Let’s get right to it, because sadly there’s no simple way to calculate how many meters are in a mile. You’re about to walk into a jumble of decimal points and long integers, so prepare to have a bit of a mental workout before your physical one.

That’s because one mile is equal to the unruly sum of 1,609.344 meters. (We’re talking land miles here, not nautical — settle down, Ahab.)

That’s not exactly a number that’s going to be at the tip of your frontal lobe when you’re trying to plan out your running route.

How to Convert Meters to Miles

To convert meters to miles, you have to divide the number of meters by 1,609.344 to get the mile sum. (If you’re not Germanic about precision, you can simply round to 1,609.)

So, for example, if you’re competing in a 400-meter sprint, you’re running about 0.248 miles, or about a quarter mile. To go the other way, you simply multiply the number of miles by 1,609.344; so, if you’re competing in a 24-mile race, you’re running 38,624.256 meters.

How to Convert Kilometers to Miles

To make the numbers a little less daunting, every 1,000 meters equals one kilometer. So 38,626.56 meters is about 38.6 kilometers. In turn, 38.6 kilometers is roughly 23.9 miles. You get that number by employing what’s known as a the “conversion formula.”

How to Convert Miles to Kilometers

Essentially, because one mile is equal to 1.609344 kilometers, you can shorten that to 1.6 and simply multiply the number of miles by 1.6 to get the kilometers. It makes it all a little easier to keep straight, and allows for at least the chance that you can do the math in your head.

Common Running Distances in Miles, Meters, and Kilometers

To boil this all down into information you can use in your overall fitness and exercise regime, refer to this handy chart.