what's the difference between speed and pace?

[Saruma]

I know this is probably a really stupid question, but can someone explain the difference between speed and pace. I've completed W8R1 today and my Sports tracker app is telling my average pace was 6.52/km, average speed 8.7km/h. I get the km/h bit but not the pace?

[mdec Graduate]

One is how long it takes you to run a given distance, the other is how far you run in a given time.

[greenlegs Graduate]

It does look confusing! There's a missing bit ("minutes") in the pace: 6.52 minutes/km.

So, it takes you 6.52 minutes to run 1 km ("pace")

or

you can run 8.7 km in an hour. ("speed")

(Apologies if that's now obvious, but it caught me out for a while. I suspect that I sometimes use both words to mean the same thing... Hmm. I suppose in practice, if you're not mentioning the actual units, they sort of do mean the same thing - I ran that at a faster speed. I ran that at a faster pace. Interesting!)

[Saruma Graduate]

Thanks for that , I get it now! So ideally, the longer term aim is to get the pace fig 'lower' - ie run 6 minutes/km and the speed fig higher, say 10km/hr?

[mrqwest Graduate in reply to Saruma]

Yes, that would be a long term aim, but doing one achieves the other. If you're running at a faster pace and getting to 6min/km, you'll be covering more distance in an hour and pushing the speed figure up.

[Nevertoolate Graduate]

So 5k in 30 minutes would mean 10k in 1 hour (speed)

Divide 30 minutes by 5 (for each km) and you get 6 minutes for each kilometer.

That means 1 km in 6 minutes - so your pace is 6/km.

To run 5k in under 30 minutes you need to be aiming to run at a pace of less than 6/km.