I just went through the onboarding for the Wahoo app assignment of my “Running 3DP” which they explain here:
Overall, it seems ok, but I need to look at it a bit more. I’ll admit I was dismayed to see my results put me as a “Miler,” and it’s not that I think it’s the wrong category (again, I need to examine this more), but I just dislike the label. I run in metric doing mostly 5km and 10km efforts, and otherwise I’m doing 400m loops on a track. I want the world to move to international standards, not have an Imperial label from previous millennia.
The runner types are “Speedster, Miler, Climber, Tempo Ace, All-Rounder, and Marathoner” and if pressed, I suppose “Marathoner” works well enough, even if I think it’s a stupid uneven distance in both imperial and metric (just run 50km and call it a day if you want to go long). But the Miler label is inane and surely, we can come up with something better?
Not sure, otherwise I would have given a suggestion. I need to study the entire system and think a bit. But “Miler” means nothing to me. They could call it Snickerdoodle and it would have equal relevance. Even “kilometer-er” doesn’t tell me much as a label. Here’s what it looks like for me:
I don’t recall hearing “Tempo Ace” before, as an example, and I just did a quick search on the term. Using DuckDuckGO and the term like this:
“tempo ace” running
I only get three results, this thread is the first, the other two are non-running related. While I’ve been running for decades I’ve a bit of a lone wolf I suppose and don’t have in person running clubs I converse with, so don’t have anecdotal experience of calling someone one kind of runner versus another. It does look that at least some of these terms were made up. Even if “miler” is a common American term, I’d be surprised if it was used in the overall international community. Note the Wahoo onboarding asked about 5km, 10km, half and marathon times. It didn’t ask for my “mile pace” and I’d have been annoyed if it did.
Here’s my understanding of a list of running events as would be used in Olympics, etc. up to Marathon length as that’s the last category Wahoo uses (sorry, Ultra people), and ignoring things like “steeplechase,” “hurdles,” and “relays” for just running by a single person.
Sprints:
100m
200m
400m
Middle Distance:
800m
1500m
Long Distance:
5000m
10,000m
Road Events:
Half-Marathon
Marathon
So perhaps “Middle Distance Specialist” might be a better term for “Miler”?