Guides · Reading the distance
How to read the distance on your treadmill
Ten minutes into the run the display reads 0.87 and you are doing arithmetic instead of running. Is that most of a mile, or most of a kilometre, or something else entirely?
The distance field counts whole units and decimal parts of one unit. So 1.00 is one full mile or one full kilometre, depending on how your machine is set, and 0.60 is six tenths of that same unit. It starts at zero and climbs while the belt runs. If the number is in the hundreds or thousands and was not at zero when you stepped on, you are reading the machine's lifetime total instead of your run. Look for MI or KM beside the speed. If nothing is printed, the three checks further down settle it.
The decimal is a fraction of one unit, not a second number
Two digits after the point look like a time. They are not. A treadmill distance is an ordinary decimal, so 0.50 is half a unit and 0.75 is three quarters of one. Nothing there counts minutes or seconds.
Your 0.87 is eighty-seven hundredths of one unit, most of the way to the next whole number. The unit itself is either miles or kilometres, whichever one the machine is set to.
What your distance reading works out to
This is the same reading, taken as miles and taken as kilometres.
| Display shows | If it is miles | If it is kilometres | Landmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.25 | 402 m | 250 m | One lap of a track, in miles |
| 0.50 | 805 m | 500 m | Two laps of a track, in miles |
| 0.60 | 966 m | 600 m | Just under 1 km, in miles |
| 1.00 | 1.61 km | 1.00 km | The first whole number on the display |
| 3.11 | 5.01 km | 3.11 km | Just past a 5K, in miles |
| 5.00 | 8.05 km | 5.00 km | A 5K, in kilometres |
| 6.21 | 9.99 km | 6.21 km | Just short of a 10K, in miles |
| 13.11 | 21.10 km | 13.11 km | A half marathon, in miles |
One mile is 1.609344 kilometres. Metres are rounded to the nearest whole number.
Miles or kilometres? Three ways to tell
Every number on the display depends on one setting you cannot always see: whether the machine is in miles or kilometres. Try these in order.
- Look for the letters. Check beside the live speed first, then under the distance. MI or MPH means miles, and KM or KPH means kilometres. One pair of letters settles the whole display.
- Look for the units setting. It usually sits behind a menu or settings button. Some machines lock it behind a staff code, so if it asks for one, go to the next step.
- Let your legs answer. Set the speed to 6.0 and give it half a minute. In miles per hour that is exactly a ten minute mile. In kilometres per hour it is about a sixteen minute mile, a walk you could hold a conversation through.
The machine's top speed will not tell you. Machines set in miles top out anywhere from 12 to 16, and machines set in kilometres run from about 14 to 25, so a top speed in the mid-teens could be either.
The same speed setting, two very different runs
If you run at a different speed than 6.0, this is what the number works out to as a pace in each unit.
| Speed shows | If it is mph | If it is km/h |
|---|---|---|
| 5.0 | 12:00 /mi | 19:19 /mi |
| 6.0 | 10:00 /mi | 16:06 /mi |
| 8.0 | 7:30 /mi | 12:04 /mi |
| 10.0 | 6:00 /mi | 9:39 /mi |
| 12.0 | 5:00 /mi | 8:03 /mi |
Paces are rounded to the nearest second. To find your home speed on a machine set in kilometres, multiply it by 1.61.
The unit question comes back at the end of the run. A display reading 5.00 is either 5 miles or 5 kilometres, and 5 kilometres is only 3.1 miles. Log the wrong one and that run just gave you nearly two miles you never ran.
Your machine may be showing you more than one distance
A treadmill can carry three separate distance numbers at once, and only one of them is your run.
- Read the workout distance. This is the one you want. It sits at zero before you start and climbs while the belt moves. If your screen labels it DIS or DIST, that is just short for distance.
- Skip the lap counter. Some machines draw an oval and count laps, where one lap is a fixed quarter mile or four tenths of a kilometre. That count moves in whole laps, so read the distance field for the exact total.
- Skip the lifetime odometer. It counts every mile the machine has ever run, by every person who has used it. That total climbs into the hundreds or the thousands, and some machines flash it at power on.
A distance in the hundreds or thousands is not a broken display. Find the field that reads zero before you start, and read that one.
The label tells you what the number means. It does not tell you it is right.
