Apr 5, 2000

Another day, another marathon question. Kevin Casey writes from Australia, "I've read that shorter training runs should be at or near marathon pace. What does this mean, exactly?"

If you're an experienced marathoner, I told him, you know quite well what that pace is. But if you're new to the event or haven't run one in awhile, this pace might be hard to guess.

A couple of rules of thumb: Multiply your half-marathon time by 2.1 as an estimate of marathon potential, or your 10-K time by 4.7. This results in a pace that seems rather slow when you're only going a few miles on your easy days.

For instance, marathons now take me four hours or more. This is slower than nine-minute miles -- which are hard for me to hold for the full distance, but no problem at all for the daily runs lasting a half-hour to an hour.

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