How to measure your running mileage

The first rule of distance running is that you always round up, so 4.00001 miles is actually a 5 mile run. Once you get into double digits, odd number are optional. That means once you hit 10.0001 miles, you’re on a 12 mile run. And of course, anything over 20 miles gets rounded up to the next multiple of 5.

Now that that’s out of the way, the easiest way to figure out how far you’ve run is to use a sport watch that measures distance, either with GPS or a sensor in your shoe. Of course, using technology makes it so easy it feels like cheating. After all, when Philippides finished up at the battle of marathon, he didn’t strap on his Garmin before returning to Athens to deliver news of the victory. And given the rounding rule above, it’s a good thing he was a warrior first and not actually very much of a runner, or else today’s marathons would be 30 miles instead of 26.2.

Another option is to use a website like www.mapmyrun.com to figure out how far you went. Of course, if you can’t remember your exact route, err in favor of the longer option, and then round up as usual. For those of you who are old fashioned, a paper map and a ruler can also be used.

And finally, you can estimate your distance using a stopwatch. For example, let’s say you ran for 27 minutes and 5 seconds, and once in your life, you ran a 9 minute mile. So of course, at a 9 minute pace you would have run just a tad over 3 miles, which makes it a 4 mile run.

See? This is easy!