How far is a mile & Laps and Lengths Defined

A mile is 1760 yards,but 1500M and 1650 yd are the longest pool races so they are colloquially referred to as "a mile." So many people have confused lap with length that lap has come to mean length,except when it means 2 lengths.just talk about yards or meters instead of lengths or miles and everyone will know what you mean.

This is a very interesting thread! I didn't know a true mile measure was 5280' or 1760 yards, but now I do! Unfortunately, I feel extremely resentful that the Breckenridge Recreation Center counts a mile as 1800 yards. So by the time I make the "50 mile club" and finally get my name on the wall, does that mean I will have swum an additional 40 yards (1800-1760) x 50 miles = 2,000 yards? It should be the 51 Mile Plus Club!! And that's at high altitude! Length vs. Lap: very good question and food for thought. From now on, when I say "length", I will use a big hand gesture as a line segment. Very pronounced one way only. For "lap", I will make a big line and then a quick jerky motion, and then retrace the same imaginary line backwards to show it is indeed a two way deal. So here's on more: Do you say "yardage"? Because it could be you are swimming meters, but no one says meterage. Yardage just means how far did you go, in either yards or meters, but I have actually often answered in rounded miles. Depending on who's asking, and the dead giveaway are beginning questions like , Do you win?, are you fast, can you beat Missy Franklin, then you might want to answer in rounded miles when asked how far can you go. I would say something like, I usually swim 2 miles a workout.

The 1500M freestyle has been an international race since the 1908 Olympics. It was an obvious derivative of the standard running race of the same distance. While the US adopted the international standard of 50M for long course events in the early part of the 20th century, the 25yard pool was too ubiquitous to abandon so yards remained the standard for short course. For some unknown reason, the 1500M was commonly contested at short course events, even when the rest of the events were swam in yards. That meant the finish line was a rope hung ~10 yards from the end of the pool. In 1963, the NCCA added the extra ~10 yards to the event for the championship so they would finish at the wall. Pretty soon the "1650" became the standard long distance event swam in 25 yard pools instead of the 1500M. Swimmers sometimes called it "the mile" because it was the closest event they had to a mile.

Are you a runner or something? Swimmers don't count miles.

My youth coaches used to call a mile, "72 laps," even though they meant lengths, which is 1800 yards and a little over a mile.

Are you a runner or something? Swimmers don't count miles. Open water swimmers do. And the distance of open water swims is always advertised in miles (or kilometers). Dan

people call the 1500 meter freestyle & the 1,650 yard freestyle "the mile" but neither is technically a mile 5280 feet = 1760 yards = 70.4 lengths of a 25 yard pool 1 mile = 1609.3 meters = 64.372 lengths of a 25 meter pool = 32.186 lengths of a 50 meter pool Since fractions are hard to measure while you're swimming, just round each up, 25 yard pool 71 lengths 25 meter pool 65 lengths 50 meter pool 33 lengths There's also confusion with laps, some think of a lap as one length of a pool while others think of a lap as down and back. To clear things up, talk about lengths or specific distances.

I still hold that "lap" comes in from runners that start swimming. Born & raised swimmers have always called it lengths!

"a lap" is something that you end where you began. Dan

"a lap" is something that you end where you began. Dan That's how I've always understood it. Down and back in a pool is one lap. A quick Google search shows that's how its defined as well: Definition of a lap From there: a stage in a swim consisting of two lengths of a pool.