Pace and Speed Converter
Turn km/h into minutes per kilometre and back, with miles, swimming and rowing splits beside them.
12 km/h is
5:00 min/km
| Unit | Value |
|---|---|
| km/h Kilometres per hour — what you entered | 12 |
| mph Miles per hour | 7.456 |
| m/s Metres per second | 3.333 |
| min/km Minutes per kilometre | 5:00 |
| min/mile Minutes per mile | 8:03 |
| min/100 m Minutes per 100 metres | 0:30 |
| min/100 yd Minutes per 100 yards | 0:27 |
| min/500 m Minutes per 500 metres | 2:30 |
| km/h | min/km | mph | min/mile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | 10:00 | 3.73 | 16:06 |
| 8 | 7:30 | 4.97 | 12:04 |
| 10 | 6:00 | 6.21 | 9:39 |
| 11 | 5:27 | 6.84 | 8:47 |
| 12 | 5:00 | 7.46 | 8:03 |
| 13 | 4:37 | 8.08 | 7:26 |
| 14 | 4:17 | 8.7 | 6:54 |
| 15 | 4:00 | 9.32 | 6:26 |
| 16 | 3:45 | 9.94 | 6:02 |
| 18 | 3:20 | 11.18 | 5:22 |
| 20 | 3:00 | 12.43 | 4:50 |
A treadmill shows km/h. A watch shows minutes per kilometre. A swimmer counts seconds per hundred metres and a rower counts a split per five hundred. They are all the same movement, and this turns any one of them into the others.
How it works
Pace is the reciprocal of speed and nothing more: seconds per kilometre is 1000 divided by metres per second. Everything here goes through metres per second, so no two answers on the page can disagree with each other.
The number you type is read according to the unit beside it — a duration for a pace, a plain number for a speed. Every pace unit is named in minutes, `min/100 m` rather than `s/100 m`, so that the shape of the answer is in the name of the question.
Paces are rounded to the second, because a pace given to the tenth is a precision no watch and no runner has. Speeds keep three decimals, which is more than enough to convert back without drifting.
Zero is refused rather than answered. Standing still does not have a slow pace; it has no pace at all, and the arithmetic would hand back infinity instead of saying so.
Examples
| Case | Input | Result |
|---|---|---|
| A steady treadmill | 12 km/h | 5:00 /km |
| A tempo pace, the other way | 4:30 /km | 13.333 km/h |
| A swimmer's hundred | 1:30 /100 m | 4 km/h, 15:00 /km |
Frequently asked questions
Why is this not in the speed converter?
Because a pace is not a unit of speed. The unit converter moves every quantity through the base unit of its family with one factor and, for temperature, one offset — and no pair of those two numbers expresses one divided by x. Putting minutes per kilometre in a list beside knots would also mean showing a wind speed as a running pace, which is nobody's question.
How is this different from the pace calculator?
That one needs a distance and a time: it answers "I ran 10 km in 45 minutes, what was my pace?". This one needs neither. It answers "12 km/h is what pace?", which has the same answer over any distance at all.
Why does a bare number mean minutes?
Because every time field on this site reads the same way: 1:30 is a minute and a half, 1:30:00 is an hour and a half, and a bare number is minutes. It is also why the swimming unit is called min/100 m and not s/100 m — so that 1:30 rather than 90 is the obvious thing to type.
Is the mile the international one?
Yes, 1609.344 metres exactly, which it has been since 1959. The yard behind the hundred-yard pool split comes from the same agreement: 0.9144 metres exactly. Both are definitions rather than measurements, so neither can go out of date.
Why is 5:00 /km not exactly 12 km/h on my watch?
It is, to the second. Your watch is rounding a pace that is drifting from one moment to the next, and a rounded pace covers a range of speeds: anything from 4:59.5 to 5:00.5 per kilometre shows as 5:00, which is 11.98 to 12.02 km/h.
Good to know
- Arithmetic, not data. Every number on the page is derived from the one you typed and from the definition of a mile; nothing here is looked up or estimated.
- The reference table is the same conversion applied to round speeds, for recognising your own number without typing it.