Running Pace Chart with Race Finish Times

Find your pace down the left edge to read the finish time it produces at every standard race distance, along with the equivalent pace per mile and speed in kilometres per hour. Every figure holds the pace constant for the whole distance, which is the assumption to keep in mind — the last section on this page quantifies how much that assumption costs over a marathon.

Two reference points make the table easier to navigate. A 5:41/km pace is a four-hour marathon, and 6:00/km is a round 10 km/h — a 60-minute 10K and a 4:13 marathon. Most recreational runners spend the majority of their weekly volume slower than the bottom row here, which is normal and deliberate rather than a shortfall.

This is the same relationship read backwards, and it is what most people actually want: the pace a goal time requires. The last two columns give the halfway split for the marathon and the finish time the same pace would produce over a standalone half.

A detail worth noting from the last two columns: the half marathon time at marathon pace is not a realistic half marathon goal. A runner capable of a four-hour marathon should expect to race a half considerably faster than the 2:00:00 that column shows, because a half is a shorter effort. The next section is the correction for exactly that.

Every figure above assumes pace is independent of distance. It is not. The standard empirical correction is Peter Riegel's, set out in his 1981 paper: predicted time equals your known time multiplied by the ratio of distances raised to the power of 1.06. That exponent above 1.0 is the price of distance, and it was fitted to actual race results across events.

The gap grows with distance and is substantial by the marathon. A 25-minute 5K projects to 3:30:59 at flat pace but 3:59:47 under Riegel — a difference of 28:48. Over 10K the same runner loses only a couple of minutes to the correction. So a pace chart is close to exact for short races and increasingly generous as the distance rises.

Two caveats on Riegel itself. It assumes you are trained for the longer distance: a 25-minute 5K runner who has never exceeded 10 km in training will not run a four-hour marathon, no matter what the formula says. And the 1.06 exponent is an average — well-trained endurance runners fit a lower value, meaning they hold pace better, while runners with more speed than endurance fit a higher one. If you have raced two distances, the honest move is to fit your own exponent from those two results.

Three conversions cover almost everything, and none needs a calculator:

• Pace to speed. Divide 60 by your pace in minutes per kilometre. A 5:00/km pace is 60 ÷ 5 = 12 km/h.
• Kilometres to miles. Multiply pace per kilometre by 1.609. A 5:00/km pace is 8:03 per mile — the mile figure is always the larger number, since a mile is the longer distance.
• Pace to finish time. Multiply pace by distance in kilometres. A 5:00/km pace over 21.1 km is 105.5 minutes, or 1:45:30. For the marathon, multiply by 42.195.

The pace calculator does all three from any two of pace, distance, and time, and predicts finish times across race distances. If you train indoors, the treadmill speed to pace chart converts the number on the console into the same paces used here.