Pace Unit Converter
Pace Unit Converter
Pace in one unit turned into pace in every other: seconds and minutes per kilometre, per mile, per lap and per 100 m. Pace only — pace and speed are reciprocals and cannot share one ladder of factors, and this page says why.
Pace, every unit at once
Pace ⇄ pace270 seconds per kilometre — a pace of 4:30 per km
The factors, and the one conversion this page cannot do
- 1.609344
- metres in a mile, exactly. The yard is 0.9144 m by the definition NIST records from Federal Register Notice 59-5442 of 30 June 1959, which fixed the inch at exactly 25.4 mm, and a mile is 1,760 yards. Definitional, exact, and not anybody’s regulation
- 0.4, 0.1 and 1.5
- 400 m, 100 m and 1500 m as fractions of a kilometre. The 400 m figure is a lap of a standard track measured in lane 1 at the measurement line — World Athletics Technical Rule 14.1 — and not a lap of any outer lane, which is longer
- min/km and min/mi are DECIMAL
- 4.5000 min/km is four and a half minutes, which is 4:30. It is not 4 minutes 50 seconds. The decimal and the clock reading agree only at a whole minute, and the fourth decimal place is printed here precisely so the figure cannot be mistaken for a clock
- why there is no km/h here
- because this engine’s converter multiplies by a factor, and pace and speed are reciprocals rather than scalings. 270 s/km is 13.333 km/h, and no constant multiplied by 270 gives 13.333 — the relation is 3,600 ÷ 270. A ladder holding both would convert cleanly and mean nothing. The speed is on the pace calculator instead, where it is computed rather than scaled
- a pace is not a time
- every unit here is time per unit distance. Nothing on this page converts a finishing time, which needs a distance as well — that is two different calculators, both linked below
Worked example
270 seconds per kilometre — a pace of 4:30 per km
One pace, every unit
| s/km | min/km | s/mi | min/mi | s per 400 m | s per 100 m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 180.0 | 3.0000 | 289.7 | 4.8280 | 72.00 | 18.00 |
| 240.0 | 4.0000 | 386.2 | 6.4374 | 96.00 | 24.00 |
| 270.0 | 4.5000 | 434.5 | 7.2420 | 108.00 | 27.00 |
| 300.0 | 5.0000 | 482.8 | 8.0467 | 120.00 | 30.00 |
| 360.0 | 6.0000 | 579.4 | 9.6561 | 144.00 | 36.00 |
| 480.0 | 8.0000 | 772.5 | 12.8748 | 192.00 | 48.00 |
Why pace and speed are not in the same list
| Pace, s/km | Speed, km/h | Product | Speed, mph |
|---|---|---|---|
| 180.0 | 20.000 | 3,600 | 12.427 |
| 270.0 | 13.333 | 3,600 | 8.285 |
| 360.0 | 10.000 | 3,600 | 6.214 |
| 540.0 | 6.667 | 3,600 | 4.142 |
| 720.0 | 5.000 | 3,600 | 3.107 |
A ladder of paces, and the reciprocal it leaves out
This page is about athletics — track and field, and road running — whose competition rules, technical rules and scoring tables are published by World Athletics, the body that was the IAAF until 2019. Where a figure below belongs to a particular edition of those rules, the edition is named beside it, because World Athletics revises them and a number quoted without its edition will be wrong for somebody.
Every unit on this page is a time per unit distance, which is what a pace is. Seconds per kilometre is the one the arithmetic is stored in; seconds per mile is 1.609344 times it, because a mile is 1,609.344 m exactly; minutes are seconds divided by sixty; and a lap of a standard track, 400 m in lane 1 under World Athletics Technical Rule 14.1, is four tenths of a kilometre. All five factors are definitional. None of them belongs to a governing body and none of them can change between seasons, which makes this an unusually dull converter and an unusually trustworthy one.
Pace and speed are reciprocals, not two scalings of one quantity. Speed is distance divided by time and pace is time divided by distance, so their product is fixed: a pace in seconds per kilometre multiplied by a speed in kilometres per hour is always 3,600. Ten kilometres per hour is 360 seconds per kilometre, which is a pace of 6 minutes 0 seconds, and doubling the speed halves the pace rather than doubling it. That is also why a single multiplicative unit ladder cannot hold both: a converter that offered minutes per kilometre and kilometres per hour in one list of factors would be converting between a quantity and its inverse.
