How to choose a marathon target time

So you’ve decided to run a marathon. Massive kudos to you. It’s the first stage in what will be an amazing journey and we at Coopah running want to help you through it; whether that’s with a personalised sub 4 hour marathon training plan, a community of runners to keep you motivated or some tips, tricks or just some GIFs and videos to take your mind off the training from our Instagram. 

One of the first things we’d always recommend after booking a marathon race is getting a training plan. But, whether you’re looking for a beginner marathon training plan, a sub 4 marathon training plan or a sub 3 marathon training plan you’ll need to know your target time. 

How to Find Your Target Time?

There are lots of ways to find out what time you want to go for in a marathon but we’ve put together a list of a few of the easiest ways:

Use a marathon predictor. 

The easiest way to find out your marathon time would be to use a marathon time predictor. Most of these use a formula created by Peter Riegel in 1977 but it’s stood the test of time and it’s still used as the base for most calculations. 

If you’re an undercover maths guru like Peter himself and fancy playing around with the formula its:

T2 = T1 x (D2/D1) 1.06

where D1 is the distance of a race / time trial you’ve already run, T1 is the time of the distance you’ve already run, D2 is the distance you want to predict a time for, and T2 is the calculated time for that distance. Easy peasy, right?

If you decide that excel spreadsheets aren’t for you, then there are some simple online calculators which do the work for you. Our favourite is the clear and easy Omnicalculator, which you can find here.

If you’re looking for a slightly more accurate formula, the link here from Five Thirty Eight uses multiple race times and weekly mileage to calculate the right time. It’s based on a more recent formula by Andrew Vickers and Emily Vertosick of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. 

But what are the issues with using a race calculator?

• Marathon race predictors think that you’re going to be following an appropriate marathon training plan. Obviously if you download a sub 3 hour marathon training plan but don’t do any of the training even if you’ve run a 35 minute 10km a few years ago you probably won’t get your sub 3 marathon time.   
• As with all algorithms like this there will be outliers on the high end and low end. This formula loses some of its accuracy when using times under 3.5 minutes and over 4 hours. 
• Some people are built with a natural talent to run marathon but some of us are sprinters and are naturally more suited to shorter distances. So people with the same 5km time and following the same beginner marathon training plan may end up with different results. 

We’d definitely recommend giving the race calculators a spin before starting your marathon training plan, but be aware of the potential pitfalls above. 

Train for a Half Marathon or 10km first

One of the things we always tell new starters who are looking for a beginner marathon training plan is to focus on a shorter distance first and use that as part of your training plan. Downloading a very basic 12 week sub 4 hour marathon training plan is unlikely to get you there if you haven’t yet figured out how you run and train for shorter distances.

Once you’ve started your training for a Half Marathon or 10km you’ll begin to learn what paces feel comfortable to you and you’ll be able to sense check the paces given to you in the calculators we mentioned earlier.

Run with a friend

Comparing yourself to others can be a dangerous game, so make sure you only use this one as a guide.

If you’re not part of a running community then we always recommend finding friends who run to keep you inspired and motivated on your marathon training plan journey. The Coopah community is active all over the country. If you download our app you’ll be put into a training group with people of similar ability and who live in your area.

Once you’ve found a friend to run with, then sense check your predicted marathon time with them. Perhaps they’ve already run a marathon at a similar time; if you’re training alongside them then that’ll give you confidence you can achieve a similar goal. 

Start a training plan

We would always say that a planned marathon time should never be fixed. Things change when you’re training and you may feel you can go quicker than planned or perhaps you have a dreaded injury and don’t manage every session so want to change your goal.

We’d recommend starting a beginner marathon training plan with a goal in mind and then adjusting your goal once you start getting into the strength phase of the plan. At this point you may be on a sub 4 marathon training plan, but release that Tempo Runs at race pace feels too easy. If that’s the case then you could switch to a sub 3 marathon training plan. But be aware, fixed marathon plans for sub 4 hours or sub 3 hours may not be the best solution. Often people don’t fit into the standard buckets of 3 hours or 4 hours – which are a huge difference in training load and intensity; just because you don’t feel comfortable with some of the sub 3 hour marathon training plan sessions it doesn’t mean you have to jump straight up to 4 hours and doing it the other way can cause too much stress on your body and your mind. 

With Coopah’s marathon training plans, you have the ultimate flexibility. Our plans are instantly adjustable so if you feel you’re overachieving then just update your plan and test out the sessions ona  sub 3 marathon training plan!

Speak to a coach

If you can then it’s always good to have a chat with a coach about how long you have to train, how much time you can dedicate to training and what feels comfortable right now. Coaches are often expensive, but with Coopah along with your beginner marathon training plan you get 24 hours a day access to a coach via instant messaging to ask them any questions you may have about what time you want to go for in your marathon.

So there we have it. Those are our tips on finding your marathon time. 

If you’re still looking for a marathon to race then why not check out our marathon inspiration blog. 

As we’ve said, there are lots of ways of calculating your target time, but test them out, try a marathon training plan and feel free to adjust your goals as you start your training. The best way to do that is using the Coopah App – a personal running coach, any time, anywhere.