Originally Posted by
genejockey
But again, we use miles as the unit for distance and feet as the unit for climbing.
We do?
People use units that convey what they want to convey. If someone thinks that "I did 2 miles of climbing" gets the point across better than "I did 10,000 feet of climbing," they have license to do so. Along the same lines, I know that I've occasionally referred to power output in terms of horse power rather than watts.