What is the average running speed?

Ask a group of runners how fast they go and the answers spread out, but most land within a mile or two per hour of each other. The pace people settle into on an ordinary run is remarkably stable from one day to the next, and research from wearable sensors now shows why.

If your own number looks slow next to a friend's, it probably says more about how long you've been running than about what you could do. Running speed responds well to training, and the comparisons that matter are with people of your age, sex and experience, which is how this page breaks it down.

You'll find the average running speed for everyday runs, for whole race fields and for keen runners who log their times, split by distance, age, sex and experience, plus a treadmill table that turns mph into pace. For flat-out sprinting, our page on how fast a human can run covers Usain Bolt's splits and the limits of human speed. Our page on the average walking speed covers the slower end.

The Average Run Speed on an Ordinary Day

The best everyday numbers come from runners who weren't racing. Selinger and colleagues analyzed 37,201 runs logged by 4,645 people who wore a waist-mounted running sensor paired with a phone's GPS. The runners were 16 to 83 years old, with an average age of about 44, and 38 percent were women. Here's their usual pace in every unit:

Preferred everyday running speeds from Selinger and colleagues (2022). The conversions are our arithmetic. A second method in the same paper gave slightly higher averages, 2.87 m/s for women and 3.42 m/s for men, or 6.4 and 7.7 mph.

So a typical recreational run sits at roughly an 8- to 10-minute mile. That puts the average everyday run at or a little above the 6 mph line coaches often use to separate a jog from a run, which our guide to jogging vs running explains along with what changes in your stride as you speed up.

Why Your Everyday Pace Barely Changes With Distance

You might expect people to run faster on short runs and slower on long ones. In the wearable data, most people ran at about the same speed either way. When the researchers compared the same runners across runs of different lengths, from about 1 mile up to 7, average speed held steady in all three comparisons, apart from a slowdown of 0.028 m/s on the longest runs of about 11 km. From one distance to the next, individual runners changed their speed by only about 5 percent.

The reason is energy. In the lab data the authors used for comparison, the net energy cost of each kilometer was lowest at about 2.65 m/s for women and 3.35 m/s for men. The everyday speeds of 2.74 and 3.25 m/s were statistically indistinguishable from those optimums. Most runners settle into the pace that covers a kilometer for the least energy, without anyone telling them to.

Speed also fell with age and body mass in that data, which is why the tables below split runners by age and sex. It also explains a common frustration. If every run happens at the pace that feels natural, your average running speed has little reason to rise, a point the last section of this page comes back to.

Average Running Speed by Race Distance

Race results tell a different story, because a race field includes everyone from first-timers who walk part of the course to club runners. The biggest dataset we know of comes from RunRepeat's State of Running report, which analyzed 107.9 million recreational race results from more than 70,000 events in all 193 UN member countries between 1986 and 2018, with elite runners excluded. Here are its average paces converted to speed:

Average paces from RunRepeat's State of Running report (Andersen, 2019, updated 2024). The speeds are our arithmetic.

The pattern looks backward at first. Half marathon fields average the highest speed and 5K fields the lowest, even though any single runner is faster over 5K. The difference is who enters. A 5K draws walkers, families and first-time runners, while longer races tend to draw people who have trained for the distance. Our page on how long a 5K is covers how much the crowd that turns up can move a race median.

For an individual runner, speed does fall as the distance grows. A common rule of thumb predicts a 10K time at a little over double your 5K time, and our page on how many miles a 10K is explains where that comes from. The marathon is where recreational runners slow the most. In RunRepeat's data the average marathon pace was 18 percent slower than the average half marathon pace for men and 17 percent slower for women.

Average Running Speed by Age and Gender in 67,727 Timed 5Ks

For age, the cleanest numbers come from runners who time themselves. Running Level, a site where runners log their results, keeps 67,727 qualifying 5K results from November 2020 to October 2026 after screening out implausible, duplicated and automated submissions: 53,001 from men and 14,726 from women. Its median at each age, meaning the runner faster than half of those logged, looks like this:

Running Level 5K standards at the intermediate level (faster than 50 percent of logged runners), accessed October 29, 2026. The speeds are our arithmetic.

