Training Help

I was recently asked the following question by a fellow athlete... "How did you know what pace to run that race at?"

It is a very good question and my answer has a lot to do with the fact that I've been racing for about 8 years and have a good idea of where I should be.  But I want to offer a better answer along with an extremely useful tool that I use in both my training and my coaching.  Knowing what pace to race at is one thing, but you also need to know how to train to be at that fitness level.

I give you the answer!!!!!

Click on the link above and follow along with my example.  Scroll down to the section where you select an event and choose "5K" and then enter 17:12 and then hit "calculate"  That was the time of a 5K I ran on March 26th.
As you can see, you are given a big sheet with a ton of information on it.  What I want to you focus on is the upper right corner where it says 5000m with 17:12 under it (which is the info we entered) and it also gives you that mile pace.  This tool uses the info you put in to somehow project what your times could be at other distances.  Now look at the 13.1M area and notice that my projected time is a 1:19:30.  So, given that information my goal time for the Rutgers Half was a 1:20.  Now even cooler than that is that this website gives you guidelines for what types of times you should run for different workouts.

I am very confident that the workouts I did this past spring led to a big PR for me.  I did a long run on the weekend, a tempo run on Tuesdays, and a track workout on Thursdays.  I used this website to find those paces.

I used my result from the Rutgers race to then set a new goal for Long Branch.  The 9.55 mile race is very close to 15K.  So I went back to the calculator, did some math, and put in a time for 15K that projected a 13.1 time to be around 1:18:30.  Well, I don't like numbers like that, so I made my goal time 1:18:00.

Mission accomplished.


Please feel free to ask any questions about using that calculator to help you set new goals and how to train for them!