Swim Pace Calculator

Distance, m

Minutes

Seconds

Pool length, m

Result

Pace per 100 m1:40 per 100 m
Pace per 50 m0:50 per 50 m
Time per length0:25 per length
Lengths60
Speed, m/s1
Speed, km/h3.6

This result is informational only and is not professional advice.

Swimmers count hundreds, not kilometres

Works out pace per hundred metres, speed and time per length from a distance and a total time.

Runners measure pace in minutes per kilometre; swimmers use minutes per hundred metres. The reason is scale: speed in water is about four times lower, and a kilometre pace would give awkwardly large numbers.

Time per length is worth watching too: that is what the pace clock shows and what makes it possible to hold a plan through a swim.

What this calculator shows

Pace per hundred and per fifty metres
Speed in metres a second and kilometres an hour
The number of lengths and the time for one

What to keep in mind

The figure is an average across the whole distance; a real swim is almost never evenly paced.
Pool length changes the number of lengths and the split per length, but not the pace per hundred.

FAQs

What swim pace is good?

For an amateur, 2:00 to 2:30 per hundred freestyle is normal, 1:40 is good, and under a minute and a half belongs to trained swimmers.

How many lengths in a kilometre?

Forty in a 25 metre pool and twenty in a 50 metre one. Fifteen hundred metres is sixty and thirty respectively.

Why are times faster in a 25 metre pool?

Turns: pushing off the wall and gliding underwater are faster than swimming. A long-course pool has half as many of them.

How do I convert swim pace to speed?

Divide a hundred by the time in seconds for metres a second. A 1:40 hundred is exactly 1 m/s, or 3.6 km/h.

Worked example

1,500 metres in twenty-five minutes

Input: 1,500 m in 25:00 in a 25 m pool

Output: 1:40 per hundred, 60 lengths at 0:25

Note: Exactly one metre a second, a convenient reference point. A competent amateur holds 1:40 to 2:00 per hundred; elite swimmers take 1,500 metres under fifteen minutes.

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Swim Pace Calculator

Result

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