Marathon pace chart: finish time to required pace

42.195 km · 26.2188 mi

Target times and the pace they need

A marathon is 42.195 km, and almost every goal in the sport is stated as a round finish time: sub-3:00, sub-3:30, sub-4:00. This chart translates those goals into the pace they require, both per kilometre and per mile, for every finish time from 2:00:00 to 6:00:00.

How to read the chart

Each row is a finish time. The two pace columns are the average pace over the whole 42.195 km:

• From a goal to a pace: find the finish time, read across. sub-3:00 needs 4:16 per kilometre, or 6:52 per mile.
• From a pace to a goal: read across from the pace you can hold, then back to the finish time.

Three rows worth knowing by heart:

Why the average is only half the story

The chart gives one number per row, and a marathon is never run at one number. Two races with the same finish time:

• Even: 4:16 per kilometre for 42 of them.
• Fade: 4:05 for the first half, 4:27 for the second.

The first is the same average pace and a much easier race to execute, because every kilometre is the same decision. The second is what happens when the first half is run at a pace the second half cannot repeat — the single most common way a marathon goal is lost. If your goal pace is the pace you can hold for a half marathon, the chart is telling you the target is a stretch.

A useful check before committing: take your half marathon result, double it, and add 5–10 minutes. If the result is slower than your marathon goal, the goal needs either more training or a slower target — see the race time predictor for the formula behind that comparison.

Target times

The rows below run from sub-2:30:00 to sub-5:00:00. Bands are inclusive: 3:00:00 exactly is inside sub-3:00:00.

Read the target table as a map of the neighbourhood around your goal rather than a ladder. sub-3:15 is about 21 seconds per kilometre faster than sub-3:30, so a 7-second-per-kilometre improvement in training pace moves you a third of the way there — that is the size of the step, and it is worth knowing before setting the goal.

After the race

The same arithmetic works backwards from a completed race: enter the result in the pace calculator to get the splits your race implies, or in the VDOT calculator to get the training paces that follow from it. A marathon result is the most reliable input for those training paces, because it is the distance where pacing discipline matters most and the effort is hardest to fake.

For shorter targets, see the 5K chart and the half marathon chart.

Two caveats that change the numbers, not the arithmetic

• Course and conditions. The chart assumes a measured course run in reasonable conditions. Hills, heat and wind move the achievable pace by far more than the difference between adjacent rows.
• Certified distance. A certified marathon is 42.195 km. A watch reporting 42.5 km on the same course means the GPS drifted, not that you ran further — and reading pace off the watch in that case will make you think you are slower than you are.