Marathon pace chart: goal times from 2:30 to 6:00 and the splits to hold them

Somewhere around week ten of a marathon block, everyone does the same thing: picks a goal time and starts doing pace arithmetic in their head on easy runs. This chart is that arithmetic, done once, correctly, for every goal from 2:30 to 6:00.

Two notes before the table. The paces are exact for 26.219 miles (42.195 km), not rounded to the nearest friendly number. And the checkpoint columns assume even pacing, which is a choice I will defend further down.

The chart

Goal	Per mile	Per km	Halfway	20 miles
2:30	5:43	3:33	1:15:00	1:54:25
2:45	6:18	3:55	1:22:30	2:05:52
3:00	6:52	4:16	1:30:00	2:17:18
3:15	7:26	4:37	1:37:30	2:28:45
3:30	8:01	4:59	1:45:00	2:40:11
3:45	8:35	5:20	1:52:30	2:51:38
4:00	9:09	5:41	2:00:00	3:03:05
4:15	9:44	6:03	2:07:30	3:14:31
4:30	10:18	6:24	2:15:00	3:25:58
4:45	10:52	6:45	2:22:30	3:37:24
5:00	11:27	7:07	2:30:00	3:48:51
5:15	12:01	7:28	2:37:30	4:00:17
5:30	12:35	7:49	2:45:00	4:11:44
5:45	13:10	8:11	2:52:30	4:23:10
6:00	13:44	8:32	3:00:00	4:34:37

For a goal between two rows, the pace calculator will give you the exact figure, and the predictor will print the whole thing as a pace band for your wrist.

Picking the row you can actually run

The chart tells you what a goal costs. It says nothing about whether you can pay it, and this is where most marathon plans go wrong before a single mile is run.

The honest way to pick a row is to work backwards from a recent race. A half marathon inside the last couple of months is the gold standard: run it through the half to marathon predictor and you will get a number in the region of double your half plus 10 to 15 minutes. A 1:45 half predicts about 3:39. It does not predict 3:30, however much nicer 3:30 sounds, and the gap between those two rows is 34 seconds per mile, every mile, for over three and a half hours.

If all you have is a 10K, be more conservative still. The prediction reaches a long way, and it silently assumes your endurance matches your speed. Mine usually does not by February. My rule: the chart row I circle has to be one my longest training runs actually support, not one my 5K flatters me into.

Watch pace vs chart pace

One adjustment before you memorise your row. The paces above are for the certified distance, and you will run further than that. Nobody cuts every tangent through 26 miles of crowds, so a GPS watch typically records 26.4 to 26.5 miles at a big marathon. If you hold exactly 9:09 on your watch all day, you will cross the line a minute or two past 4:00 and be furious about it.

The fix is cheap: run about five seconds per mile faster than your chart pace as your watch target. For the 4:00 runner, that means the watch says 9:04 and the finish clock says 3:59-something. Decide this before the race. It is not a mid-race adjustment you want to be doing at mile 23 with a brain running on fumes.

Even splits, and the case for a slow first mile

Every row in that chart assumes even pacing, and even pacing is the right default. Nearly every marathon world record has been run with a second half within a minute of the first. The physiology is unforgiving in one direction: minutes you gain by banking time early are borrowed at loan-shark rates, and the repayment comes due at mile 21.

In practice, the best amateur executions I have seen are very slightly negative: first half maybe 30 to 60 seconds slower than the second. For a 3:30 goal, that looks like going through halfway around 1:45:30 and running the second half in 1:44:30. The first mile should be your slowest of the day, ten seconds over goal pace, while the crowd sorts itself out. You lose ten seconds. You get them back before mile 3 without trying.

What you should never see is halfway five minutes up on your goal. That is not fitness, that is a countdown timer.

The three checkpoints that matter

You cannot concentrate on pace for four hours, and you do not need to. Check three points against your row.

Halfway is the first honest reading. On target and feeling controlled is exactly where you want to be; more than two minutes fast is a red flag no matter how good you feel, because at halfway everyone feels good.

Twenty miles is where the race starts. The chart says a 4:00 runner arrives at 3:03:05, leaving 57 minutes for the last 10K. If you are there on time and your legs still answer, you will finish within a minute or two of goal. This is also the point where a small deficit is fine. A minute down at 20 with strength left beats a minute up with nothing.

Mile 24 is a decision, not a checkpoint: whatever the watch says, this is where you spend anything you have left. From here the maths cannot save you or sink you. Two miles is a distance you can gut through on will alone, which is a genuinely comforting thought at the time.

The mistakes that beat the chart

After years of watching pace bands die in the wild, the failures are boringly consistent. Banking time in the first 10K is the big one, and it is always described afterwards as "I felt so good". Skipping fuel because the pace felt easy is the second; the chart assumes an engine with fuel in it, and glycogen does not negotiate. The third is refusing to update the plan on a hot day. Heat taxes everyone, and the tax is measurable. On a warm morning, drop a row, run the cooler race, and pass the people who did not from mile 18 onwards. That last part is the closest thing to a cheat code the marathon offers.

Print your row, add the tangent buffer, and let the chart do the thinking on the day. You have better things to spend your brain on out there.