Originally Posted by
WhyFi
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.
As a general rule, yes. YOU knew he didn't mean 13,200 vertical feet of ascent per lap, didn't you? And you knew that because he put it in miles, which is the unit we commonly use for distance, rather than feet, which we commonly use for altitude gain. Note that even pilots, who ascend literal miles speak in terms of feet of ascent, not miles.