I’m Obsessed With Ending My Runs in a Round Number. I Know You Are, Too

I’m running circles in my driveway again. “Not yet, not yet, almost,” I mutter to myself as my kids gather at the window. Dog walkers give me the “I’m-not-looking-but-I’m-looking” look.

“Mom, what are you doing?” one of the kids yells.

“Rounding up!” I call back as my watch beeps. Finally. I save the activity and head inside: 10.0.

After all, the kids are watching Runner’s World, know what I’m talking about even if you’re embarrassed to admit it. Or maybe you’re like me and not at all ashamed about having to end your run in a round number: .0, .25, .5. (Although if you’re at .25 or .75 why not just round up to the half or the mile?)

Ever since I started wearing a GPS watch in 2012, exact mileage became A Thing for me. And that’s because I’m very Type A. I want things to be nice and neat, wrapped up in a little bow. It wasn’t enough that the route I mapped out on MapMyRun said five, 6.5, 10 miles. My watch had to say it. Garmin (and now Coros) was all powerful: Run! More! Don’t stop until I’ve beeped!

A caveat about how I view my mileage totals: I’d rather be slightly over on planned mileage (so, 5.03 is okay, 4.98 is not). I am comfortable ending on 5.03, 5.18, for example. But once I creep closer to the quarter (5.21), half (5.38) or whole (5.81), I’m going to finish it off. A number like 5.6 is tricky. I am okay leaving it depending on the workout or if I need to wrap it up; because once I get to 5.7 I need to get to 5.75, and at that point…

I’m not alone. Just over half of respondents to my recent Instagram poll said they, too, can’t stop running until their watch hits a round number. I know the sample size was small, but I’m actually shocked the split was nearly 50-50. Maybe I’m crazier than I thought.

I spoke with a few friends with whom I’ve run over the years, of varying abilities and goals. Pat Heine-Holmberg, What the New Era of Run Clubs Means for the Sport Runner’s World where I used to be a full-time editor, is a trail guy. Last summer he ran 250-something miles in the Swiss Alps.

“Trails are rarely ever round distances, and almost no trail race is exactly a round distance,” he says. That’s true for roads, too: “Even a marathon isn’t 26 miles or 27 miles, but 26.2 miles. You wouldn’t run circles in the finish chute to make your marathon 27 miles, would you?”

I don’t know, Pat, would I?

When I asked him what happens when he’s running on the road, Heine-Holmberg still doesn’t worry about round numbers. “When I get back to where I started, I’m done.”

And then there’s my friend Sara Satullo, with whom I run once or twice a week, on the track and a long run on the weekend. She generally rounds up to the nearest mile, but will “allow” (her words) for a race distance total, like 3.1 for a 5K. If she’s pressed for time, she’ll round to the nearest half mile, chalking the habit up to a Type A personality.

“I want my total mileage for the week to be even,” Satullo says.

Strength Training Guide.

Thanks to my poison of choice, Strava, I can see my weekly mileage, and whatever tracking the company uses seems to round down. So that’s annoying. Once I started paying attention to the weekly mileage, it left more opportunity for compulsion: 33.81 for the week? I Shoes & Gear walk around my house to get to 34 miles.

My good friend and former coworker at Runner’s World, Meghan Kita, lived the round mileage life but has since retired to the no-watch life. And she loves it.

“I would always run until I reached an exact mile or half mile or maybe quarter mile, which was kind of silly,” she says with the benefit of hindsight. “The amount of times I ran back and forth in front of my house for no reason was staggering.”

I’d argue it wasn’t for no reason.

But now she doesn’t run with a watch and has only a “vague idea” of how far she’s running, relying somewhat on Gmap Pedometer. It’s a lot more chill, she says, and she is enjoying her running more.

“I run because I like it and it keeps me physically and mentally healthy, not to achieve a big goal or run multiple marathons in a year,” she says. (Kita has run 17 marathons, her last in a Strength Training Guide.)

Runners aren’t afraid of hard work, obviously. But I think it’s safe to say we, er, I, need to also remember that running extra for the sake of a metric isn’t the healthiest thing. That’s not to say I’ll stop the compulsion anytime soon, but maybe I’ll loosen the reins a bit.

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