Does anyone know if there is a standard conversion from a half-marathon to marathon pace? I want to take my Helvetia Half time and convert it to a Marathon target. Thanks.

DaveActive posted this link in a thread earlier this year. (I think it was Dave...it was a while ago...)

http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/Running%20U...gcalculator.htm

Hi!

This is the pace conversion tool I used in my blog. I found it to be pretty accurate for me so far.

http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/trainingca...0-0-0-0,00.html

Cheers!
AC Jess

There is one at marathonguide.com that gives you the results from a number of them. I have found them to be in the ballpark with their accuracy. Remember they assume you are properly trained and ready to go at the marathon distance. Many of you first timers may be thinking that there is no way you can run a full marathon knowing how hard the half was this weekend. Stick with the program and you can. Come August when we have runs of 11-12 miles you will go great, today is an easy day and you will do great. You started at the end of March and its mid June and you have until October. When I took my first Helvatia half time and put it into the marathonguide.com it said I would run a 3:59 and I ran a 4:01; pretty close. The key is sticking with the program and doing you runs and not over do by running the long ones to fast. I never did get under 4 hours for a marathon until I slowed down on my longer runs and built a better base without feeling so tired. It does work to run slower to race faster; espically if you are doing the speed work and some tempo shorter runs.

I made a mistake in my last post on this topic. It's www.runningforfitness.org that has all the conversions of predicting your race time from another race of a different distance.

When I find the guy that invented that calculation I'm going to whoop him good. Chances are I won't be able to catch him after a certain distance b/c his formula was off.

I've heard double your time + 10 minutes. They were smoking something. I've run a 1:50 1/2 but a 4:00 marathon that 'bout killed me. 1:51 1/2 and 4:12 marathon. 1:57 half and TBA.

Those formulas have me running at about 3:30-3:40 marathon. Maybe I'm doing some speed drills in my sleep and I don't know it.

If you're trying hard on long runs each saturday and feel like you're pushing...ADD MORE TIME. If the SAT runs feel easy and you've got plenty left in the tank...Don't add as much time.

There is also one on the Portland Marathon web site, specifically for the Portland Marathon route.

It takes into consideration the up hill and down hill parts of the run. I found it to be accurate. If you put in your half marathon time it will kick out an estimate for completing the Portland Marathon.

Michael

Here's the link Coach Michael refers to:

http://www.teamoregon.com/pmc/course/spltfrm.htm

It's great to see people interested in using their half-marathon performance to estimate marathon potential. For many of us, this is the best information we have so far in figuring what we've got in us at marathon distance.

The fundamental problem with this computation is that for many of us in the program, our conditioning for marathon distance is quickly evolving -- typically for the better -- and we are new to marathon training. As a result, it can be difficult to extrapolate our half-marathon performances in early June to a full marathon in October. We are "works-in-progress" -- I guess that's a good way of thinking of it.

Many of the estimation formulas make the fundamental assumption that when you are estimating your performance at a new, longer distance, you have trained as well for the longer run as you have for the shorter run. Keep in mind that the USA FIT program is designed to get novice runners/walkers up to marathon distance with minimum chance of injury, so as a result it leaves you with somewhat less mileage than other programs. (I hope that doesnt' sound discouraging to you, but the truth is that the USA FIT program has an excellent track record for getting our athletes to the start line compared to other, more ambitious programs that can leave you with injuries.)

As a result, I think that unless you are doing more mileage than the USA FIT program, you should add extra minutes to any of these estimation formulas.

Keep in mind that we still have the 15 mile, 30K and 21 mile benchmarks ahead of us. It's good to use these iteratively to try a more suitable pacing strategy and see how it feels. Don't let any one day's performance depress you or inflate your ego too much -- as you've seen by now, there is some normal variability based on your level of rest/recovery, nutrition, stress level and so on.

The key thing is to use each of these benchmarks as a metric and refine your work in progress. Use them to motivate you to do your weekly mileage. Then on Marathon Day in October, you'll be dialed-in on what your best pace should be.

These conversions are a rough tool. For me if I plug in my Helvatia times there are somwhat accurate but if I plug in my fast flat halves they are not so accurate. Its fun to play with these but if this is your first marathon don't get to hung up on worring about your time. As Eric says, the goal is to get to the start line and finish line of the marathon. Don't use the longer training runs coming up as race previews. If you do you greatly jepoardize getting injured. These are to be long slow base building runs.