Walking can offer a wide variety of health benefits but time is also an important factor. How long does it take to walk a mile?
Your walking speed will vary because of details like age, walking surface, where you walk, physical fitness, weather, and much more.
That being said the average person walks about 3 to 4 miles per hour. At this pace, it takes 15-20 minutes to walk a mile.
This article will go over how long it takes to walk a mile and other distances at different speeds, more specific walking estimations for different ages, and convenient ways to measure how long it takes for you personally to walk a mile.
How long it takes to walk by speed
Besides wanting to know how long it takes to walk a mile at the average walking pace, you may be interested in how long it takes when you speed up or down and how long it takes to walk other distances.
| Walking Speed Distance | 2 mph (3.2 kmh) (Slow Pace) | 3 mph (4.8 kmh) (Moderate Pace) | 4 mph (6.4 kmh) (Fast Pace) | 5 mph (8.1 kmh) (Very Fast Pace) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 kilometer | 19 minutes | 12 minutes | 9 minutes | 7 minutes |
| 1 mile | 30 minutes | 20 minutes | 15 minutes | 12 minutes |
| 2 miles | 60 minutes | 40 minutes | 30 minutes | 24 minutes |
| 3 miles | 90 minutes | 60 minutes | 45 minutes | 36 minutes |
| 5 kilometer | 93 minutes | 62 minutes | 47 minutes | 37 minutes |
| 4 miles | 120 minutes | 80 minutes | 60 minutes | 48 minutes |
| 5 miles | 150 minutes | 100 minutes | 75 minutes | 60 minutes |
| 10 kilometer | 186 minutes | 124 minutes | 93 minutes | 75 minutes |
| 10 miles | 300 minutes | 200 minutes | 150 minutes | 120 minutes |
Biggest factors in walking speed
A fact that may feel annoying is that how fast you walk is hard to predict correctly. This fact can make things like predicting how long a walk will take feel like a guessing game. In turn, this makes it harder to know how much time you have to free up in your schedule for what duration for your walking sessions.
Even so, good estimations can be a helpful starting point. By taking a few important factors into account you can make your estimations more accurate.
Some of the biggest factors that influence how fast you will walk include:
- Physical fitness: The first factor that influences how fast you walk one mile is your current physical fitness level. If you are used to running miles in 7 minutes you will likely also have a fast walking speed. This results in walking a mile faster.
- Walking surface: Your walking surface can influence your walking speed in a few different ways. First of all the slope of your walking surface will matter a lot. Generally the steeper the slower you will walk. There will also be a difference between walking on a flat concrete surface vs walking in the mud.
- Age: The next factor may be a consequence of other factors but there are studies that find a relation between age and walking speed. One study estimates that per year you get older you walk a kilometer (0.62 miles) 1.2 minutes slower (1).
Estimations for walking speeds by age
One study looked at the walking speeds of 358 healthy individuals to see how different factors influence walking speed (1). The data from their measurements indicated a statistically significant difference for age.
They also found differences for gender but these were not statistically significant. This can mean that there is no difference between genders in walking speed but that would be unusual since men are typically taller. It can also mean that a larger study may be needed for more accurate data.
Another thing to note is that this data is from a 7-day free-living period. So when walking as actual exercise your average speed will likely be higher.
| Age | Speed (kmh) | Speed (mph) | Time To Walk A Mile (Minutes:Seconds) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20-29 Years | 4.82 kmh | 3 mph | 20 minutes |
| 30-39 Years | 4.54 kmh | 2.82 mph | 21:17 minutes |
| 40-49 Years | 4.54 kmh | 2.82 mph | 21:17 minutes |
| 50-59 Years | 4.43 kmh | 2.75 mph | 21:49 minutes |
| 60+ Years | 4.36 kmh | 2.71 mph | 22:08 minutes |
How to measure your personal time per mile walking
Having good estimations on how fast you walk and in turn how long it takes to walk a mile can be useful. That being said in the end there are a lot of differences between individuals. The best way to get an accurate prediction is to measure out your time on a few occasions and use these times as your personal benchmarks.
To do this you need 2 things. Something to measure how much time has passed. For this you can use basically anything that tells the time like watches or a phone or something like a stopwatch.
Secondly, you need to know how long the distance is you will walk. You can walk on a path from which you know the distance. For example, most outdoor tracks are 400 meters, slightly less than a quarter-mile.
More convenient options for this second part are using a fitness tracker, app, treadmill, or website to tell you how many miles your walk was.
If you measure these 2 pieces of information a few times you can then calculate how long it takes on average for you personally to walk a mile or any other distance.
Is walking faster healthier?
The first thing to think about is the limits of your body. Your heart and other muscles can get injured by overdoing it. A big part of a good workout schedule is being consistent and an injury can reduce the amount of exercise you can do.
Even though walking is generally a low injury risk workout you want to be aware of where your personal limits currently are.
With that in mind, if your body is able to deal with it, walking and most exercises will generally be more beneficial at higher intensities than the same duration lower intensity exercise (2).
So if you can deal with it and want to get more health benefits in a shorter amount of time you can walk faster or even consider running.
That being said, a small amount of walking, even if it is not at record speeds, can offer you important health benefits over doing nothing (3).
