How do I determine my 10K pace? (Read 5012 times)

When I ran my first 10K, I had no idea how to determine my target pace, either. Since most of my training runs were around a 10:00 mile, I just figured that would be my race pace also, and expected to finish it in a little over an hour. However, the adrenaline and excitement of the race put me across the finish line in 59:22, much to my happy surprise. I haven't looked at your log, so I don't know at what speed you run most of your runs, but my whole point is, racing is a whole different ballgame from training. You'll get caught up in the fun, excitement and camaraderie, and you'll end up running faster than you expected. So don't worry about how fast you think you should run the race, just go out and run it, and enjoy the experience. Once you get your finishing time, then you'll have something to use for the future.

You can also check out Mcmillan Running Calculator You've ran 8:10 ish pace for 5 M previously so i don't see why you can't run that pace, or at least the 2nd half Race hard but don't get hurt good luck.

Thanks everyone. I have started running and allowing myself to reach the threshold floor (85%); actually I haven't been able to reach that level becasue I get tired before hand. The first day was good and full of energy, even with hills (I had had 2 days of rest previously after an easy 10 mi jog). Today it was challenging, probably from the lack of recovery in between days. So I'm gonna keep paying attention to my time but it looks like realistically I may not be able to shoot at a pace below 9 min/mile ... but I'll make sure to eat well and rest plenty before the race, as these seem to have affected me significantly today.

I've been wondering the same things since I'm almost done with the walking parts of my walk/runs. What's a good estimate of my 5K and 10K pace? Not that I'm ready to race either, but I'd like to have some idea on how fast I should go when I see "Run x distance at 5K pace". Jeff Galloway's Magic Mile Race Prediction Formulas seems to be reasonble. Basically it's: warm up, run a mile hard, add 33 sec to get 5K pace and multiply by 1.15 to get 10K pace. Do this once a week for 4 weeks and throw out the lowest time and average the other three. If I'm reading it right , this VO2max link gives another way to estimate 10K pace as: run as far as you can in 5 minutes and note the distance. 20% slower is your approximate 10K pace. So if you run 1609m in 5 minutes (5 min/mile) your 10K pace would be 1609m in 6 minutes (6 min/mile) I'm still new to all this running stuff so I'm not worrying about any *real* racing until I get a few more months behind me. But it's still fun to think about....

FOLLOW UP: For future readers of this thread. I ran my 10 K on April 15. This was my first ever race. TIME: 58:58 PACE: 9:5 I ran with a friend of mine, and the course had just the right amount of challenges. A couple of not steep, but long hills. I think that if I had run by myself I would have walked some, but as I did not want to loose face, I ran all the way. Granted I w.asn't very fast, I am proud of not having to stop. In the end, I do feel I gave it at LEAST 99% of my effort. That extra 1% would have made me get sick at the end of the run. I made a printout of time splits for finishing at 1 hour or finishing at 55 mins. and adjusted my pace as I went along depending on how I was feeling. When 55 mins seemed impossible I aimed for staying under 1 hour. Final advice, run at your normal training pace and find out how you are feeling as you go along. I also knew the rout from previous runs so I had an Idea of the hills that I knew would be challenging for me.

WTG Cordovez!! 1st 10K in under an hour. Quite impressive!

Thanks all. I'll be coming back for more love after I run my first Adidas race series this summer (5 mile, 10 mile, half marathon, and Marathon in October) in Dublin.