've used the app previously for running and it's an amazing motivator.

As for KM or M historically I've always used miles as I know the set distances around my local town for 4, 6 and 8 mile runs. I'm pretty sure Strava is quite easy to flip between the two so I'll probably use both.

 

[numbnuts]

I'm British and it's miles

 

[on the road]

I use miles because miles is the unit of distance in Britain and I've set Strava to miles.

 

[Easytigers]

Also use miles (there are challenges on Strava though that I find are a good motivator and they're always shown in km)

 

[Rustybucket]

Miles all the way- will the tour of Britain be covered in miles I wonder...

 

[Keith Oates]

I've spent so many years now outside of the UK that I use Km automatically and even think distances in them as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Nigelnaturist]

Also use miles (there are challenges on Strava though that I find are a good motivator and they're always shown in km)

Not always the CTS one is in miles.
@Jaco45er you can set the units in either or, and flip I ride in imperial but ride to metric distances 20,30,40,50Km ect..
My spreadsheet shows both if I need it in one or the other.
Certain other things are easier in metric like avg gradients of hills, meters climbed/meters travelled.
The only good thing strava is any use for is to show people your ride, and segment times, the rest of the info isn't very accurate.

 

[Easytigers]

Not always the CTS one is in miles.
@Jaco45er you can set the units in either or, and flip I ride in imperial but ride to metric distances 20,30,40,50Km ect..
My spreadsheet shows both if I need it in one or the other.
Certain other things are easier in metric like avg gradients of hills, meters climbed/meters travelled.
The only good thing strava is any use for is to show people your ride, and segment times, the rest of the info isn't very accurate.

I didn't know that!!! Thanks Nigel...I never noticed when I've seen the milestone badges (just goes to show how observant I am!!!)

 

[Jaco45er]

Not always the CTS one is in miles.
@Jaco45er you can set the units in either or, and flip I ride in imperial but ride to metric distances 20,30,40,50Km ect..
My spreadsheet shows both if I need it in one or the other.
Certain other things are easier in metric like avg gradients of hills, meters climbed/meters travelled.
The only good thing strava is any use for is to show people your ride, and segment times, the rest of the info isn't very accurate.

Hi Nigel, so if you are not too interested in competing with others on certain sections of your ride? Then Walkmeter is better? I've found Walkmeter to be very accurate.

Thanks for all the replies, now when you pop to the grocers, do you buy bananas by the pound or kilo? Joking

 

[the_mikey]

I use km and convert to miles if necessary, I find it much more useful personally to work with km than miles, mostly because the km is a smaller unit, switching to miles on my gps is psychologically worse than having no gps at all, but then this is down to having always used km to measure cycling performance.

 

[BSRU]

I use km because I know what 0.37km is(370 metres) whereas I have no idea what 0.37miles is.
Plus miles is so last millennium

 

[Nigelnaturist]

Hi Nigel, so if you are not too interested in competing with others on certain sections of your ride? Then Walkmeter is better? I've found Walkmeter to be very accurate.

Thanks for all the replies, now when you pop to the grocers, do you buy bananas by the pound or kilo? Joking

I use ride with gps (rwgps), mainly for elevation correction, but even that I think is a little high, but as I have used it from the out set, I use it for consistency to compare ride to ride data (elevation, ft climb per mile ect).
Using strava is just simple a matter of of uploading and looking, so it's no real hardship, and it is interesting to see.
What I did though at the beginning of the year was to follow some riders in my area that where doing similar times to myself at that time, and I have set the default view to show those I follow, makes it a little more interesting than the same top riders being on top of a table.

 

[Nigelnaturist]

I use km because I know what 0.37km is(370 metres) whereas I have no idea what 0.37miles is.
Plus miles is so last millennium

But I know exactly how much a foot and a yard is, and visualise how far something is away, 0.37 of a mile is a 1/3 of a mile or about 1 1/2 mins riding.

 

[Hill Wimp]

Having been educated in the last millenium and saw decimalisation come in i am a miles girl.This is despite travelling and cycling abroad a lot. I also use mapmyride to record all i need. If you need motivation i understand Strava is good but i agree with Nigel it can also be wildly inaccurate and give people a false idea of what they have done.

If you are happy with what you have used before when running why change?