Runners generally think in pace — how long it takes to cover a fixed distance, like 8:00 per mile or 5:00 per km. Treadmills and some GPS watches often default to speed instead — how far you cover in a fixed time, like 7.5 mph or 12 km/h. They describe the same effort, just inverted, which is why a treadmill display and your own sense of "pace" can feel disconnected until you know the conversion.
Since a mile is 1.60934 km, converting pace between the two is a single multiplication:
For example: a 5:00/km pace × 1.60934 = 8.047 minutes per mile, which is 8 minutes and about 3 seconds — commonly written 8:03/mile. Working the other direction, an 8:00/mile pace ÷ 1.60934 ≈ 4:58/km.
For an exact figure on any specific pace, the Speed category on the UnitDial converter handles the underlying distance conversion directly.
| Pace (min/km) | Pace (min/mile) | 5K | 10K | Half Marathon | Marathon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4:00 | 6:26 | 20:00 | 40:00 | 1:24:23 | 2:48:47 |
| 4:30 | 7:15 | 22:30 | 45:00 | 1:34:56 | 3:09:53 |
| 5:00 | 8:03 | 25:00 | 50:00 | 1:45:29 | 3:30:58 |
| 5:30 | 8:51 | 27:30 | 55:00 | 1:56:02 | 3:52:04 |
| 6:00 | 9:39 | 30:00 | 1:00:00 | 2:06:35 | 4:13:10 |
| 6:30 | 10:28 | 32:30 | 1:05:00 | 2:17:08 | 4:34:16 |
| 7:00 | 11:16 | 35:00 | 1:10:00 | 2:27:41 | 4:55:22 |
Say you want to break 50 minutes for a 10K. That's a target pace of 5:00/km (50 ÷ 10). Converting: 5:00 × 1.60934 = 8:03/mile. The same pace line also gives you a 25:00 5K, a 1:45:30 half marathon, and a 3:31:00 marathon at even effort — useful for gauging what a single training pace means across race distances.
If you need speed instead of pace — for a treadmill, for instance — the relationship is simply the inverse:
A 6:00/km pace, for example, works out to 60 ÷ 6 = 10 km/h. For any other pace-to-speed conversion, the Speed category on the converter will do the arithmetic directly.