![]() But am I alone in that feeling of slight implausibility? Well, no – at least not judging by the data. T2 = 105 x (26.2/13.1) 1.06 = 219 minutes = 3hrs 39mĪnd there’s that prediction that left me bemused – a whopping 14% quicker than I managed. So if you ran a half marathon in 1hr45 (105 minutes), and wanted to predict your marathon time, you’d fill it in like this: It is awesome because it can apply to pretty much any distance between one mile and a marathon – and in most cases, it gives a decent estimate. You can feed one race time into it, and get a prediction for how fast you would run at a different distance. In 1977, Peter Riegel published an article in the US edition of Runner’s World that introduced a formula for estimating race times – and it is this formula that is most commonly used in dozens of race calculators all over the internet. They range in ability from five-minute-milers to 12-minute-milers. But by concentrating on runners who had completed at least five half marathons and five full marathons, I found a core of about 1,000 runners who (you would hope) would have recorded a representative time at both distances. There were red herrings of course – such as folks who have run a great time at a flat half, then slogged their way around the Beachy Head marathon. The Fetch database holds over 30,000 marathon and 57,000 half marathon performances – enough to expect to find some sort of relationship between them. How many runners set out to achieve those predictions, and end up having an awful race? Ultimately, predictions help set our expectations and inform our plans – so it makes sense to ensure they are good ones. My training could have been a bit better – but it made me wonder whether the race time predictors are giving us a realistic view of what we’ll achieve.
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