How to set a realistic running pace

Marathoners who fail to achieve their goal finish time almost immediately begin to question their preparation and training. In many cases, their preparation was good and appropriate, but they may have been unlucky because one of the many variables that come into play with an endurance event was not ideal that day.

Frequently, it is temperature or humidity that prevents a runner from reaching a realistic target goal. However, setting an unrealistic marathon goal finish time — even one that is just a couple minutes too fast — will lead to a toofast early pace that will undermine good preparation and great effort.

Selecting a realistic finish time should include a thorough review of your training and race results. Recent race times at different distances are valuable predictors of marathon times. There are many tables and online calculators that enable you to enter a 5K, 10K, or half-marathon time and predict a marathon finish time. As you might expect, a half-marathon time will be a better predictor for the marathon than a 5K time.

The difficulty of the race course and the raceday weather forecast must also be considered in your determination of a realistic race pace. Hilly courses, temperatures over 60 degrees and high humidity will not lead to optimal race performances.

Also valuable in choosing the right marathon pace are your long training run paces. You should develop a sense of what pace is realistic, assuming that you have been doing long runs of 10 to 20 miles for 12 to 16 weeks. We recommend that you run your long efforts with at least a few miles at the finish or, even better, the entire run at goal marathon pace.