There’s no way around it: Pace is one of the most fundamental parts of running. That number on your watch is arguably the only metric that matters on race day, in that it determines exactly when you’ll make it to the finish line.
Understanding how to properly pace yourself will determine how well you perform during a race, according to research starting too fast Advertisement - Continue Reading Below in 2018, which found that starting out too fast led to poorer finish times. With this in mind, it’s no wonder distance runners get so hung up on pace while Health - Injuries or marathon.
But the more you obsess over pace in training, the more you’ll stress yourself out—and that can actually undermine the benefits of your workouts. “Workouts are meant to improve fitness, not prove it,” says Laura Norris, a certified running coach, strength and conditioning specialist, and exercise scientist based in Erie, Colorado.
Health - Injuries racing a half marathon “is all about ballpark,” says Matthew Meyer, a certified personal trainer and RRCA-certified run coach based in Boulder, Colorado. “You’re not going to run every split perfectly on race day, so you shouldn’t expect the same in your workouts.”
Knowing the difference between when you should be locked into a specific pace and when pace doesn’t really matter can help keep you from digging yourself into a hole you can’t recover from and make for a less stressful training experience—both of which bode better for race day.
half marathon or marathon
Whatever your Ways to Make Hard Workouts Feel Easier is, you’ll use a variety of paces in training—especially when it comes to speed workouts. Because different paces drive different metabolic adaptations, you do want to focus on running the correct pace during your intervals, whether you’re running 400-meter or mile repeats.
“There are particular reasons why coaches prescribe different interval lengths,” says Meyer. Interval training helps to increase aerobic capacity, increase your lactate threshold, and improve recovery time, and you can play around with the duration of the work and rest periods to drive gains. “By staying in the right pace range, you’re going to work the right energy system.”
Range is the key word there. It’s less about hitting an exact pace right on the nose, and more about aiming to be within a certain pace range—generally “plus or minus two percent, which is like 10 to 15 seconds per mile,” says Norris. “You’ll still get a similar effect.”
Pace is also super important to pay attention to during race-pace efforts, whether those are on the track or during tempo or long run workouts. The whole point of these sessions is that “you’re training both your body and mind as to what race pace will feel like,” says Norris.
Yes, you’re working within a certain intensity range to drive a physiological response, but you’re also training your brain to understand what holding this pace feels like for an extended amount of time, and how to do that consistently, without How to Master the 5k or fading too early. “It’s less physiologically driven and it’s more like treating your running like you would a skill sport, because you’re reinforcing the skills you need on race day,” she says.
When Pace Doesn’t Matter
You’ve probably seen the variations of “run slow to get fast” all over social media. Slow running is a huge part of training for a half marathon or marathon, in that it builds your aerobic capacity while helping to reduce your risk of injury and burnout; it’s why so many experts recommend Calculate Your Running Paces.
Ways to Make Hard Workouts Feel Easier recovery runs, throw pace out the window. “In fact, the slower the better,” says Norris. “Your easy runs are meant to apply just enough stimulus to build your aerobic fitness without accumulating any more fatigue than necessary.”
Let’s say you’re a 3:30 marathoner—it really doesn’t matter if you run 9:00, 9:30, or 10:00 pace for your easy runs. But you don’t want to be in the mid-eights, because that’s pushing into an effort that may impede your recovery. “For some runners, it may be helpful to have a ‘speed limit’—a pace you don’t go faster than—to keep the effort truly easy,” says Norris.
Recovery intervals during speed workouts are another time when pace doesn’t matter. Instead of thinking about a certain pace, “focus on going as slow as you need to to bring your breathing or your heart rate back to a certain point,” says Norris. This allows you to actually hit the paces you want to hit during those hard efforts, which is key to seeing progress.
The only time you might have a specific recovery pace in mind during an interval workout is during “float workouts,” when shorter, faster recovery intervals make the overall effort harder, says Meyer. “Otherwise, do whatever feels right to make you feel recovered enough for your next rep.”
