Pace → speed

What it's for

Runners and treadmills speak different languages: pace (min/km) and speed (km/h) are two ways of saying the same thing. Here you convert from pace to speed and pace per mile.

Example

A pace of 5'00"/km equals 12 km/h. On the treadmill you set speed; on the road you usually think in pace.

Why the treadmill speaks another language

The treadmill was born as gym equipment and uses kilometres per hour, like a car; road running thinks in minutes per kilometre, because that is how you read a marker. The two numbers are joined by a division — sixty divided by the speed gives the pace — but the link is inverse, and that makes it impossible to do accurately in your head.

The practical effect is that the steps on the dial are not uniform: going from 10 to 11 km/h takes thirty-three seconds off the kilometre, going from 16 to 17 takes only thirteen. At fast speeds each step counts far less, and at slow speeds a great deal more.

The numbers worth remembering

There are few, and they cover almost everything. 6 km/h is a brisk walk, that is 10:00 per kilometre. 8 km/h is the slow jog of a beginner, 7:30. 10 km/h is exactly 6:00, and it is the most useful round number of all. 12 km/h is 5:00, 15 km/h is 4:00.

Everything else is interpolated from there: each extra kilometre per hour, above 10, takes between twenty and thirty seconds off the kilometre. Anyone holding in mind that 10 km/h equals 6:00 and 12 km/h equals 5:00 already has the two references needed to know where they stand.

A treadmill is not the road

At the same set speed, running on a belt is slightly easier: there is no air resistance and the belt helps the foot along. It is why many people set a one per cent incline, which is the correction used to make the effort comparable with outdoors.

Then there is a question of calibration: gym treadmills are often wrong, and not always slightly. A belt showing 12 may be running at 11.4, and anyone training by feel does not notice. The way to check is comparing the distance the treadmill claims with the one measured by a watch with an accelerometer on the same session.

The other units that still turn up

People who run miles think in minutes per mile, and a mile is 1.609 kilometres: an 8:00 mile pace is about 4:58 per kilometre, which is the conversion needed when reading American training plans. In the pool, swimming uses minutes per hundred metres, and in cycling speed rules, because wind makes pace a meaningless number.

In hiking and trekking, finally, hardly either is used: people think in hours and in elevation gain, because on a trail a flat kilometre and a climbing one have nothing in common.

Nearby tools

For race pace there is Pace calculator and Race pace, to estimate a time over another distance Race time prediction. For other units Length converter, and for consumption Calories burned.