Pacing Your Marathon

Marathon Pacing — What It’s For

When running a marathon, having a pacing strategy gives you the best chance to run well, avoid burning out, and finish strong. Without a plan, many runners start too fast — and pay for it later. 

A good pacing strategy can help you:

• Run more evenly
• Recover better after the race
• Maintain mental strength (it’s easier to overtake others in later miles)

Predicting Your Finish Time & Setting a Target Pace

• Use your latest fitness test results (or a recent race result or threshold run) to estimate a realistic marathon pace.
• For flat or easy courses under good conditions, our online pace calculator (or a pace chart) can help translate your fitness into a predicted finish time.
• Treat that predicted time as a guideline, not a guarantee. Things like weather, terrain, nutrition or how you feel on race day can change the outcome.

How to Pace on Race Day

Even Pacing with Room for Variability

• Aim to hold a steady pace throughout — small tweaks are fine (for hills, wind, temperature) but avoid wild swings.
• If conditions are difficult (hilly course, bad weather), use heart rate or perceived effort (RPE) instead of pace alone. These adapt better to external stressors. 

Example Target Zones (depending on goal finish time)

* “Threshold run pace” means your recent sustainable pace over a threshold-based test or race. 

Before You Race — Make Planning Part of Preparation

• Base your pacing on up-to-date data (fitness test or recent run), ideally done within 6–8 weeks of race day.
• If the race course is hilly, windy or warm/cold — adjust your pacing strategy. Don’t try to stick rigidly to pace when conditions differ significantly.
• Link your race-day nutrition and hydration plan to pacing — good fueling helps preserve energy and pace consistency. 

Why This Approach Works (and What to Watch Out For)

What it helps avoid:

• Going out too fast and “hitting the wall.”
• Overestimating what you’re capable of based on past shorter races.
• Running too hard in challenging conditions, which often leads to a tough finish or even withdrawal.

What to remember:

• Pacing is a guide — not a guarantee. Race-day conditions, how you feel, and external factors still matter.
• Even pacing or controlled effort generally leads to better outcomes than aggressive starts.
• Using fitness-based pacing keeps expectations realistic and sustainable.

And for more about Marathon training check the video below:

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