How Far Is a K?

What’s the deal with all these “K”s runners are always talking about? I mean, everyone trains all week by measuring their miles, and then they go off on the weekend and race 5Ks and 10Ks. “K” stands for kilometer, as in a five-kilometer race. A kilometer is a metric standard of distance equal to 1,000 meters. One kilometer equals .621 miles. Europe is the epicenter of the international track and field circuit. Every summer, the best runners in the world spend June through August traveling to track meets throughout Europe to race each other. World-class track meets in Europe are like the Super Bowl is here. They often sell out more than a year in advance, with some stadiums holding more than 50,000 fans.
I ran a few of these meets in the late ’70s, and it was an incredible experience. The fans are really knowledgeable. They spend most of the distance races clapping rhythmically, stomping their feet, cheering wildly. You can’t help drawing from their energy. You just don’t see that happening at track meets in this country, which are usually more sparsely attended than a shoe-sniffing contest.
As a result, European track meets set the agenda. Because tracks are measured metrically, being 400 meters around, almost all races are in metric distances. (The main exception is the mile, which fans all over the world love.) The two main distance races are 5,000 meters, or 5K, and 10,000 meters, or 10K. Usually when people talk about track races, they give the distance in meters; when they talk about the same race on the roads, they describe it in kilometers. So a 5,000 on the track is the same distance as a 5K on the roads. Wacky, eh?
Road races used to be all kinds of strange distances: 4.7 miles, 7.1 miles, 11.6 miles, whatever. People would lay out a good course, measure it, and that’s how far the race was. But when the first running boom started in the ’70s, the new breed of runner wanted more precision. Theses runners wanted to be able to compare their times from week to week to make sure that their 5K time this month was better than it had been last month. So the standard distance races from the track were transported to the roads. Next thing you knew, runners who failed algebra could instantaneously convert miles to kilometers and back again.
But what about 8Ks, which are never run on the track? Why don’t those races lengthen their course by 47 yards and call themselves five-milers? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to know what your pace in them was that way? I don’t know. Stop asking so many questions. Just run ’em.