I detest running. It is the most soul-crushingly monotonous recreational activity that mankind has inflicted upon itself. However with lockdowns, advancing age, limited exercise options and a fervent desire to not get a belly, it has become a necessary evil.
I now look forward to going for a run. This is temporary. But even in on a cold, grey day, it's an opportunity to absorb some daylight, catch up on a podcast and maybe even smile at another human being.
Despite going running almost every other day now, I don't cover huge distances. I average 5 to 10 km. People often seem quite impressed by that. I don't know why.
What does impress me is that whenever I'm asked how far I've run and I give an answer in kilometres, nobody asks me, "What's that in miles?" People seem to simply understand. The same universal understanding is not true when I use kilometres for anything else. For example, when giving someone directions. A significant proportion of people would ask the dreaded question.
Why then is there so much more tolerance for metric units in running?
Running is competitive. For there to be competition, there must be measurement.
The most obvious answer is that metric measurements are used for many running events. With the exception of marathons, which are still defined in miles to some extent, most other organised runs are either 5 or 10 km. It should be no surprise that I find the use of 5k and 10k irksome and inaccurate - but still, better than 3 and 6 miles. The common use of kilometres for organised runs means that it quickly becomes something people can visualise, dispelling the argument that "metric units are hard to visualise".
Another possibility is that in my experience, I've not seen a treadmill that allows you to switch from miles to km. This has a similar effect of making people comfortable with the feeling of running a kilometre.
Does this mean that running largely sits outside the metric muddle?
Well, no. I think I've either lived a sheltered life in my short months as a runner, or the people who I've spoken to during lockdown know me and accept that I'm not going to give them a distance in miles. It's actually both.
Looking through running forums, it becomes very clear that many runners in Britain actually operate in both miles and kilometres, doing a 10 km run one week and a 10 mile run the next.
There is a diversity of preference, with a narrow majority of people preferring to use kilometres over miles, and a considerable majority being happy to convert between the two to suit the occasion and audience.
The fact that people are able to switch easily between miles and kilometres raises the question of why we need to keep miles at all. Kilometres are easier to break down - 0.2 km is 200 m, 0.2 miles is a much more complicated calculation to yards (352 yards). I was naïve to think that running could be unscathed, but do take solace in the fact that it shows that if people can understand kilometres for running, they can also do so for walking or driving.
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