Sub 1:30 half marathon pace: 4:16 per kilometre

• 1:30:00 4:16 /km
•   6:52 /mi

Splits

Splits assume an even pace — they show what an even race looks like, not a pacing strategy. Going out faster or slower than these numbers is a choice, and one that costs more than it usually gains.

Training paces

Training paces are derived from Daniels' Running Formula (4th edition (2021)) with the Daniels–Gilbert oxygen-cost equations. VDOT is back-calculated from a race result, not measured.

Equivalent VDOT: 51.0

Ninety minutes for a half marathon is 4:16 per kilometre, or 6:52 per mile, held for 21.1 km. It is a target that separates runners who train from runners who race: the pace is not exotic — it is the same pace as a three-hour marathon — but holding it for ninety minutes requires a base that a 5K or 10K block does not build.

What makes 1:30 different

The pace is the easy part to understand and the hard part to hold. Twenty-one kilometres at 4:16/km is roughly the effort you can sustain for an hour, extended by half again, which is why the half marathon punishes under-training more visibly than shorter races: the last 5 km shows exactly what the previous sixteen were costing.

Two comparisons are worth knowing, and both are on this page:

• The equivalent VDOT above is back-calculated from 1:30:00 over 21.1 km. It is lower than the VDOT of the same pace over a marathon distance, because sustaining a pace for ninety minutes says less about capacity than sustaining it for three hours. That is not a contradiction — it is the formula stating that duration is part of the demand.
• The training paces derived from it are what to run in training. At this level the threshold pace and the race pace sit close together, and the temptation to make every session a race rehearsal is the most common way to arrive tired.

How the race should look

The splits table above gives the even-pace reference every 5 km, plus the half marathon mark itself. A well-executed 1:30 is usually run as two halves within a minute of each other, with the second half slightly faster if anything.

Where it goes wrong, in order of frequency:

• The first 5 km at 10K pace. It feels controlled, it banks thirty seconds, and it costs two or three minutes.
• The 15–20 km section. This is where a half marathon is decided. If the splits above show the 20 km checkpoint and your watch shows more than a few seconds over it, the last kilometre is going to be long.
• Racing it on 5K training. Ninety minutes at this pace needs weekly volume that a 5K block does not include.

As with every page in this series, use the splits as the reference and the finish time as the outcome. If you are consistently 90 seconds away, the base needs work rather than the sharpening.

Training for it

The training table above is the same set of intensities used for every target on this site; at 1:30 the distribution matters more than the sessions:

• Easy running should be the majority of your week, and it should be genuinely slow — the table's easy range starts about half a minute per kilometre slower than race pace (4:49–5:47/km). The half marathon is an aerobic race and most of its training is aerobic running.
• Threshold work is the specific session: repeated 10–20 minute blocks at around the pace you could hold for an hour. Once or twice a week, depending on how much else you are doing.
• Long runs of 90 minutes or more are what make the last 5 km of the race tolerable. They are not optional at this distance.
• Race-pace blocks — for example 3 × 5 km at 4:16/km with short recoveries — teach the pace itself. One session like this every week or two is plenty; more turns training into racing.

Common questions

Target times and the pace they need

Next

• All target times for this distance
• Pace calculator
• VDOT calculator and training paces