KM vs Miles

[figbat]

When I go to the pub, I'll ask for a lager in a 0.568 litre glass.

Beer/cider and milk are the only things legally allowed to be sold in pints.

I’m a miles guy as most of those I ride with are miles people so it helps with integration. I will swap and change between miles and km (and feet and metres) depending on who I’m talking to though. As a child of the early 70s I was educated in metric but lived with imperial parents so have become largely bilingual.

 

[Mike_P]

It just sounds better to say you have done 50k or 100k rather than a smidge ovet 31 or 62 miles

 

[Sharky]

On our local 10 course, somebody has set up a Strava segment called "First Mike"!

Must be a new measurement system.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Kilometres sound more impressive. I use miles.

Do they. Why?

 

[Ming the Merciless]

For me I ride audaxes, and they are always in kilometres due to their origins. I leave my gps on km. Thus if I am talking about a ride I have done, then it is in km.

Nowt about trying to make it sound impressive. Can’t see why people would think that. Maybe people quote height gain in feet to sound impressive if that is the way they think? 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

 

[pippy]

I'm very able to swing both ways.

My wife, who is French, and I have been together a ba' hair(*) short of 30 years. As we visit her family several times each year - and normally travel by car - I rapidly became very familiar with thinking in Kilometres.

On the other hand if I'm in the UK and am chatting with a fellow Brit - especially one whose time on this planet has been roughly the same as mine - I will discuss matters in Mileage.

Philip.

* A versatile system of short-scale measurement used in a ubiquitous manner throughout the Scotland of my youth (except Edinburgh).

 

[Oldhippy]

I still work in miles and feet and inches.

 

[cyberknight]

Beer/cider and milk are the only things legally allowed to be sold in pints.

I’m a miles guy as most of those I ride with are miles people so it helps with integration. I will swap and change between miles and km (and feet and metres) depending on who I’m talking to though. As a child of the early 70s I was educated in metric but lived with imperial parents so have become largely bilingual.

Im a similar vintage ( well i was a late 60s kid ) i had the same upbringing where i switch between both ways although i never got my head around kg for weighing myself !

 

[postman]

Miles means smiles.
Metric means==== go on find something.

 

[Bristolian]

Being a child of the 1950's my early years were dominated by imperial measurement but that changed before I left school to metric. All the races I did were measured in miles too. Throughout my time in the Army I needed to swap between the two systems all the time and even work in both at the same time. Civilian employment in engineering was predominantly metric until I went to work in the USA where they have developed something vaguely similar to imperial, but not quite.

When driving I use whichever system is in use in the country I'm in. On the bike, I have my head unit set to imperial but have both Strava and Garmin convert to metric on upload simply because the cycling universe is predominantly metric. I do wish I could set my Garmin head unit to measure distance in miles and height in metres though as I find thinking of heights in feet rather weird.

 

[SteveH80]

Distance in metric and elevation in imperial cos the numbers are bigger 🤣
TBH the only imperial I can relate is miles (distance and speed), everything else in my head is metric.

 

[Hacienda71]

Whilst 62 miles doesn't sound as impressive as 100k I still use miles.

 

[Animo]

Road cycling is a continental sport. Everything on a road bike is measured in metric so logical to use kms.
Mountain biking istarted in america and they are backward and still use imperial measurements for everything, hence MTBing using imperial in the main.
TTing has a big UK background so tends to be a mix of metric and imperial.

But use whichever you prefer - the distance will be the same!

What tyre pressure do you run?

 

[Dogtrousers]

Personally I do all human powered distances in km, and ascent in m. Not sure why. Possibly comes from my time decades ago doing distance running* or maybe from the fact that the OS grid is metric and heights are in m so it's easy to eyeball walking distances.

Driving I use miles cos that's how the speed limits are set (in the UK at least)

I'm pretty much bilingual - having ridden a lot of 100 mile rides. But I have no clue about elevation measured in feet.

Use what you like. Neither has any real advantage unless you're doing science or engineering ... or sending probes to Mars.

* Technically, plodding.

 

[ColinJ]

What tyre pressure do you run?

I know you weren't asking me, but I use bar. I didn't know what that was in more standard metric units so I just looked it up...

1 bar = 100,000 pascals and approximately 1 atmospheric pressure at sea level.

Apparently, it is a deprecated unit, but it is handy to say that a tyre has a pressure of 5.5 bar rather than 550,000 pascals.