Ever wonder what pace you should be running during workouts? Or maybe you’re building up to a race soon, but haven’t a clue what time you’ll do it in?
Fear, not. Help is at hand. There are plenty of special pace calculators on the web to help take the mystery out of running.
One of our favourites is Greg McMillan’s running calculator
Simply choose a recent race distance and the time you ran it in. Hit calculate and – hey presto! – your equivalent performance for every race distance from 100m to the marathon will pop up, along with optimal training paces for key workouts.
In our experience, it’s an eerily good predictor. There will always be variables, though: you might have a niggling injury, training hasn’t gone according to plan or it’s simply not your day. Try it and see…
Another useful pace calculator is courtesy of Cool Running to help guide you in a race or training.
Unlike McMillan’s version, it doesn’t factor in fatigue over the course of several miles. Nevertheless, it’s handy for planning your race pace and training runs.
Also, Runner’s World has a training calculator with an emphasis on your optimal training pace.
For the mathematically-challenged (which includes us), it has a neat feature called “pace converter”, which translates your miles to kms, and vice versa.
Have you got any favourites? Do you find they work for you? Let us know…
