The Barkley Marathons

For today’s fun fact about the United States, we’re going to learn about The Barkley Marathons.

So let’s begin by talking a little bit about measurement in English. First of all we use what we call the imperial system, not the metric system. However, there are certain periods of time that we do use the metric system. For example in races, when they’re under 26 miles. When they’re under a marathon. Right.

So if you’re going to a race you might see 5k. 5k stands for five kilometers. So I did a 5 kilometer race when I was living in New York and it was on my bucket list. Crossed that off my bucket list and was very excited about it.

Someone might also do a 10k. I did a 10k. In other words, I did a 10 kilometer race. So we do use kilometers when talking about races under the 26 miles. However, when going over 26 miles I think it would be very rare to use kilometers, although you could.

When talking about driving, of course that’s a different story. We do not use kilometers. People would be very confused if you started mentioning things in kilometers because we don’t quite understand kilometers when they get to higher numbers. . .