Half Marathon Pace Chart

A 2:00 half marathon is 5:41 per kilometre, 9:09 per mile. A 1:45 is 4:59 and 8:01, and a 1:30 is 4:16 and 6:52. The chart below covers the goal times most people race for, with the clock at 5K, 10K and 15K, and the calculator above rebuilds the full band around any time you type.

Half marathon pace chart: common goal times

Find your finish time on the left and read across. The pace columns are the average from gun to line; the split columns are what your watch should read at each marker on dead-even pacing.

The full chart below the text steps every 2 minutes 30 seconds, and the mile version uses 3, 6, 9 and 12 mile markers. Type 1:52:30 and the widget highlights that row exactly; type 1:53:10 and it highlights the nearest row while the headline pace is worked out from your real time.

How to read it

Pace is finish time divided by 21.0975. The split columns do the rest of the arithmetic for you, and that matters more than it sounds, because the half is long enough to lose track and short enough that a two-minute mistake costs the goal.

One thing the chart cannot show. Effort. The half sits at an awkward one: faster than the pace you can chat at, slower than the 10K pace that hurts from the start. For most runners it is a little slower than one-hour race pace, the threshold pace you find in the VDOT calculator, which is why a half that starts at 10K effort feels brilliant for 8 km and then falls apart.

Even splits are a model, not a plan

The rows assume you hold one pace for 21 km. What happens instead, in most fields, is a fast opening 5K, a steady middle, and a fade over the last 5 km that costs anywhere from 20 seconds to several minutes. The fade is smaller than in a marathon because glycogen is rarely the limit at this distance. Legs are. Twenty-one kilometres is too short to run out of fuel and long enough to run out of quads, which is why a half that goes wrong goes wrong at 17 km rather than at 32.

The last quarter of a half, 16 km to the line, is where the race is decided. Arrive on pace and you hold. Arrive 30 seconds up from a fast first 5K and you usually give back a minute or more before the 20K marker, where it shows on the clock for anyone who cares to look.

A sensible plan is even to 1 percent negative. For a 2:00 goal that means 5:44 per km through 10K, 5:41 through 15K, and whatever is left over the final 6 km, which puts halfway at about 1:00:36 and the second half at 59:24. It is a smaller swing than a marathon plan because there is less race left to spend it in. The pace band calculator prints the clock at every marker for whatever swing you choose.

Hills, heat and wind move the number

The chart assumes flat, calm and about 10 to 15 °C. Warmer than that and pace slips for most of the field; a half in 22 °C is not a chart half, and the environmental pace calculator will tell you roughly how much to give back at the start so you do not give back more at the end. Hills are another race. Run it by grade adjusted pace and accept that the 10K split will not match the row. A headwind on the way out costs more than the tailwind returns on the way back. For treadmill sessions at chart pace, set 1 percent and check the treadmill pace calculator.

Picking a goal time

Take a recent 10K into the race time predictor. It will project a half, and if the projection matches the row you want, you have the fitness; if the projection is two rows slower, the fitness is not there yet, and no chart fixes that. Six weeks old at most. A 5K works too, but it flatters runners with speed and little endurance, and the half is the race that finds them out.

How Movement Rebels fits

The chart gives the pace. Whether you hold that pace on tired legs is visible in your training data, and that is what the coach in Movement Rebels reads: connect Garmin Connect or Apple Health and every run arrives with pace, cadence and per-kilometre splits, so after a 16 km session with 8 km at goal pace the coach can see whether the last 3 km of the block were at 5:41 or 5:55, and it will bring that up.

It plans the half marathon build in your calendar, the tempo runs and the goal-pace long runs, and when auto push is on those sessions go to your Garmin watch as structured workouts with the pace targets loaded. It cannot read the chart. It tells you whether the row you chose is the row your legs agree with.

The block that gets you to the row is in the Half Marathon Training Plan.

Other pace charts

The marathon pace chart uses the same layout at twice the distance, and the 10K pace chart and 5K pace chart cover the shorter races. The pace chart hub puts one pace against all four distances on one table. To see what your half is worth against the world standard for your age, use the age grade calculator.

Half marathon pace chart: finish time to pace and splits

Find your goal time in the left column and read across. Pace is per kilometre, the rest are the clock readings at each marker on even pacing.

Half marathon distance 21.0975 km. Rows step by 2.5 minutes.

The same chart in miles

Same finish times, splits at mile markers.

Questions

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