Running pace calculator

What it's for

«Pace» is the time it takes you to cover one kilometer: it's the figure runners use to manage their effort and plan training.

How to read it

A pace of 5:00 min/km means 5 minutes per kilometer, i.e. 12 km/h.

Why runners count backwards

Pace is a time over a fixed distance, speed is a distance over a fixed time: they say the same thing the other way round. The difference is practical: while running, the number you need is how far you are from the next kilometre, not how many kilometres you would cover in an hour, and at the kilometre marker the sum takes an instant.

There is a consequence that confuses, though: in pace smaller is better, and improvements read in reverse. Going from 6:00 to 5:30 per kilometre is an enormous improvement; going from 4:00 to 3:30 is nearly impossible, even though in both cases the difference is thirty seconds. It is why race times do not improve linearly.

The paces that actually matter in training

The easy pace is the one at which you can talk without gasping, and most of the weekly volume is built on it: almost everyone runs it too fast, and that is the mistake behind most running injuries. Threshold pace is the one you can hold for about an hour under effort, and in racing it corresponds roughly to half-marathon rhythm.

The race pace for short distances and intervals sit faster still, and are needed less often than people think. The distribution nearly every programme proposes is the same: about eighty per cent of the time easy and the rest hard, not a continuous middle ground that tires without training.

The things that move your pace and are not fitness

The gradient, which weighs more than it seems: a five per cent climb can cost forty or fifty seconds a kilometre, and the descent does not give them back. Heat, which above twenty degrees starts taking seconds and above thirty changes the race itself. And wind, which against you slows a lot and behind you helps little.

Then there is the surface: gravel, sand and trail do not compare with tarmac, and mountain runners stop looking at pace entirely, because there the reference is time and elevation. Comparing the pace of two runs done in different conditions is the fastest way to get discouraged for no reason.

When pace is not the right number

Pace says how fast you are going, not how hard you are working. On hot days, uphill or when tired, the same pace costs far more: anyone chasing it at all costs ends up training too hard on exactly the days they should slow down. The alternative references are heart rate and perceived effort.

And in a race pace should be used to avoid starting too fast, which is the commonest mistake of all. The first kilometres feel easy because they are, and what is gained in the first half is paid back with interest in the second.

Nearby tools

To move between minutes per kilometre and kilometres per hour there is Pace and speed converter, and to estimate a time over another distance Race time prediction and Race pace. For training zones Heart rate zones, and for consumption Calories burned.