[vog]

That's a straw man. Nobody argued against using minutes and hours.

This is not about blindly using plain SI units wherever possible. This is about writing for an international audience. Most people in the world don't use miles but kilometres in their everyday life. This especially important when reporting about an international event such as the marathon.

[Thrymr]

I'll admit that my comment was tongue-in-cheek and alludes to the fact that units are harder than they seem.

I suspect that Runner's World (an American magazine) knows their audience, and that they are mostly Americans (they do have some international sites [1], but I didn't see this article in a glance at the UK site).

Personally, I wish the US would just go with the metric system already, but that's another discussion.

[1] http://www.runnersworld.com/about-runners-world/internationa...

[sheepdestroyer]

The thing is, they are talking about an international push by international athletes to break world records and the 2h limit. It takes data about events in many countries and while US recognise SI system still manage to convert everything to imperial units.

I am wondering if that's wise in such an international context, when not talking about a subject taking place only in US and affecting only US citizen.

I mean, even US citizens learn the International standard at school so why not constantly use to it when it's clearly appropriate (international sport, athletes and events places)?