Running Pace Calculator
Pace, time or distance from the other two, with race presets and split tables. 100% free, no signup. Everything runs in your browser.
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Give this free pace calculator any two of pace, distance and time, and it solves for the third. Planning to run a 10K in 55 minutes? It tells you that is 8:51 per mile or 5:30 per kilometer. Know you can hold 9:00 miles? It tells you what that means for a half marathon. Presets for 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon load the exact race distances with one tap, everything works in both miles and kilometers, and a split table lays out your cumulative time at every mile or kilometer marker.
There is also a treadmill converter, because treadmills speak mph while training plans speak pace, and doing that conversion in your head at 6 a.m. mid-run is how mistakes happen. A 9:00 mile is 6.7 mph; now you can just set the belt and go. I built this before my own first half marathon, when I realized I had no idea what my goal time actually demanded from each mile, and the split table below did more for my pacing discipline than any gadget I owned. If you are training seriously, my calorie calculator helps you fuel the volume properly.
How to use
- Choose miles or kilometers.
- Enter any two values: your pace, your distance, or your total time.
- Or tap a race preset for 5K, 10K, half marathon or marathon to load the distance.
- Read the third value, calculated instantly.
- Scroll the split table to see your cumulative time at each mile or kilometer marker.
- Check the treadmill equivalent if you are taking the workout indoors.
Why use our running pace calculator?
The any-two-gives-the-third design matches how runners actually think, which is in three different directions depending on the day. Before a race you have a goal time and want the required pace. After a training run you have time and distance and want to know what pace you held. Browsing a race calendar you have a realistic pace and want a predicted finish. One calculator answers all three instead of making you rearrange the formula yourself.
The split table is the feature that changes race day. Knowing your marathon goal needs 10:18 miles is abstract; knowing you should pass mile 10 at 1:43:00 is actionable at the exact moment you are running past the mile 10 sign. Racers write these numbers on their arm or tape them to a bottle for a reason: mid-race arithmetic is beyond everyone, including people who are quite good at arithmetic while sitting down.
Race presets remove a surprisingly common error: the actual distances. A marathon is 26.2 miles, 42.195 kilometers, a figure with a genuinely odd history you can read about on Wikipedia's marathon page, and a half is 13.1 miles. People routinely calculate against 26 or 13 flat, and at marathon length that rounding hides more than two minutes at a 10-minute pace, which is precisely the margin that separates a sub-4:30 finisher from a heartbroken one.
Working in both miles and kilometers matters because running culture is bilingual. Parkruns and most race distances are metric, US training plans are imperial, and UK runners casually mix both in one sentence. Flip units here and the same effort reads correctly either way.
Like everything on this site, it is free, instant and private: no account, no install, nothing stored, and the math runs in your browser.
If you are working out how far to run rather than how fast, the CDC's physical activity guidance for adults sets out the weekly amounts that actually matter for health, which is a different question from race pace.
Who is this tool for?
Goal-setting for a race is the headline case. Pick your target, load the preset, and the calculator turns a dream like "sub-2 half marathon" into a concrete requirement: 9:09 per mile, passing 10K around 56:52. Having that number early shapes months of training. Before my first half I taped the splits to my water bottle, and hitting mile 8 within 20 seconds of the plan is still one of my favorite small victories.
Everyday training uses the reverse direction. You ran 4.6 miles in 42 minutes; that is 9:08 pace, and logging real paces over weeks is how you watch fitness arrive. It also keeps easy days honest, since most runners run them too fast.
Treadmill sessions rely on the mph conversion. A plan that says six times 800 meters at 7:30 per mile becomes "set the belt to 8.0", and intervals indoors suddenly require no mental math. Runners in Canada and the UK doing winter mileage indoors live in this feature from November through March.
Race-day support crews use it too. If your partner starts a marathon at 7:00 aiming for 10:30 miles, the split table tells you they should reach mile 18 around 10:09, which is the difference between catching them at the right corner and staring at strangers for 40 minutes. Pair it with my water intake calculator for the long-run hydration plan, and my BMI calculator if you are tracking general fitness alongside the running.
Frequently asked questions
Enter your goal time, pick the race preset or type the distance, and the calculator returns the required pace per mile and per kilometer, plus the full split table. That pace is the honest answer to whether the goal is realistic: compare it against what you currently hold on training runs of similar effort.
5K is 5 kilometers (3.107 miles), 10K is 10 kilometers (6.214 miles), a half marathon is 21.0975 kilometers (13.109 miles) and a marathon is 42.195 kilometers (26.219 miles). The presets use these exact figures, because rounding to 26 or 13 miles quietly corrupts every split that follows.
Pace and speed are reciprocals: divide 60 by your pace in minutes per mile to get mph. A 10:00 mile is 6.0 mph, 8:34 is 7.0 mph. The calculator does this for whatever pace you enter, so you can set the belt without doing fraction math mid-workout.
No, and this is the most common training mistake the calculator quietly exposes. Easy runs should generally sit one to two minutes per mile slower than your race pace so that hard days can actually be hard. If your easy pace and goal race pace look identical here, one of them needs adjusting.
Most distance-running wisdom favors even or slightly negative splits, meaning the second half equal to or faster than the first, because starting too fast is the classic way races fall apart. The split table gives you even splits by default; disciplined racers often plan the first miles a few seconds slower.
Yes, the math is identical for any steady-paced activity. Walkers planning charity events use the same distance presets, and the mph conversion works for any speed. Only the physiology advice differs; the arithmetic does not care how you cover the distance.
No, it converts between pace, time and distance; it does not model fatigue or fitness. A common rule of thumb is that race pace slows as distance doubles, so do not assume your 5K pace holds for a marathon. Test goal paces on long training runs, and fuel the buildup properly, which is where my calorie calculator earns its place.