Put in the belt speed for the pace in both units, and what 5 km would take at that setting.
Estimates are for general guidance only and are not medical advice. For a personalised plan, book a free guided tour at RPM Gym.
Pace is speed turned upside down: 3,600 seconds in an hour, divided by the kilometres you cover in one. So 10 km/h is a 6:00 kilometre, 12 km/h is a 5:00 kilometre, and 14 km/h is 4:17. The console holds one form of that number and your training log wants the other.
The two imperial rows do different jobs. Miles per hour is a machine setting, for a console that reads in imperial; pace per mile is a plan figure, for a session written in miles. At 12 km/h those are 7.46 mph and an 8:03 mile, and swapping one for the other is the usual error.
The 5 km line turns a setting into a length of time before you commit to it. At 10 km/h that's thirty minutes on the belt; at 12 km/h it's 25:00. If the window is forty minutes, that row says whether the speed you fancied fits it.
What the page can't do is promise that the same number outdoors is the same run. Treadmill and overground running at a matching displayed speed have not been established as equivalent in effort, and the clearest physical reason is air resistance: outdoors you push through it, on a belt you don't. Pugh measured that cost on runners in 1970. Everything past that one mechanism is still argued over, which is why nothing above has been adjusted to compensate for it.
Pace (seconds per km) = 3600 ÷ speed (km/h) Pace per mile = pace per km × 1.609344 Speed (mph) = speed (km/h) ÷ 1.609344 Time for 5 km = pace per km × 5 No term for incline, air, surface or temperature. This is a unit conversion and it is only a unit conversion.
A treadmill set to 12.5 km/h.
A 4:48 kilometre, a 7:43 mile, 5 km in 24:00 if the belt never changes. The conversion is exact. What it is not is a claim that 4:48 on the road would feel like this one.
A 6:00 kilometre — the roundest conversion on the dial. In the other units that's a 9:39 mile and 6.21 mph, and 5 km at that setting takes 30:00.
12 km/h exactly, which comes back as 5:00 per kilometre, 8:03 per mile and 7.46 mph. Paces that don't land on a round speed are the awkward ones: at that end of the dial a single step of the belt moves the kilometre by a few seconds, with 11.4 returning 5:16 and 11.5 returning 5:13. Pick the one on the correct side of your target and stop fiddling.
It hasn't been established as the same effort, no. The one difference that is clearly documented is the air you work against outdoors and a belt takes away. Everything past it is unresolved: a 2019 meta-analysis of crossover trials found that some measures differ between treadmill and overground running while others do not, and that it can depend on the speed being tested. Which is why nobody can honestly hand you one conversion factor.
No. Pace is belt speed, so a kilometre at 10 km/h takes six minutes whether the deck is flat or steep. What the incline changes is what those six minutes cost you. For what the console's percentage means as an angle and a climb, use the treadmill incline calculator; for what it cost in calories, the treadmill calorie page has the published equations.
Multiply by 1.609344 and enter the result. Eight miles an hour is a shade under 12.9 km/h, so type 12.9 and you get a 4:39 kilometre, a 7:29 mile, and 8.02 mph back. That last figure drifting off a round 8 is the rounding to a tenth, not an error in the conversion.
Converting between them takes a second. Deciding which paces are worth a week of your training, and how many of each, is coaching. Book a free guided tour at RPM Gym in Al Manhal.