Treadmills tend to show speeds in miles per hour or kilometers per hour, whereas running watches (and runners) tend to work in minutes per mile or minutes per kilometer. Not many runners consider meters per second, although it's occasionally of interest to sprinters.

Our pace/speed calculator allows you to quickly between different running speeds and paces, and also finish times for 5k, 10k, the half marathon and the marathon.

Fill in any field and all the other fields will update. The conversion is automatic and instant.

You can also generate a summary of speeds/paces/finish times which, in addition to summarising the values on the page, also shows finish times for a variety of track and road races, and adds some useful (and some not so useful, but possibly interesting) speed comparisons.

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Pace/speed conversion table

The difference between pace and speed

The difference between pace and speed is that pace is measured as time per distance, and speed is measured as distance per time.

Runners tend to use pace to work how fast they're running. I.e. minutes per mile or minutes per kilometer. Although, strangely, many treadmills default to showing speed in miles per hour or kilometers per hour.

Converting between miles per hour and kilometers per hour

One mile is 1609.344 meters, and one kilometer is 1000 meters, so to convert from miles per hour to kilometers per hour we multiply by 1.60934:

kph = mph × 1.690344

To convert from kilometers per hour to miles per hour we divide by this value:

mph = kph ÷ 1.690344

Converting between minutes per mile and minutes per kilometer

This is very similar to converting between mph and kph as described above. However the calculation needs to be carried out with seconds. To convert from mins/mile to mins/km, we first need to convert minutes and seconds to seconds. They can then be converted back to minutes and seconds after the calculation has been carried out.

seconds per kilometer = seconds per mile ÷ 1.690344

To convert from mins/kilometer to mins/mile:

seconds per mile = seconds per kilometer × 1.690344

Converting speeds to meters per second

This is easily achieved by first converting distance to meters and converting hours to seconds (by multiplying by 3600, the number of seconds in an hour). Then finally dividing by the number of seconds so that the speed is given in number of meters per single second.

To convert from miles per hour to meters per second:

meters per second = (miles × 1609.344) ÷ (hours × 3600)

To convert from kilometers per hour to meters per second:

meters per second = (miles × 1000) ÷ (hours × 3600)

Carrying out the calculations in the other direction is simlar, but involves dividing the units rather than multiplying them.

To convert from meters per second to miles per hour:

miles per hour = (meters ÷ 1609.344) ÷ (seconds ÷ 3600)

To convert from meters per second to kilometers per hour:

miles per hour = (meters ÷ 1000) ÷ (seconds ÷ 3600)

Pace tables