Average Mile Time

Average mile time by age: US students, 1985

The largest set of timed one-mile runs we could trace is the 1985 National School Population Fitness Survey, run for the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. It tested a national probability sample of 18,857 public school students in grades 1 to 12. The table gives the 50th percentile of the one-mile run/walk at each age: half of the students of that age were faster and half were slower.

The survey’s youngest group is 6 and under and its oldest is 17 and over. Each student did six of the survey’s nine tests, so a few hundred of each sex did the mile at each age: 232 boys and 234 girls in the youngest group, 461 boys and 267 girls in the oldest.

In the oldest group the mean was 7:27 for boys and 10:50 for girls, slower than the medians of 7:04 and 10:22. The survey estimated that about 50 percent of girls aged 6 to 17, and 30 percent of boys aged 6 to 12, could not run a mile in under 10 minutes.

These are school students doing a fitness test in 1985, and the test was a run/walk. They are not adults, not runners in training and not today’s students.

Adults: average pace per mile

We could not find a large published set of timed one-mile runs by adults, so there is no adult row to add to the table above. What is published for adults is the average pace per mile over longer runs. A pace held for several miles is slower than the same runner’s time for one mile: by Riegel’s formula, a 5K is run about 7% slower per mile than a single mile. Read these as paces, not as mile times.

Garmin also gives the pace by age group, for men and women together:

Garmin’s figures cover runs recorded on its watches around the world, and the average run was 4.82 miles long. It does not say how many runners or which dates are included. The 5K rows are the US medians for 2015 and parkrun’s 2020 average, each divided by 3.1069 miles. The average 5K time page has those figures in full.

What is a good mile time?

Good is a judgment, not a measurement, so this page does not name one good mile time, and for adults there is no measured mile average to set a time against. Two things can be said from the figures:

• For a student, the table by age gives the middle of the group in 1985. A boy of 14 under 7:44 or a girl of 14 under 10:06 was faster than half of the students of that age.
• For an adult, a mile time can be turned into the 5K time that two formulas rate as its equal, and the 5K has measured marks: in RunRepeat’s 35 million race results half of 5K finishers were under 34:37 and one in ten was under 25:20. The calculator gives that equal 5K time for your mile.

How it works

Enter your time for one mile. A mile time is already a pace per mile, so the calculator shows it per kilometer and as a speed, then sets it beside each published figure and shows the gap.

The first rows of the list are the timed one-mile runs of US students aged 17 and over in 1985, as a median and as a mean. The rest are average paces per mile over longer runs: the runs recorded on Garmin watches, and three 5K averages turned into a pace. Choose men or women to keep that group’s figures. The count in the result is how many of the rows your time is faster than.

The second table gives the times at other distances that two standard formulas rate as equal to your mile: Riegel’s formula, which the race time predictor uses, and the Daniels and Gilbert oxygen cost model, known as VDOT.

The formula

pace per km = mile time ÷ 1.609344
mph         = 60 ÷ mile time in minutes
gap         = your time − theirs
  under zero: you are faster

Pace of a longer run
pace per mile = time ÷ miles
  a 5K is 3.1069 miles

Equal time at another distance
Riegel: T2 = T1 × (D2 ÷ D1)^1.06
VDOT:   the time at D2 with the
        same VDOT score as T1 at D1

One mile is 1.609344 km. T1 and D1 are your time and distance, and T2 is the equal time at distance D2. The VO2 max calculator shows how a VDOT score is worked out.

Worked example

A mile in 9:00, compared with everyone.

1. Pace per km: 9:00 ÷ 1.609344 = 5:36. Speed: 60 ÷ 9 = 6.7 mph.
2. Boys aged 17 and over in 1985, median 7:04: 9:00 is 1:56 slower. Girls, median 10:22: 1:22 faster.
3. Garmin runs, average pace for men 9:21 per mile: 9:00 is 0:21 faster. For women, 10:11: 1:11 faster.
4. US 5K median for men in 2015, 29:43: 29:43 ÷ 3.1069 = 9:34 per mile, so 9:00 is 0:34 faster.
5. Of the 9 rows in the list, 9:00 is faster than 7.
6. Equal 5K time: Riegel gives 9:00 × (5 ÷ 1.609344)^1.06 = 29:56. The VDOT model gives 30:08.

Limits of the data: who was counted

Each figure on this page describes the people below and nobody else. The one-mile times are from school students in 1985. The adult figures are paces over longer runs and races. None of them is a measured one-mile average for adults.

• US public school students, 1985. Public school students in a national probability sample of 18,857 US students in grades 1 to 12, tested in 1985. Each student did six of nine tests, so a few hundred boys and a few hundred girls of each age did the one-mile run/walk: 461 boys and 267 girls in the oldest group, 17 and over. Used here: the median and mean. Source: President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (1986).
• Runs recorded on Garmin watches. Runs recorded by Garmin watch users around the world. The average run was 4.82 miles long, so this is a pace held over several miles, not the time of a single mile. Garmin does not say how many runners or which dates are included. Used here: the average pace. Source: Garmin (2026).
• US 5K finishers, 2015. Finishers of timed 5K races in the United States in 2015: 7,643,600 finishes, counted by Running USA with data from Athlinks. Used here: the median. Source: Running USA (2016).
• parkrun, worldwide, 2020. Everyone who completed a parkrun in 2020, walkers included. parkrun is a free, weekly, timed 5K, not a race, and it says its events were paused around the globe when the pandemic hit that year. Used here: the mean. Source: parkrun (2021).
• 35 million results, to 2017. RunRepeat’s comparison of 35 million results from more than 28,000 races over 20 years, published in 2017. It does not list the races. Its study of American runners the same year drew on 34,680,750 results from 28,732 races, 9,989,369 of them in the 5K. Used here: the median and fastest 10% mark. Source: RunRepeat (2017).

Plates & Pace is not affiliated with any of these organizations.

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Sources

1. Reiff GG, Dixon WR, Jacoby D, Ye GX, Spain CG, Hunsicker PA. The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports 1985 National School Population Fitness Survey. University of Michigan; 1986. ERIC document ED291714. Appendix C (sample sizes and means) and Appendix D, Table 7 (percentiles for the one-mile run/walk).
2. Garmin. Trends in running: New data shows how Garmin runners hit their stride. 3 June 2026. Average pace per mile of recorded runs, by sex and by age group.
3. Running USA. 2016 State of the Sport: U.S. Road Race Trends. 5 May 2016. Finishers and median times in 2015, by distance and sex (data: Running USA powered by Athlinks). Read in the copy published by German Road Races.
4. parkrun. 17 years of parkrun. 1 October 2021. Average finish time in 2005 and in 2020.
5. Nikolova V. Compare Running Finish Times: 5K, 10K, Half Marathon, Marathon. RunRepeat; 15 November 2017, updated 1 March 2024. Percentiles from 35 million results in more than 28,000 races over 20 years.
6. Nikolova V, Andersen JJ. American Runners Have Never Been Slower (Mega Study). RunRepeat; 4 July 2017. 34,680,750 results from 28,732 races, with the number of results at each distance.
7. Riegel PS. Athletic records and human endurance. American Scientist. 1981;69(3):285-290. The formula for equal times at other distances.
8. Daniels J, Gilbert J. Oxygen Power: Performance Tables for Distance Runners. 1979. The oxygen cost model behind VDOT.
9. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), Special Publication 811, Appendix B.9: 1 mile = 1.609344 km exactly.