Marathon pace chart

Quick answer: a 4-hour marathon needs 9:09 per mile or 5:41 per kilometre, with halfway at 2:00:00. A 3-hour marathon needs 6:52 per mile (4:16 per km); a 5-hour marathon needs 11:27 per mile (7:07 per km).

Marathon pace chart, 2:00 to 7:30

Finish time, average pace and the elapsed time at each checkpoint for an even-paced marathon (42.195 km, 26.219 miles). Times are rounded to the nearest second.

How to use a marathon pace chart

Find your goal in the first column and read across: the pace to hold, and where you should be at 5K, 10K, halfway, 30K and 20 miles. On race day those checkpoints matter more than single mile splits, which water stations, hills and crowded starts throw off. If you are more than a minute ahead of the chart at 10K, you are almost certainly going too fast.

The tool above gives the same splits for any goal time, not only the round numbers in the chart, and both mile and kilometre splits for courses marked in either unit.

Even pace or negative split?

For most runners the safe plan is simple: start no faster than goal pace. A 1% negative split on a 4-hour marathon means a first half of 2:01:12 and a second half of 1:58:48, so the first half averages about 5.5 seconds per mile slower than goal pace and the second half about 5.5 seconds faster (in the tool the very first mile is about 10.6 seconds slower than even). Choose a negative split in the tool to see every mile at that plan.

The first miles

The opening miles decide a lot of marathons. The start is crowded, the legs are fresh and goal pace feels gentle, so running 10 or 15 seconds per mile too fast is easy and hard to notice. What you bank that way is small: 10 seconds per mile over the first 3 miles is 30 seconds. What you can lose later is much bigger: fading by 30 seconds per mile over the last 6.2 miles costs 3:07. For a 4-hour goal the chart puts 10 km at 56:53 and 10 miles at 1:31:32. Well inside those times? Ease off rather than keep the gift.

Mile markers, km markers and your watch

Courses are signed in miles, in kilometres or in both, which is why the tool gives both sets of splits. Read the elapsed time on your watch as you pass each sign instead of trusting auto-lap. A certified course is measured along the shortest route a runner could legally take, while real runners weave, swing wide on corners and drift to water tables, so GPS distance usually ends up longer than 26.2 miles. At 4-hour pace each extra 0.1 mile takes about 55 seconds, and a watch reading 26.5 miles at the line means roughly 2:34 of extra running. Running the tangents, straight lines from the inside of one bend to the inside of the next, keeps that gap small.

Hilly courses

Even pace on a hilly course means uneven effort. Even effort is the better target: slower on the climbs, a little quicker on the way down. Using the Minetti energy cost curve, 4-hour effort (9:09 per mile on the flat) works out to about 10:45 per mile up a 3% grade and 7:47 per mile down one. Few runners should attack descents that hard, because the braking work in your legs is not in the energy model, but the climbs are where plans usually fall apart when runners try to hold flat pace. Judge the day by the 10K, halfway and 30K checkpoints, not by single miles around a hill. The grade adjusted pace calculator converts any slope.

Choosing a goal you can hold

Set the goal from a recent race, not from a round number. A 1:55:00 half marathon predicts 3:59:46 for the marathon with Riegel's formula, 4:03:07 with the more cautious 1.08 exponent and 3:57:48 with the Daniels and Gilbert model; that spread is the honest range. If your long runs and weekly mileage have been light, plan from the slow end. The race time predictor runs these numbers for any result.

Using the chart in training

Goal pace should feel familiar before race day. If your plan puts sections of a long run at marathon pace, the per-mile column gives the target, and the 5K and 10K columns give the time for a goal-pace block on a measured loop. Practise drinking and taking gels at that pace in the same runs, and set the amount with the race fueling calculator.

Weather and the course

The chart has no heat correction. Warm, humid days can slow you down, and a headwind on an exposed stretch costs time that the tailwind later does not fully give back. If the forecast is warm, choose a slower row before the start rather than chasing the original splits after halfway.

Print it

Use the pace band generator to print your splits as a wristband, or print this chart. Training for the race? Your training paces come from a recent race, and the race time predictor shows what a 10K or half marathon time suggests for the marathon. Running a hilly course? Load its GPX file into the course pace planner for even-effort splits. Prefer to type a pace instead of a goal? Use the marathon pace calculator. Before race day, read tapering by the numbers. Run-walk racers can time their intervals with the run walk timer.

Formula and examples checked 7 October 2026. Found a problem? Tell us.

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