Once you know the unit and the field, you have read the display correctly. Nothing has told you whether the belt actually carried you that far. Think of a basic clip-on pedometer, the kind where you enter your stride length once and never touch it again. It counts your steps and multiplies. The arithmetic is flawless. Nothing in it ever checks the ground. A treadmill's distance total works the same way, and nothing we have found inside these machines checks the belt under your feet. Reading the display right did not protect me. On one machine I run on regularly, it said 5 miles when I had really run 4, the widest gap I have caught and not a typical one, so I under-ran my marathon training.
Treadwell measures the belt instead of reading the screen. You stand on the floor beside the machine and hold your iPhone Pro over the moving belt, and its camera and LiDAR sensor give you the belt's real speed. From that you know what the 0.87 on the screen should have read. If it cannot see the belt clearly, it tells you, and the number stays as unproven as it was.
Read the belt, not the display
Get your treadmill's true belt speed in seconds, on any machine. Treadwell needs an iPhone Pro.
Scan with your iPhone Pro to get the appTested: in our tachometer tests the app read within about 2 percent of true belt speed.
Quick answers
What does 1.00 distance mean on a treadmill? It means one whole unit covered so far, and the unit is either miles or kilometres depending on how the machine is set. The two digits after the point are tenths and hundredths of that unit, so 1.00 is exactly one mile or exactly one kilometre and nothing more.
What is 0.60 on a treadmill? It is six tenths of one unit. In miles that is 966 metres, a bit over half a mile and just short of two and a half laps of a running track, and in kilometres it is 600 metres.
Is the treadmill distance in miles or kilometres? It is whichever unit the machine is set to. Look for MI or KM near the number. If nothing is printed, set the speed to 6.0 for half a minute, because in miles that is a ten minute mile and in kilometres it is a walk.
Can I change my treadmill from kilometres to miles? Sometimes. On some machines the units switch is an ordinary setting you can reach. On others it is locked behind a staff code, so you may not be able to change it at all. That depends on the brand and model, and your machine's manual is the place to find out.
Sources.
- Every manual we could read ties speed and distance to a single units setting, including Life Fitness T3.0/T3.5, Life Fitness 97Ti/95Ti, Vision Fitness Simple and Deluxe, and Matrix T4/T5. That is not the same as saying no machine anywhere separates them.
- The Vision Fitness Simple and Deluxe owner's manuals document MI and KM as the labels that identify the configuration on a display that prints them.
- That a display can label its live speed with the active unit: NordicTrack T Series 5 owner's manual, model NTL17624.0, which describes the speed field as "MPH or KPH" alongside a standard and metric setting. Other machines label differently or not at all.
- That the units setting sometimes sits behind a manager or service menu: the Matrix T3x service manual, whose engineering screens carry a units field meant for a club operator or manager, and the Life Fitness 97Ti/95Ti, where it sits in a service menu. On other machines, including the Bodycraft T1000 and SportsArt T635A, it is an ordinary user setting.
- Top speeds for machines set in miles run from 12 mph on common hotel-tier models (Precor TRM 211 and 223, Life Fitness Active Series, Vision T600) to 15 mph (Matrix T7xe owner's manual) and 16 mph (Precor TRM 885 sell sheet). Machines set in kilometres run from about 14 km/h on budget home units to 25 km/h (Technogym Excite+ Run). The Precor TRM 885, Matrix and Technogym figures come from the manufacturers' own sites. The hotel-tier and budget-home figures come from specification listings, so they corroborate rather than prove.
- A machine keeps a lifetime distance separate from the workout distance, and we take that from the Matrix T4/T5 owner's manual, which lists an accumulated distance value held for display only, and from a Sole F80/F83/F85 owner's manual, where odometer readings appear at power on. That Sole document's content is genuine, though its cover page and footer disagree on which models it covers.
- A fixed lap distance is a separate number again, and the SportsArt T635A owner's manual states that one lap equals 0.4 km or 0.25 mile.
- Nothing watches the belt's top running surface in any motorized manual we could read. That is the absence of a documented sensor there, not a claim quoted from any manual.
- The 5 miles against 4 is my own run on a machine I use regularly, reported from my own training rather than from a captured test file.
- Conversions on this page are arithmetic: one mile is 1.609344 kilometres, and 60 divided by miles per hour gives minutes per mile.