Pacing

Here is information on proper pacing, especially in long distance races such as a half marathon or full marathon.  Visit the Tools section of AskRunGuy to download a sample pace chart.

Guidelines

Within a race, I’ve found it most useful to run as many miles as possible at a consistent goal pace.  The first mile or two might be at a slower than goal pace, then I settle in to running each mile at a goal pace I think I can attain for every mile the rest of the race.    

Make every effort mentally and physically to slow yourself down and not get sucked into starting the race too fast.  At the beginning there is often a lot of adrenaline, fans, excess energy, runners passing you, etc. Going out too fast is a very common mistake for beginning runners, and even experienced runners.  You end up feeling out of energy by the middle of the race or especially with 1/3 to ¼ remaining.

I do not subscribe to the concept of “banking time”  i.e., running the first few miles of the race significantly faster than goal marathon time, thereby “banking time” so that you can run slower miles later in the race.  It seems that the excess energy burned early via this method outweighs the ability to run slower later in the race.

A general rule of thumb and goal is to strive for even or negative splits, meaning running the second half of the race in the same time or faster than the first half of the race.  This can be challenging to achieve, but pacing yourself to strive for even or negative splits seems like the most efficient use of energy and fuel throughout the race.

If you conserve energy during the first half to ¾ of the race, it should be quite easy to pick up the pace and burn that conserved energy in the last part of the race via a faster pace, and still finish with a lot of extra, unused “fuel in the tank”.

Breaking Race into Sections

Another pacing technique for racing that has been helpful is to break the race down into several mini-races.  

Here is an example for a full marathon. Think of the race as six 4-mile races, plus 2.2 miles to gut out at the end.  

Hitting each of the next 4-mile marks is a nice intermediate goal to achieve, and is way less daunting than the mental aspect of “I have 25, 24, 23 miles left”.  Instead – “I have two miles left until I finish my next mini-race check in point within the race”. This leads to a much more positive mindset.

I also like the 4-mile race subsections, because the pacing calculations are quite simple to perform during the race, with goal paces in 15 second increments.  

Sample Pace Chart

Visit the Tools section of AskRunGuy to download a sample pace chart.