Understanding Marathon Pace: How to Run Your Perfect Race

To complete a marathon, it’s no secret that you have to run hard, but you also have to run smart, too. The smarter runner often beats the fittest runner, so understanding the importance of pacing and knowing how to run your perfect race is key to achieving your marathon goals. In this OTE guide, you’ll discover how the science of pacing works and how you can implement it into your marathon or half-marathon strategy.

The Science of Pacing: Why Starting Slow is the Secret to Finishing Fast

Pacing yourself isn’t just about giving yourself a mental game plan for race day – it can actually improve your performance. By resisting the urge to run fast right out the gate, you help your body use its energy more efficiently, reserving enough to complete the distance. To better understand the science of pacing, let’s break down the numbers.

The body stores around 2,000 calories’ worth of glycogen (a key energy store) in the muscles and liver, and running a marathon typically burns around 100 calories per mile. Across a 26.2-mile (42km) distance, the maths doesn’t add up, so pacing plays a key role in optimising how the body uses its fuel reserves.

Starting fast depletes glycogen, causing the body to expend too much too soon. By starting with a conservative mindset, runners can slow glycogen use until they truly need it. In other words, the fuel they save while running feels easy and pays dividends when all they want to do is rest.

So, pacing is the key to optimising glycogen reserves, but what is marathon pace, and does it vary for half-marathons? Let’s look at how to approach each event.

How to Pace for a Half Marathon: Comfortably Uncomfortable

For a half-marathon, we recommend adopting the popular negative-split strategy. Referring to the approach of running the first half of the race slower than the second, this pacing plan conserves energy, prevents burnout, and gives you a roadmap for completing the full distance.

Running is never easy, but maintaining a comfortable level of discomfort throughout the first half of your half-marathon is key to making good time while preserving key glycogen stores. Here is our breakdown of how to approach your run:

• First 5 Kilometres: Start out conservatively, running around 5 to 10 seconds slower than your goal pace. This may be difficult to maintain as people pass you, but it will all count down the line.
• 6 to 20 Kilometres: Once you’re established in the race, it’s time to take things up a notch. Run at your goal pace, but prepare for this to get more difficult as the run progresses. Remember: your slow start has prepared your body for this energy expenditure, so keep going!
• Final Stretch: In the final kilometre or so, give it everything you have. Remember to ensure you have enough energy to cross the finish line, but focus on that end goal and go for it.

How to Pace a Marathon: The Art of Patience and Discipline

Because it is longer, a marathon requires a more conservative approach than a half-marathon. Patience and long-term thinking are pivotal for success, so let’s divide your marathon pacing plan into three parts:

• 0 to 21km: As above, focus on running slightly slower than your goal pace for the first half of your marathon. Focus on enjoying the experience and keeping things comfortable.
• 22 to 36km: Pick up your pace ever so slightly, ensuring you stay comfortable and don’t burn yourself out. Reach your goal pace and focus on each kilometre as it comes, ticking each off as a little victory.
• 36km to the Finish: In the home stretch, it’s time to use the energy you’ve saved. Let your legs feel the burn and go for it, maintaining a manageable pace as you pass those who haven’t paced themselves. When the finish line is in sight, let the adrenaline take over as you charge towards the finish.

Setting Your Sights: What is the Pace for a 4-Hour Marathon?

In order to complete a 4-hour marathon, you need to maintain a pace of 5 minutes, 41 seconds per kilometre (or 9 minutes, 9 seconds per mile). If you want to set yourself a finish time to aim for, here is our marathon pacing breakdown:

Your Secret Weapon: How Fuelling Empowers Pacing

Marathon pacing is designed to optimise the body’s energy reserves, but fuelling before and during a marathon is key to maximising these reserves. The body uses carbs as it runs, so onboarding as many carbs as possible before and during a marathon means the benefits of pacing yourself are optimised.

Before a marathon, a carb-rich breakfast of granola, cereal, or OTE snack bars ensures the body begins a marathon with the maximum amount of energy it can hold, and the same applies to a pre-race energy gel used 15 to 30 minutes before.

During the race, onboarding fuel is vital for topping up energy reserves and ensuring the body has what it needs to push through the fatigue and arrive at the final third of the distance with power. What you fuel the body with during the first two-thirds of a marathon is what it relies on towards the end, so taking sports gels and energy chews at 30- to 45-minute intervals is vital.

Hydration can’t be overlooked either. Fluids and electrolytes keep the muscles working at optimal levels. While water is essential, nutritious OTE Hydro Tabs and energy drinks at regular stops along the way make pacing more rewarding. 

Pace to Perfection Here at OTE Sports

Mastering the art of pacing is key to getting the most out of your body’s energy reserves on marathon race day. Taking your time, planning your race, and focusing on your own goals is all worth it in the end, and there’s nothing like crossing the finish line with just enough fuel left in the tank.

Ready to run smarter for your next marathon? At OTE Sports, we’ve got the product range to keep you going, plus everything you need to help your body recover as effectively as possible. From energy chews to protein bars, find everything you need at OTE Sports.