Estimating your race finishing time

I wonder how many first timers do struggle with estimating finishing times? If you've never done a race before it's probably pretty tricky. I suppose the first thing to consider is what distance to target for the first event. 5km is probably a sensible choice. The parkruns take place all over the country every Saturday morning at 9am and the fields are small enough for everyone to get onto the same start line and so not have to estimate a finishing time. These could then be used as a guide for any future events. The other great thing about the 5km is that you can make the usual novice mistakes, such as going off at the wrong pace and it's not too far to get back and so not too long to suffer!

However, if your first race is a high profile event and you need to know where to put yourself on the start line then you should use your training pace to estimate a finishing time. If you know the distance of your training runs and then you time yourself around them you will be able to work out how many minutes it takes you to cover each mile or kilometre. If you have a device such as a garmin you will be able to get a very accurate idea of your pace. Below is a conversion of your minutes per mile into your estimated finishing time for 5km:

* 13 min/mile pace finishing 5K in over 40 minutes

* 12 min/mile pace finishing 5K in around 37 minutes

* 11 min/mile pace finishing 5K in about 34 minutes

* 10 min/mile pace finishing 5K in 31 minutes

* 9 min/mile pace finishing 5K in about 28 minutes

* 8 min/mile pace finishing 5K in around 25 minutes

* 7min/mile pace finishing 5K in between 21 minutes 30 seconds and 22 minutes

* 6 min/mile pace finishing 5K in 18 minutes 30 seconds

You could do this with any distance if your training runs are approximately the same distance as the race you want to take part in. However, you may want to estimate your 10K pace from your 5km time. Unless you are used to running that distance regularly and are somewhat one-paced it is not simply a case of doubling it. It is likely that you will run at a slightly faster speed for 5km than you do for 10km. If you run 24 minutes for 5km you are probably going to be around 50 minutes for 10km. If you run 90 minutes for half marathon you will probably be around 3:05 for a full marathon as the advice is to double it and add 5 minutes.

There are several running calculators around. Check out this one on runworks that will help you to predict times when taking into consideration all sorts of factors such as altitude, hills and wind! Have fun playing with the calculator and then start planning that race at altitude with lots of hills on a very windy day!!