If you’re participating for the first time or the 41st time in any Marathon, being aware of what is a realistic pace for yourself and working towards this is the best way to maximise your chances of success.

 

by doubling your time and adding 2-3minutes to work towards a half marathon. The same formula can also be applied to predict your Marathon pace from a half marathon training run.

 

A healthy training regime is the key to achieving your pace goal; predicting your Marathon time won’t be as accurate if you haven’t run 21km in training.

This old adage rings true for runners and the best way to achieve a challenging - yet realistic - goal is to run at an even pace throughout the race. Wearing a GPS running watch will allow you to track your pace in kilometer splits. By tracking your run speed at beginning, middle and end segments, you can try to keep your pace as steady as possible so you won’t fade during the closing stages of the race. Tracking is also useful for race day when nerves, adrenaline and other runners can alter your perceptions of pace.

 

Running with a friend during training keeps you both accountable and, should you both have a similar goal time for the event, then you can help each other maintain the goal pace on race day.

 

Some marathons provide pace runners for the most popular finishing times for every 10 – 15 minutes. You can rest easy knowing that by following them, you’ll be tracking towards your pace goal. By sticking with a pace runner you can benefit from words of encouragement, which at the right time can help spur you on when you need it most, especially over the testing closing stages.  

 

Pat Carroll runs weekly running groups in Brisbane and offers online coaching as well helping hundreds of runners achieve their goals.

You can also find more at his website patcarroll.com.au or on Facebook.