Speed barely moves from 20 to 30, then slides gradually. By 40 the median man is about 5 percent slower than at 20 and the median woman about 8 percent. By 60 both are about 20 percent slower, and by 70 the gap is about 26 percent for men and 29 percent for women.

Women's average running speed sits about 10 to 17 percent below men's across the three datasets on this page. The gap is about 16 percent on everyday runs in the wearable data, 17 percent for the median logged 5K, and 10 to 16 percent across RunRepeat's race distances, smallest in the half marathon and marathon. Women supplied only about a fifth of Running Level's 5K results, so its women's figures carry more uncertainty. For median finish times in American 5K races by age, see the 5K page linked above.

Average Running Speed for Beginners vs Trained Runners

Within any one age group, the spread from slower to faster runners is far wider than the change from one decade to the next. Running Level's 5K standards show the spread, from runners faster than only 5 percent of those logged to runners faster than 95 percent:

Source: Running Level's overall 5K standards (identical to its age-20 row), accessed October 29, 2026. The speeds are our arithmetic.

Even Running Level's beginner level describes someone who already runs and times it. A true newcomer on a run-walk plan is slower again, closer to whole race fields, which include many walkers and first-timers: RunRepeat's average 5K speeds are 4.5 mph for women and 5.3 mph for men.

Over a 5K, most of the climb from beginner to trained is aerobic. Regular running raises the ceiling on how much oxygen you can use and lowers the oxygen cost of each stride, which is called running economy. Our review of running economy research explains how that cost is measured and what improves it. If you're near the beginner row, the next mile per hour usually comes from running more often at an easy pace before adding faster sessions.

Treadmill Speed: Where Common mph Settings Land

Treadmills show speed in mph or km/h, while most running advice talks in minutes per mile. This table converts the common settings and shows where each one sits against the averages on this page:

Paces and 5K times assume an even speed for 3.107 miles and are rounded to the nearest second.

If you run outdoors too, the belt and the road differ a little at quicker paces. Our guide to treadmill vs outside running covers when it's worth setting the treadmill to a 1 percent incline.

Average Running Speed in a Sprint

A sprint is a different scale. The middle of the pack among people who log a timed 100 m on Running Level runs it in 12.6 seconds (men) and 14.9 seconds (women), which averages out to 17.8 and 15.0 mph including the start. The fastest human ever timed, Usain Bolt, covered 20 meters of his 9.58-second world record at 27.8 mph. Our page on how fast a human can run has his official splits, the research on what limits top speed and how people compare with animals.

Why Your Easy Pace Won't Speed Up on Its Own

The wearable study carries a practical lesson. If most runners drift to the speed that costs them the least energy per kilometer, then running every session at that comfortable pace mostly holds it where it is. Your body is doing exactly what it's built to do.

To raise your average running speed, some days have to ask for something different. The recipe is well established: plenty of easy running, one interval or tempo session a week, a few short strides after easy runs and two strength sessions. Our guide on how to run faster sets out the doses and the order to add them, so this page won't repeat it.

Strength work is the easiest piece to skip, and you can do all of it at home with dumbbells or body weight. Goblet squats, split squats, step-ups, dumbbell Romanian deadlifts and calf raises, twice a week, cover the muscles that push you along.

What This Means for You

If your everyday runs sit around 6 mph as a woman or 7 mph as a man, you're right on the average. If you're slower, you're probably newer to running, older, or both. Newer runners usually speed up as weeks of consistent running add up. Compare yourself with your own age and experience rather than with the fastest person in your group.

The hard part is showing up week after week. Jim, 26, put it simply: "I kept telling myself I'd start Monday. FitCraft made me start on a Wednesday and I haven't stopped."

A workout app that keeps you motivated can take the planning off your plate. With FitCraft, your AI coach is a 3D character who demonstrates each strength exercise, calls you by name and keeps you going through the workout, while streaks, leaderboards and calendar tracking make a skipped session easy to spot.