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Running to pace

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mulbs Feb 2021 9:22am, 17 Feb 2021 13,935 posts	Quote Pin mulbs Help please dear Fetchies. When you are meant to be completing a training run at a certain pace, what are typical pace boundaries, so to speak? So how much leeway either side of target pace as you run do you allow yourself before you consider it a disaster? Any useful tips very much appreciated
Fitz Feb 2021 9:26am, 17 Feb 2021 2,375 posts	Quote Pin Fitz It's a good while since I did any targeted pace running but I used to set my Garmin to alert if I drifted more than 5 secs / mile under / over target, so a 10-sec pace "window." It was only a disaster if I was a long way slower than target, never if I was faster!
cerid Feb 2021 9:46am, 17 Feb 2021 495 posts	Quote Pin cerid Depends quite a lot on the distance concerned. For a 5k, for instance, going 10 seconds a mile too quick in a race is going to lead to one of three things happening and none of them are good, while 5 seconds a mile too slow is going to make you suffer just as much and then miss the goal by 16 seconds or more. So you need to be pretty dialled in at faster paces. Longer runs give you much more leeway, although the same issues apply if you are training for race pace. Would suggest if you are training for a longer race then you try to drop in a couple of 2-mile intervals at race pace so that you can get used to what it feels like, but then drop back the effort for most of the session.
fetcheveryone Feb 2021 9:50am, 17 Feb 2021 25,661 posts	Quote Pin fetcheveryone I am tending to use HR as an indicator of suitable pace right now - and I usually don’t worry if I creep 1-2 beats over - although I do then try to correct this. I guess it’s worth wondering what the purpose of running at a specific pace is - i.e. what improvement are you targeting. I don’t know how much leeway there is for any specific session - but maybe you can work backwards based on the outcomes of your training. As a rough guide though, I try to aim for within 5-10s/mile of the suggested pace. I find that setting my watch to show my average pace for the current mile, rather than my ‘current’ pace (which tends to wobble a bit because of GPS) is a good tactic.
fetcheveryone Feb 2021 9:51am, 17 Feb 2021 25,662 posts	Quote Pin fetcheveryone Good point Ceri.
McGoohan Feb 2021 10:20am, 17 Feb 2021 48,531 posts	Quote Pin McGoohan My problem with pace bands on my older Garmin was that if you specified too tight a range, the damn thing was bleeping all the time, too fast, too slow! Not that I necessarily was - it was just struggling with a completely consistent signal. Take it to too wide a range and you're not really getting the benefit. I've not really tried it out on my newer model. It does seem to keep a signal much better.
Dvorak Feb 2021 12:30pm, 17 Feb 2021 21,991 posts	Quote Pin Dvorak Doing track laps, I'd want to be within two or three seconds a lap (dependent on pace). In the wild, within maybe ten seconds a km overall, ideally starting slightly slower than target and finishing slightly faster. Within that though I wouldn't bother about the pace over anything less than maybe 500m, as long as it was in the ballpark. Too many variables. Frequently of the hilly sort.
cackleberry Feb 2021 12:35pm, 17 Feb 2021 1,983 posts	Quote Pin cackleberry Just run a muddy, hilly, off road route then pace is irrelevant!
fetcheveryone Feb 2021 12:42pm, 17 Feb 2021 25,665 posts	Quote Pin fetcheveryone Re: pace bands on watches - I did a tempo run this morning, and wanted sub-8 mins/mile. I used pace alerts for 7:50 and 8:10 - but it feels like the sampling that the Garmin does is affected by short-term GPS fluctuations. So from one moment to the next it was complaining about me being too fast or too slow - and yet the pace felt fairly consistent to me. Even cutting my run into quarter mile chunks, the pace for each chunk only varied between 7:43 and 8:07 - way less variation than the Garmin was reporting at the time. Like I said above, I find that "average pace for current lap" is a better measure. It's a bit flaky for the first 0.1 of each mile, but after that it gives a good steer. Rather than fluctuating wildly, it just creeps in one direction or another if you're going at the wrong speed.
larkim Feb 2021 12:56pm, 17 Feb 2021 13,550 posts	Quote Pin larkim I like to use custom data fields on my watch (presumably available on most Garmins) which are things like "average pace for last 30s" to help stablise pace variations. If that's not available, set the lap distance to be shorter than a mile (I've used 0.5m in the past) so that as Fetch says you can use average pace for current lap as a substitute. On a track, I've broken down the required pace into 100m segments (where possible) - so for example if I was required to run at 92s per lap, that would be 23s for each 100m segment and have my watch "beep" eveyr 23s. I can look at the track (providing I'm in lane 1!) and judge whether I'm behind or ahead of pace. That avoids GPS gremlins interfering with accuracy on a 400m lap at least!