Swim Pace Calculator

Divide your total time (in seconds) by your total distance, then multiply by 100. Swim 1,000 m in 15 minutes (900 s) and you get 0.9 s per meter, or 1:30 per 100 m. The calculator does the same math in both yards and meters so you can read pace off a US or international scoreboard without converting.

Recreational adult swimmers usually land between 2:00 and 2:30 per 100 yards. Trained age-group swimmers cruise at 1:30 to 1:45 per 100. Elite open-water and pool distance swimmers hold around 1:00 to 1:10 per 100 m for kilometers at a time. The world record for 1500 m freestyle is just under 14:30, which is a 0:58 pace per 100 m.

SWOLF is short for Swim Golf. You add the seconds you took to swim one pool length to the number of strokes it took, and lower is better. A SWOLF of 30 or below is elite, 31 to 40 is good, 41 to 50 is average, and above 50 means there is plenty of efficiency to gain. Garmin, Polar, Form, and Apple Watch all log SWOLF for every length.

A short-course yard pool is 25 yd per length, a short-course meter pool is 25 m, and a long-course Olympic pool is 50 m. One yard is 0.9144 m, so a 100 yd time is about 9 percent faster than the same swimmer's 100 m time on equal effort. The calculator reports both side by side so you do not have to do the conversion by hand.

Yes. Pick Pool lengths as the unit, then enter the length of your pool (25 yd, 25 m, and 50 m are the common ones). The calculator multiplies lengths by pool length to get your total distance, so 40 lengths in a 25 m pool resolves to 1,000 m before any pace math happens.