How to Predict Your Marathon Time

During a recent track workout, which had me running several 800's at about three minutes each, the coach of the group I run with told me it was similar to a popular marathon prediction workout called Yasso 800's.  I did a little research on this, as well as several other marathon prediction methods, to try to figure out what type of pace to shoot for on race day.  Here are the best I've found.

Yasso 800's. Here's the idea.  Pick a marathon time you'd like to run.  Replace hours by minutes and minutes by seconds to get your 800 meter pace.  Sounds complicated, but it's not!  Since I need to run the marathon in 3 hours, 10 minutes to qualify for Boston, my 800 pace becomes 3 minutes, 10 seconds.  If you can do 10 of these 800's, slowly jogging for that same amount of time between each (3:10 for me), then this method predicts you can run your marathon at the corresponding hours-and-minutes time!  The coach told me that a lot of people think this method is too optimistic, so adding five minutes to your marathon time is a good rule of thumb.  Here's a link to Runner's World's take on Yasso's.

Galloway's Magic Mile.  Former Olympian and current coach Jeff Galloway (the walk-run guy) has his own method for predicting race times, and not just marathons.  And the great thing about his method is that it's simple, albeit painful.  Run one mile as fast as you can, middle-school style (don't barf or die, though).  Then to predict your marathon time, take your mile time (in seconds) and multiply by 1.3.  The result is your marathon pace per mile, in seconds.  I haven't done this one yet, but just to give an example:  In my last 5K, I ran the first mile in 5:53.  Let's say that if I were going all-out, I could have run a single mile in 5:40 (you're supposed to actually do it, of course, not guess).  That's 340 seconds, and 340 x 1.3 = 442 seconds, or 7:22 marathon pace, for a 3:13 marathon.

Galloway actually gives you a break; he says to run four one-mile time trials, drop your lowest, and average the remaining three to get your mile time.  He also gives different adjustment factors to predict 5K, 10K, and half marathon times at his website.

Jack Daniels' Tables.  There are myriad jokes one could make here; I'm going to take the high road and keep quiet.  Jack Daniels is a famous running coach (I can't help it—he's a good coach alright, when he's not making Tennessee whiskey!), and author of a book I really like, Daniels' Running Formula.  In the book, he gives a table for predicting any common race time, given any other common race time, based on what seems like a lot of research and statistics.  You can find such a pace table here (Table 1).  Basically, you look up a recent race time, and from that you look to the left or right to find your projected time for another distance.  Don't worry about the "VDOT" column, it's something from the book.  Ideally, you want the race distances to be similar (i.e. use a half marathon time to predict a marathon time, if you have a recent one).  You also want things like the terrain and conditions to be similar.  Example:  My half marathon a few months ago was extremely hilly, so I can't really compare that one.  But if I look up my recent 5K time of 19:15 on a very flat course, the equivalent marathon time is about 3:04.  If you're not into tables, running coach Greg McMillan has a similar tool here, called McMillan's Running Calculator.

Anyone ever try one of these?  How did it work for you?

Related posts:

1. Gimme that Good, Good Runnin'
2. Guest Post on Running Easy
3. How I Plan to Qualify for the Boston Marathon
4. Qualifying for Boston: How I Did It
5. 3 Track Workouts Guaranteed to Kick Your Ass