10K pace chart: mile and km paces from 30:00 to 1:40

The 10K is 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles. This 10K pace chart lists the pace for every finish time from 30:00 to 1:40:00 in 2-minute steps, per mile and per kilometer, so you can set a goal pace for your next race or check what a recent result was worth.

How to read the 10K pace chart

Each row is a finish time. The pace columns show the even pace that gets you there over the full 6.2 miles. Because a 10K is exactly 10 kilometers, the per-kilometer column is simple: your finish time divided by ten. A 55-minute 10K is 5:30 per kilometer.

Miles are less tidy. One second per mile adds up to about 6 seconds over the race, so if you're chasing a round number, round your pace down. US races usually mark miles; some also put up kilometer signs, so it helps to know both numbers for your goal.

Paces for common 10K goals

Watch the 45- and 50-minute rows: the rounded even pace (7:15 and 8:03) actually finishes a few seconds over the goal, so you need a second per mile faster to get under it.

The 5K split is your halfway check. At even pace, it's exactly half your goal time.

What is a good 10K time?

There's no single answer, because a good time for a 25-year-old man is a very different number from a good time for a 65-year-old woman. The fairest yardstick is age grading. USATF Masters describes it as a handicap based on age that corrects a performance to what it would have been in the athlete's prime years, expressed as a percentage, with these levels:

Run your 10K time through an age-grading calculator based on the current World Masters Athletics (WMA) tables, such as the one the USATF Masters page links to, to see your percentage. It's also a good way to track progress over the years, since the percentage accounts for getting older.

For most people, though, a good 10K time is simply one you trained for and ran well. If it's your first, finishing strong is the goal. Our 10K training plan for beginners can get you there, and if you're starting from zero, begin with Couch to 5K.

How to pace a 10K

The 10K is long enough that a fast start hurts, and short enough that you'll be working hard from early on.

• Mile 1: goal pace, not faster. Race-day nerves and fresh legs make the first mile feel easy. Check your watch and hold back.
• Miles 2 to 4: settle and hold. This is where the race is decided. Keep the effort steady and use the 5K split as your checkpoint.
• Last 2 miles: push. If you're on pace at 4 miles, you can start to speed up. Save the all-out effort for the final half mile.

Your watch will often read a bit more than 6.2 miles. Certified courses are measured along the shortest route runners could take, with a small margin added so they're never short, and GPS watches almost always overestimate race distance by at least 1%, according to a Running USA article by course measurer Doug Thurston. Over a 10K, 1% is about 110 yards: if your watch reads 1% long, you finish about 36 seconds slower than its average pace suggests at 9:39 per mile. Taking corners wide adds real distance too, so run the tangents and check your time at the mile markers.

Moving up from the 10K

Thinking about a longer race? The half marathon pace chart works the same way, and so does the marathon pace chart.