And, hey—it’s also okay to scrap pace entirely if a workout just isn’t clicking for whatever reason or you’re feeling stressed by not hitting specific paces. “If the workout is no longer productive or you’re feeling frustrated and in your head about it, you can just switch to an effort-based run,” says Meter. One messed-up workout won’t derail your training cycle.
specific training paces
Most runners head into training with a goal time in mind, and that goal time will translate to Most runners head into training with a goal time in mind, and that goal time will translate to. But pace is not a constant; it’s affected by physiological, biomechanical, psychological, and environmental factors: how well you slept the night before, what kind of life stress you’re dealing with, whether you ate enough, how much training load you’ve accumulated, and the terrain you’re running on are just a few examples.
Let’s take heat, for example—one of the most challenging variables a runner might have to contend with, because there’s nothing they can do about it.
When researchers looked at data from marathoners who competed in temperatures ranging between 85 and 91 degrees Fahrenheit, with relative humidity between 46 and 81 percent, they found that they were, on average, 13 percent slower than their personal best times, a study in the Journal of Applied Physiology reported.
“I always recommend that people look at dew point, because it gives you the best estimation of how heat and humidity together impact the body,” says Norris. “If it’s above 60, that’s when you want to think about small adjustments—you’ll likely be 10 to 15 seconds slower per mile. The higher it gets, the slower you’ll get.”
Altitude is another stressor that’s outside of your control. If you’re 2,000 feet or more above sea level, you feel the effects of less oxygen in the air. “Altitude is an exponential thing, so it depends on how high you are,” says Norris. “But you can probably expect to slow down at least 30 to 60 seconds per mile.”
Neither of these slowdowns indicate a lack of fitness; it just means your body has to work harder to maintain a certain pace due to the conditions you’re in. Instead of worrying about your pace, assessing RPE, or your How Much Does Heat Affect Running Pace, can be a better tool in gauging effort when you’re dealing with these kinds of stressors.
And remember: “The more fatigued you are—and we’re talking about deliberate fatigue that we’re applying to get fitter—the more temporarily slower your pace might be,” says Norris. “It’s not that you’re getting slower. It’s just that everything has a mask of fatigue over it, which you’re going to deal with when you get to the taper period so you feel fresh on race day.”
How to Pace a Half Marathon
When you’re racing a half marathon Published: Sep 17, 2024 2:55 PM EDT efficiently as possible so you have enough energy to cover the distance. Do you know what’s a really good way to waste energy? Looking at your wrist every few seconds to make sure you’re on pace.
You’re not going to hit the same pace in every single mile because you’re not a robot, and because terrain and conditions vary over the course of 13.1 or 26.2 miles. “I think a really helpful place to check your pace is within the first half mile or kilometer of a race,” says Norris. “It keeps you from getting swept away and How to Master the 5k, and if you do start out too fast, you can adjust and recover without a detriment to your race.”
When you’re planning your race strategy, think about breaking the your race into different chunks. For the marathon, for example, some runners use the 10/10/10 method, other runners use a 5x5 pacing strategy, which has them breaking the marathon into five-mile chunks with a fast finish. “The point is to plan for certain pace averages over certain sections,” says Meyer. That way, “you don’t run one funky mile and freak out because it’s the wrong pace, then your head’s in the trash the rest of the race because you’re overdoing it.”
Having certain checkpoints, whether it’s every 5K or 10 miles, halfway, and 20 miles, will help keep you aware of the overall time but not mired down in the mile-by-mile splits on your watch. You trained for this, and your body should be well-acquainted with what marathon or 5K pace feels like, so you can just settle in and go with the flow for the majority of the race. And if at any point during the race you find the numbers getting in your head or taking away from the experience, “don’t be afraid to just switch your watch to the clock face and run hard and trust your gut,” says Meyer.