So what is missing from the list is deliberate. Kilometres per hour, miles per hour and metres per second are speeds, and a speed is 3,600 divided by a pace in seconds per kilometre rather than a pace multiplied by something. There is no factor that turns 270 into 13.333, because the relation is a reciprocal and not a scaling. A converter that listed km/h beside min/km would produce a number for every input and the number would be meaningless — the same failure as a unit ladder offering a concentration beside a total quantity. The speed is computed on the running pace calculator instead, where it is a division rather than an entry in a table of factors, with the product printed beside it so a reader can check it.
The other thing this page does not do is turn a pace into a finishing time, because that needs a distance as well and a converter takes one number. The race split times calculator does that, and it takes the pace as two fields — minutes and seconds — rather than as a decimal, which is the safer way round for exactly the reason the decimal columns here carry four places. 4.5000 minutes per kilometre is 4:30. Read as a clock it looks like 4 minutes 50 seconds, and a reader who makes that mistake over a marathon is out by fourteen minutes.
Frequently asked questions
What is 4:30 per kilometre in minutes per mile?
7.2420 decimal minutes per mile, which is 7 minutes 14.5 seconds. 4:30 per km is 270 seconds per km, and 270 × 1.609344 = 434.5 seconds per mile.
Why is there no km/h or mph on this converter?
Because pace and speed are reciprocals, not two scalings of one quantity. A converter like this one multiplies the input by a factor, and no factor turns 270 seconds per kilometre into 13.333 km/h — that relation is 3,600 ÷ 270. Putting both in one ladder would give a clean number that means nothing, so the speed is computed on the running pace calculator instead.
Is 4.50 min/km the same as 4:50?
No, and this is the mistake the page is written against. 4.50 decimal minutes is four and a half minutes, which is 4:30. 4:50 would be 4.8333 decimal minutes. The columns here print four decimal places so the figure cannot be mistaken for a clock reading.
How many metres are in a mile?
1,609.344, exactly. The international yard was fixed at 0.9144 m by the 1959 definition NIST records from Federal Register Notice 59-5442, which made the inch exactly 25.4 mm, and a mile is 1,760 yards. The factor is definitional rather than measured, so it is exact.
Is a lap of a track always 400 m?
Only in lane 1, and only at the measurement line 0.30 m out from the kerb. World Athletics Technical Rule 14.1 makes the standard track 400 m there; every outer lane is longer, by about 7.67 m a lane on a 1.22 m lane width. The s per 400 m column here is a lane 1 lap.
Related calculators
References
- National Institute of Standards and Technology. “SI Units — Length”, Office of Weights and Measures, nist.gov (read 12 Oct 2026). Records the 1958 agreement by which “a conference of English-speaking nations agreed to unify their standards of length and mass” and the 1959 Federal Register Notice 59-5442 of 30 June 1959 making the inch “exactly equivalent to 25.4 mm”, with a conversion equation giving 0.9144 m to the yard. The page does not state the mile in words, so the 1609.344 m used here is 1760 × 0.9144 m and is exact by that definition rather than quoted.
- World Athletics. Technical Rules (Book C, C2.1), copy read 12 Oct 2026 carrying amendments effective 1 January 2022; about 60,000 characters of readable text, truncated before the combined-events material. Rule 14.1, “The length of a standard running track shall be 400m”, two straights and two bends of equal radii, kerb 50mm to 65mm high. Rule 14.2, the measurement “shall be taken 0.30m outward from the kerb or, where no kerb exists on a bend … 0.20m from the line marking the inside of the track”. Rule 14.4, lanes of “1.22m ± 0.01m” with “the remaining lanes … measured 0.20m from the outer edges of the lines”. Rule 14.5, eight lanes minimum at the top international competitions; Rule 14.6, lateral inclination not over 1:100 and downward inclination not over 1:1000.
- World Athletics. “Marathon” discipline page, worldathletics.org (read 12 Oct 2026; about 20,000 characters, much of it navigation). “Athletes run a distance of 26 miles and 385 yards (42.195km)”, and “this distance was standardised at 26 miles 385 yards (42.195km) in 1921”.