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Your race pace isn’t something you only encounter once you cross the start line. Both treadmill class instructors and training plans may utilize race paces for certain workouts, and even group run leaders may ask you to share your race pace to gauge where you’ll fall in the pack depending on the distance. But if you’ve never actually raced a certain distance before and have no idea what speed you can maintain for that mileage, the concept of race pace can be daunting. How are you supposed to know your mile best pace or your half marathon pace if you’ve never raced those distances? Well, here’s the good news: You can still train with race pace! Here’s what you need to know.
What is race pace?
Race pace, at its most literal, is the actual pace you can hold for a specific race effort. For example: Your 5K race pace is going to be way different from your marathon race pace, because the distance is so much shorter.
Training using a variety of race paces is essentially interval training. In a treadmill class or in a race training plan, coaches may take you through intervals alternating through efforts at mile best pace, 5K pace, 10K pace, half marathon pace, and marathon pace. If you don’t have PRs in all those distances, think about it as a way to gauge effort level—like running by perceived effort, or RPE, or even heart rate training.
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Why does race pace training matter?
Race pace training—and interval training in general—matters because you can’t always run at a steady state. Switching between fast and slower efforts can help increase your VO2 max, muscle power, and endurance; it’s actually more performance-boosting than training at moderate intensities, according to research published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
If you’re competitive, “the more you get used to the feeling of a certain pace, the more likely you’re going to be successful at those race distances,” says Amanda Nurse, an elite runner and running coach based in Brookline, MA. Running shorter distances fast also helps up your speed for longer distances—that’s why a marathoner, for example, may do 400-meter repeats at a minute faster than their goal marathon pace.
Even if you’re not competitive, “the only way to get faster in the long run is by first being able to run a faster pace in small bites,” says Matthew Meyer, a certified trainer and running coach at Mile High Run Club in New York. “From those small blocks, you build bigger blocks.” Translation: You start with 30- or 60-second efforts at a fast pace, and eventually start increasing the length of those intervals as you get more comfortable at that pace.
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How to find your race paces
You don’t need to have PRs in every distance to figure out your race pace. There are actually multiple ways to figure out what a race pace should feel like. One of the easiest ways for non-competitive runners to gauge effort is by the talk test, or how breathless you are at a certain pace. If you wear an activity tracker or heart rate monitor, you can also go by heart rate zones, based on percentages of your heart rate max, or if you prefer being low-tech, you can self-assess your rate of perceived exertion, ranking your effort level on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being no effort and 10 being all out). Here’s how those paces break down:
Mile Best: This is the hardest, high-intensity pace because you can only hold it for one hard mile. It’s a 9 or a 10 RPE during which your heart rate is about 95 percent of your max. This is an all-out, leave it all on the table, full-gas, sprint pace.
5K: “This is a high-intensity pace,” says Nurse, or an 8 or 9 RPE. If you go by conversational pace, you should not be able to talk, she adds—in fact, you should be breathless by the end of the effort. During a 5K effort, your heart rate should be at 85 to 95 percent of your max. “This isn’t a sprint, but the longer you’re there, the more it feels like a sprint,” says Meyer. If you can’t hold a 5K pace for a minute, you’re running too quick, he adds.
10K: Your 10K pace is going to be 10 to 20 seconds slower than your 5K pace, says Nurse. “It’s an aggressive pace—you might feel good at the start, but it’s going to feel more challenging the longer you hold on,” says Meyer. You may be able to eke out a word or two to your neighbor, but your breath is pretty labored. You should be running at around 80 to 85 percent of your max heart rate, and it’ll feel like an 8 out of 10 RPE.
Half marathon: “Half marathon pace is essentially a tempo effort,” says Nurse, or 25 to 30 seconds per mile slower than your 5K pace. Your breathing should be less labored here, enough that you may be able to get out a sentence or two at a time, but you should be working at about 70 to 85 percent of your max heart rate, or a 7.5 out of 10 RPE, says Meyer. “Half marathon pace is where it starts to get challenging, but you can definitely sustain it,” he adds.
Marathon: Marathon pace is aerobic, says Meyer—anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of your max heart rate, or a 6 out of 10 RPE. “You’re definitely not huffing and puffing; it’s challenging, but overall its smooth, and you could be here for a while,” he says. If you’ve run a half marathon, your marathon time would be double that plus seven minutes, says Nurse; to figure out your mile pace, convert that finish time to minutes and divide by 26.2.
Should you fib your paces?
During short efforts, it’s easy to run faster than you might be able to sustain for an actual race. There’s a difference between current race pace and goal race pace. “If you were to go out and race today, that’s your current race pace,” says Meyer.
Whether you’re running at current race pace or goal race pace depends on the type of workout and the results you’re trying to achieve, says Nurse.
Let’s say you know you can run a 9:00 pace for a 10K, but you can run an 8:30 pace for a 3-minute 10K effort in a treadmill class. “There’s nothing wrong with shooting a little higher,” says Meyer. “It’s OK to push that limit—as long as you’re not totally overreaching—because that’s how you’re going to eventually improve your current 10K pace.”
But in the beginning of training or during longer, lower-intensity efforts (like your weekend long run), you want to pump the brakes a bit and stick to your current race pace. “For at least the first few weeks of a training cycle, when you might not be able to hit your goal race pace, you want to start out conservatively at your current race paces so you can build confidence and endurance at longer intervals at your current ability,” explains Nurse.
However, “you can do shorter interval workout early on in your training at faster paces to build your anaerobic capacity and increase your VO2 max. Over time, you’ll be able to sustain those pieces for longer and enter into your goal race paces more effortlessly.”
Try this race pace workout:
“Classic ladder work is a great way to work through the paces—the shorter the effort, the faster you can work,” says Meyer. The workout itself is only 34 minutes, but with warmup and cooldown, you’ve got a solid 45-minute interval run.
- 15:00 Easy Warmup
- 4:00 @ Goal Marathon Pace
- 2:00 Recovery
- 3:00 @ Goal Half Marathon Pace
- 2:00 Recovery
- 2:00 @ Goal 10K Pace
- 2:00 Recovery
- 1:00 @ Goal 5k Pace
- 2:00 Recovery
- 4:00 @ Goal MP
- 2:00 Recovery
- 3:00 @ Goal HMP
- 2:00 Recovery
- 2:00 @ Goal 10K
- 2:00 Recovery
- 1:00 @ Goal 5k
- 10:00 Cooldown
