Guides · Miles or kilometres
Is your treadmill in miles or kilometres? How to tell in ten seconds
You are travelling, and the hotel machine is nothing like the one at home. You set it to 10.0, your usual number, and three minutes in it feels like a warm-up.
Look for the unit letters first. MI or MPH means miles, KM or KPH means kilometres. If the screen shows none, open the machine's settings and find the units option. If you cannot reach the settings, set 6.0 and judge it by effort, because in miles per hour that is a ten minute mile and in kilometres per hour it is a walk.
Three ways to tell, in the order worth trying
- Look for the letters. Check beside the live speed first, then under the distance. Two letters settle the entire display, because speed and distance follow one units switch on every machine we have checked.
- Look for the units setting. It usually sits behind a menu or settings button. If it is unlocked, switch it to the unit you train in and the whole display follows. Some brands leave it open and others lock it behind a staff code, so if it asks for one, go to the next step.
- Let your legs answer. If the display tells you nothing and the settings are out of reach, set 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, which is a walk you could hold a conversation through.
The machine's top speed is not a tell. Machines shown in miles top out anywhere from 12 to 16, and machines shown in kilometres run from about 14 to 25. A machine that tops out in the mid-teens could be either.
The same number, two completely different runs
A mile is 1.609 kilometres. Read the wrong unit and your easy day becomes a race, or your race becomes a walk.
What the number on the display works out to
The same setting, read as miles per hour and as kilometres per hour.
| Display shows | Pace if it is mph | Pace if it is km/h | How far apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5.0 | 12:00 /mi | 19:19 /mi | 7:19 per mile |
| 6.0 | 10:00 /mi | 16:06 /mi | 6:06 per mile |
| 8.0 | 7:30 /mi | 12:04 /mi | 4:34 per mile |
| 10.0 | 6:00 /mi | 9:39 /mi | 3:39 per mile |
| 12.0 | 5:00 /mi | 8:03 /mi | 3:03 per mile |
| 14.0 | 4:17 /mi | 6:54 /mi | 2:37 per mile |
| 16.0 | 3:45 /mi | 6:02 /mi | 2:17 per mile |
Paces are rounded to the nearest second.
If you know your number at home in miles, multiply it by 1.61 to find the same run on a machine counting kilometres. Your 8.0 tempo becomes 12.9. Your 6.0 easy run becomes 9.7. Going the other way, divide by 1.61.
Distance carries the same trap on the way out. A display reading 5.00 at the end of your run 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.
One thing the label cannot fix
Knowing the unit tells you what the number means. It does not tell you the number is true. Some treadmills just tell the motor how fast to spin, and others read a sensor near the motor and correct to hold that number. Either way, no treadmill we have looked into checks the top of the belt, and that is the only part your foot ever lands on. The widest gap I have caught was on a machine I run on regularly. The display said 5 miles when I had really run 4, so I under-ran my marathon training. Here is what a treadmill actually measures, and here is how to check a belt with a stopwatch.
Or you can measure the belt itself. Treadwell reads its true speed through your iPhone Pro's camera and LiDAR sensor. You stand beside the machine, hold the phone over the moving belt for a few seconds, and get the speed in the unit you asked for, on a machine you have never touched before. When it cannot get a reading it trusts, it says so instead of inventing one.
Know the number and the unit
Get your treadmill's true belt speed in seconds, on any machine. Treadwell needs an iPhone Pro.
Quick answers
Is my treadmill in miles or kilometres? Look for the unit letters by the speed or the distance. MI or MPH means miles, KM or KPH means kilometres. If there are none, check the machine's units setting, and if that is locked, set 6.0 and judge it by effort, because that is a ten minute mile in miles and a walk in kilometres.
Can the speed be in miles while the distance is in kilometres? Not on any machine we have checked. Every one of them ties speed and distance to a single units setting, so one label settles the whole display. Find the letters anywhere on the screen and you know what every other number means.
How much difference does the unit make? About 1.6 times, because a mile is 1.609 kilometres. A treadmill set to 10.0 in miles per hour is a 6 minute mile. The same 10.0 in kilometres per hour is a 9 minute 39 second mile. That is the difference between a hard workout and an easy jog.
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. Which one you are standing on depends on the brand and model rather than on where the machine lives, and your machine's manual is the place to find out.
Sources.
- That a display can label its live readout 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. Scoped to that model line; other machines label differently or not at all.
- That the letters MI and KM identify the configuration: Vision Fitness Simple and Deluxe owner's manuals, which state that MI means the machine is set in miles and KM means kilometres.
- That speed, distance and weight share one units setting: eight owner's and service manuals across seven brands and sub-brands, including Life Fitness T3.0/T3.5, Life Fitness 97Ti/95Ti, Vision Fitness and Matrix T4/T5. Every manual we could read ties them together. That is not the same as saying no machine anywhere separates them.
- That the units toggle sometimes sits behind a manager or engineering menu: Matrix T3x-03 service manual, whose engineering screens carry a units field described as being for a club operator or manager, and Life Fitness 97Ti/95Ti, where it sits in a service menu. On other machines, including Bodycraft T1000 and SportsArt T635A, it is an ordinary user setting. It differs by brand and even between models inside one brand.
- Top speeds for machines shown in miles: from 12 mph on common hotel-tier models (Precor TRM 211 and 223, Life Fitness Active Series, Vision T600) up to 15 mph (Matrix T7xe owner's manual) and 16 mph (Precor TRM 885 sell sheet) on club and performance models.
- Top speeds for machines shown in kilometres: from about 14 km/h on budget home units up to 25 km/h (Technogym Excite+ Run). The Precor TRM 885, Matrix and Technogym figures come from the manufacturers' own sites. The hotel-tier ceilings and the budget-home figure come from specification listings we could read but not always fetch from a manufacturer domain, so they corroborate rather than prove.
- That nothing watches the belt's top running surface is what we found across every motorized manual we could read. It 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.
- Pace conversions on this page are arithmetic: 60 divided by miles per hour gives minutes per mile, and one mile is 1.609 kilometres.