Marathon Pace Marathon pace chart: every finish time from 3:00 to 6:00

Marathon pace chart from 3:00 to 6:00

Every row is even pace, the same speed the whole way. The 5K, 10K, and half columns show what the race clock should read at those points if you're right on pace. Each goal links to a training plan built for it.

Marathon = 26.2188 miles (42.195 km). Times rounded to the nearest second. Past 5:00 there is no goal-time plan, so those rows link to a first-marathon plan.

Two things to know before you write these on your wrist. First, the half column is your split at halfway, not the half-marathon race time that predicts it. A 1:50 half marathon doesn't mean a 3:40 marathon (more on that below).

Second, your watch will probably say you ran a bit more than 26.2. Courses are measured along the shortest possible route, cutting every corner, and most runners don't run that exact line. If you want the race clock, not your watch, to hit your goal, aim a few seconds a mile quicker than the chart.

For scale, Kelvin Kiptum's world-record 2:00:35 in Chicago in 2023 averaged 4:36 a mile. Every row on this chart is a marathon, and every one of them is worth being proud of.

Should you run even splits or bank time early?

Eliud Kipchoge, a two-time Olympic marathon champion, went out too fast in Berlin in 2022. He reached halfway in 59:51, quicker than his team had planned, and his second half was almost a minute and a half slower than his first. He still won, in a world record of 2:01:09, but he knew what the fast start had cost. "We went too fast," he said afterward. "Actually, it takes energy from the muscles." A year later in Chicago, Kelvin Kiptum went through halfway in 1:00:48, a little behind record pace, then ran the second half faster and broke Kipchoge's record by 34 seconds.

"Banking time" feels smart at mile 3 and gets expensive at mile 20. Barry Smyth, a computer science professor at University College Dublin, studies the race data of everyday marathoners. In Chicago, he found, half the runners who hit the wall had run their first 5K as the fastest part of their race. "Running as even a pace as possible is the best way of running your personal best," he said, with the fair caveat that race data shows a pattern, not proof. Even pacing is also a skill you get better at: runners with more racing experience tend to pace their marathons more evenly.

So pick one row and run it. On race morning, rested and excited, chart pace will feel too easy for the first few miles. That's the point. If you're going to miss, miss a little slow over the first 5K, never fast. On a hot day or a hilly course, run by effort and let the pace slip; the chart assumes flat roads and cool air.

The best place to learn the pace is in training. Good marathon plans put miles at goal pace inside your long runs, so by race day it feels familiar, and your tracked splits show you whether you're holding it or drifting.

How to pick a realistic marathon goal time

Andrew Vickers, "a competitive runner and statistician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center," as Slate described him, surveyed more than 2,300 recreational runners about their races with his colleague Emily Vertosick. The classic prediction formula, they found, worked well for races up to a half marathon but "dramatically underestimated marathon time, giving times at least 10 min too fast for half of runners." "No wonder so many runners blow up and limp to the finish," Vickers said.

The fix is simple. Take a half marathon you've run in the last couple of months and multiply it by about 2.19, the starting point from their data. A 1:50 half points to about a 4:01 marathon, not the 3:49 the old formula gives. A 2:00 half points to about 4:23. Then find the nearest row in the chart.

Your weekly miles move the number, too. "You might run a quick 5K, but if you don't put in the miles, your marathon is going to be on the slow side," Vickers said. A recent 10K works as a rough first guess. Treat it as a draft, and let your training confirm it.

That's the real test. Your training runs can give a decent estimate of your race time, and it's an estimate that gets better as the weeks go by. By the middle of your plan, the goal-pace miles in your long runs should feel steady, not desperate. If they feel desperate, move down a row. Finishing strong at 4:30 is a much better day than fading to 4:45 after starting at 4:15 pace.

Running your first marathon? Pick a row that feels a little conservative, or skip the goal time entirely and run to finish. The marathon plans page has first-marathon plans built around exactly that.

What to eat while you train for a goal pace

Sara Hall ran 2:20:32 at The Marathon Project in December 2020, at the time the second-fastest marathon by an American woman, and she has raced at a high level for well over a decade. Her top nutrition goal, she told Just Women's Sports, is eating enough to get through each training session. "You need not only to fuel well to finish that effort, but you also need to fuel enough to recover quickly," she said.

That's the part of marathon food most runners skip. Your plan grows week by week, and eating enough to match it is what lets your body turn those miles into fitness. Match the food to the day: more carbs the day before and the day of a long run or a goal-pace workout, and normal meals on rest days, not starvation days. After the big sessions, eat soon, with carbs to refill and protein to repair. Runners need more of both than people who don't train, so put some protein in every meal.

When the training outgrows the food, it shows up quietly: legs that never feel fresh, goal-pace miles that get harder instead of easier, paces that stall, more colds, bad sleep, and a shorter temper. The International Olympic Committee's 2023 consensus on underfueling names each of these, from a weaker training response and slower recovery to lower immunity, poor sleep, and irritability. Weeks of low energy also undermine your bones, raising the risk of a stress fracture. If your chart pace keeps slipping, check your plate before you add more miles.

Trying to lose weight while you train? Take a modest cut from the day's food overall, never by shorting your long-run days. Big deficits raise the risk of getting sick or hurt, and keeping enough carbs around your long run keeps the session your goal depends on strong.

Which training plan fits your goal time?

A pace chart tells you what to run on race day. A plan gets you there. A good one grows your long run a little at a time, puts goal-pace miles into your weeks so the pace stops feeling new, gives you easier weeks to absorb the work, and lightens the load at the end so you race fresh. The long run matters most of all: marathoners whose long runs reach further tend to finish faster.

There are lots of options. Runner's World has a Break plan for every 15 minutes from 3:00 to 5:00, and I've reviewed each one (the 4:15 and 4:45 plans are linked in the chart). Run to the Finish has a free 4-hour plan, linked below with my review. Buena Vida's goal-time plans run from sub-2:50 to sub-5, over 16 to 20 weeks, with 3 to 6 days a week depending on the goal, and those are the rest of the links in the chart.

Every plan here, mine and theirs, is scored on the same 30 measures, each tied to published research, so you can compare them side by side and pick the one that fits your week.

Running your chart on race day

Smyth found one more thing in the race data. "I found that something like five times more runners ran even splits when they were running with or near a pacing group," he told World Athletics. If your race has pacers, find the sign that matches your row and settle in behind it.

Take your first gel before you feel you need it. Check your 5K and 10K splits against the chart, and if you're ahead, ease off, because those seconds come back with interest later. Past halfway, the chart becomes a guide, not a judge. If you have something left at mile 20, that's the time to use it.

You trained for this row. Go run it.