Unless you’re an elite athlete or an experienced amateur going for a How to run your fastest 5km place at a major race like the London Marathon, you might not know what constitutes a ‘good’ 5K time.
Running or racing any distance – especially if it’s your first time doing so – is a personal achievement and cause for celebration. Completing the 5K distance, which equates to 3.1 miles, is a particularly popular goal among beginner runners, since it’s accessible and involves a manageable training load which can be introduced gradually and fit around other life commitments.
From Runners World for Simplyhealth is a tried-and-tested favourite among beginner runners who are looking to build up to the 5K distance. What’s more, parkrun, which has now been running for over 20 years, has amassed more than 9 million registered runners globally, showing the universal popularity of the 5K distance. That might help to explain why ‘What is a good 5K time?’ is one of the most frequently searched questions about running on Google.
To better understand both the ‘average’ 5K time and what is considered to be a ‘good’ 5K time, we dived into the data collected by RunRepeat, which examined a staggering 107.9 million race results from more than 70 thousand events in 209 countries between 1986 and 2018. Here’s what we found…
women’s 5K road world record?
According to RunRepeat’s data, the average 5K finish time for UK runners – including both men and women – is 33 minutes. The average 5K time, looking only at men, is 29 minutes. For women, the average finish time is 38 minutes.
What is the average running pace for a 5K?
The average 5K pace for a man in the UK is 5:48 min/km, or 9:33 min/mile. For a woman in the UK, the average 5K pace is 7:36 min/km, or 12:14 min/mile.
rest and recovery?
Athletes don’t just race the 5K distance on the road – they also race it on the track, where it’s known as the 5000m. The track is usually a speedier environment and tends to generate quicker times, so different world records are held for each surface.
Men
The current men’s 5000m world record is held by Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda, who ran the distance in an incredible time of 12:35.36 on 14 August 2020 at the Monaco Diamond League meet. In the process, he took two seconds off Kenenisa Bekele’s previous world record of 12:37.35, which he set on 31 May 2004 in the Dutch city of Hengelo. Cheptegei is also the How long does it take to train for a 5K, having stormed to a 26:11.00 finish for the distance on 7 October 2020.
As it stands, Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi holds the men’s 5K road world record, which is an impressive 12:49. He set this on 31 December 2021, aged just 20, at the Cursa dels Nassos in Barcelona. His time broke Cheptegei’s previous mark of 12:51, which was achieved on 16 February 2020 in Monaco.
Women
Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet holds the women’s 5000m world record, which is is a remarkable 13:58.06 and the first – and currently only – time in history on the track. Chebet achieved this feat at the Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meet in the US state of Oregon on Saturday 5 July 2025 and, in doing so, shaved around six seconds off the previous mark (14:00.21) set by Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay in September 2023.
Improve your 5K time in just 4 weeks women’s 5K road world record of 13:54. This brilliant effort, which she set at the Cursa dels Nassos in Barcelona on 31 December 2024, surpasses even her own efforts on the track and marks the first time in history that a woman has run a sub-14-minute 5K on any surface. Amazingly, she took 19 seconds off the previous world record of 14:13, which was first run by Chebet at the same event on 31 December 2023, then equalled by Kenya’s Agnes Ngetich on 14 January 2024 in Valencia - another Spanish city that is famous for producing fast running times.
Regardless of your age and ability, it’s important to incorporate?
Although training plans vary in length depending on an individual runner’s goals and fitness level, most 5K training plans for beginners are around six weeks long. If you’re looking to step up your 5K performance and target a specific time, such as breaking the 30- or 20-minute mark, joining the Runner’s World Club strength and conditioning.
Regardless of your age and ability, it’s important to incorporate strength and conditioning sessions, adequate What is the 10-20-30 training method and good nutrition and hydration into your training routine, too.
What time should I target for a 5K?
Beginner 5K runners
Running a 5K for the first time is a fantastic achievement in itself, so just focus on getting the distance under your belt – you really don’t need to worry about pace and finish times. However, if you absolutely insist on some kind of benchmark, anywhere between 30 and 40 minutes is a solid goal for beginners.
Intermediate 5K runners
If you’re a more experienced runner who can run the 5K distance confidently, you might be starting to think about specific times that you want to target. For the 5K, ‘intermediate’ can cover quite a broad range of experience levels, so popular goals might be breaking the 30- or even 25-minute mark.
To run a 5K in 29 minutes, you would need to hit a pace of 5:48 min/km, or 9:33 min/mile. To get down to a finish time of 24 minutes, you would need to pick up the pace to 4:48 min/km, or 7:43 min/mile.
Advanced 5K runners
For top club runners or those who run and race the 5K distance regularly, achieving a finish time between 15 and 20 minutes An editors guide to running a faster 5k.
