[Brett Avery]

Curious about what your recent races, workouts or Monday or Saturday runs tell you about your workout targets or race goals? Online pace calculators will take your recent performances and show potential capabilities and, over time, gauge your improvement.

Basic per-kilometer and per-mile paces from a run or race serve as basic yardstick. A calculator can help you become smarter and more confident about what it will take to achieve a goal, or how to build stamina or return from a layoff. While calculators might initially overwhelm you with a dizzying quantity of numbers, they can provide valuable measurements.

Here are two widely used calculators:

The Hansons-Brooks Project (https://hansonscoachingservices.com/hmmcalculator/race_equivalency_calculator.php)

Type in your run/race distance and time and the calculator provides a range of paces for everything from long, medium and short training runs to tempo workouts. Was it hot and humid or cold and windy? Adding temperature, relative humidity and/or wind speed will adjust your range paces accordingly.

The calculator also translates that distance/time combination into equivalent performances for 19 distances, from the mile to the marathon. If you run NYRR races, note your 10k equivalent: NYRR translates every race, regardless of distance, to 10k and uses your fastest recent time to assign race corrals.

McMillan Running (https://www.mcmillanrunning.com)

This site starts with a short video by Greg McMillan explaining how to use the calculator and recent improvements. It has the same functions of distance/time = workout/race paces. This calculator offers several other goals, though, such as building stamina or returning to running after a layoff. If you want it also can factor in age, sex, ability level and runner type. The site does ask for your email address before calculating paces, but then it provides information on almost 40 distances, including all the shorter ones traditionally used for speed and tempo workouts.

One key to using these calculators is to print the results for multiple runs or races and compare the equivalent times and workout ranges. Those printouts also provide a basis for comparing weeks and months from now, or during a training program or block of races. Experiment with them and see what you can discover!
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• This topic was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Brett Avery.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Brett Avery.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Brett Avery.

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