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Trail Pace Calculator

Enter your trail distance and elapsed time to get your pace and speed.

How it is calculated

The tool adds hours, minutes and seconds into total seconds, T = 3600h + 60m + s, then divides by the distance D to get pace in seconds per unit: pace = T / D, rounded to the nearest second and shown as minutes:seconds (with hours if it exceeds 60 minutes). Average speed is D / (T / 3600) in units per hour. The distance unit is kilometres unless you choose miles; no conversion between the two is done, so the result is per the unit you select. Distance and total time must both be above zero, and blank time fields count as zero. It uses elapsed time including stops, so it will not match moving pace.

Worked example

A trail half marathon of 21.1 km takes 3 hours 15 minutes. Total time: 3 × 3600 + 15 × 60 = 11,700 seconds. Pace: 11,700 / 21.1 = 554.5 seconds per km, rounded to 555 seconds, or 9:15 /km. Speed: 21.1 / 3.25 hours = 6.49 km/h. The total time is displayed as 3:15:00.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Entering the finishing time as 3.15 hours when it means 3 hours 15 minutes; use the hours and minutes fields separately.
  • Leaving the unit on km when the distance is in miles, or the reverse, which changes the pace by about 60%.
  • Including a long aid-station break in the time and then comparing the pace with a flat road run, where stops are rare.
  • Reading the pace as 9.15 minutes. 9:15 means 9 minutes 15 seconds, which is 9.25 minutes.
  • Expecting hills to be adjusted for. The average pace of a hilly route stays the plain time divided by distance, and does not account for elevation.

About this calculator

Pace — time per unit distance, expressed as minutes and seconds per kilometer or mile — is simply your total elapsed time divided by the distance covered, and it's the inverse of speed (distance divided by time). For trail running or hiking, where terrain and elevation change constantly, pace over a full route is usually far less even than on a flat road, so a single average figure is a useful summary even though it hides a lot of variation.

This calculator takes your trail distance and elapsed time and returns both your pace per kilometer/mile and your average speed. Trail runners and hikers use it after a run to log training data and track fitness trends, or before an event to estimate finishing time on a course of known length based on a target or previous pace.

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