Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay Broke the 44 Kph Speed Limit

How to Convert 10 meter Splits to Kph or Mph

This article is in response to a LAZY reader who emailed me on how to calculate or convert 10m times to miles per hour.  It is possible the reader is 9 years old and unable to do fractions, too.

In reviewing the splits from the Men’s 100m finals from Berlin World Champs, it dawned on me that both Bolt & Gay both broke the 44 Kph speed limit.

The old “record” of 0.82 seconds per 10 meters translates to 43.90 Km per hour.  Remember when the Holy Grail was 0.83 seconds?

The new WR achieved a 44.72 Kph top speed.  Tyson recorded a 0.163 20 meter segment, which translates to 44.17 Mph

How to Calculate 10 meter segments times to Kph or Mph

Kilometers per hour (Kph) is the inverse of the 10m split-time divided by 36.  That is,

Kph = 1 /  [split-time in seconds / 36 ]

Why a factor of 36?  1 Hour = 3600 seconds, and 100 decimeters = 1 kilometer

For the American audience, I added miles per hour (mph) by a factor of 1.609.  I also added how fast a 30mph, 10 meter segment would be.

Yes, it’s going to be a while before we see a 0.745 sec/10m top end speed. Or a lot of tail wind.