Good running pace for beginners: what the race data says

Recreational runners are slowest on average at the 5K, not the marathon. That comes from RunRepeat’s “The State of Running 2019”, which covers 107.9 million race results from 1986 to 2018. Elite runners, charity walks and parkruns were left out, so these are ordinary people wearing a bib.

Average running pace per mile and per km by distance

The report puts the slow 5K average down to who shows up: almost everyone who races starts with a 5K, so it has the most novices. The half marathon has the fastest average pace. Marathon pace is 18% slower than half marathon pace for men and 17% slower for women.

So compare your pace with runners at the same distance. For a man, 11:15 per mile is close to average in a 5K and about two minutes per mile slower than average in a half.

What is a good running pace?

The slowest finishers pull an average a long way. Percentiles are more useful: what share of runners finish faster than you. RunRepeat has them for 2.6 million US 5K finishes in 2018. Here those finish times are turned into pace.

A 5K pace under 7:56 per mile for men or 9:04 for women puts you in the fastest fifth of a mass race. Only 10% of finishers are slower than 17:11 and 18:11 per mile, which is 3.3–3.5 mph, a brisk walk. The finish times behind these numbers, by age and gender, are in our average 5K time breakdown.

Easy run pace for beginners: let your breathing set it

Everything above is race pace, run at full effort. Most training runs are slower. For easy runs there is a guide that needs no watch at all: the talk test. In a 2004 study by Persinger, Foster and colleagues, 16 healthy volunteers read a standard passage aloud on a treadmill and an exercise bike as the effort increased. Once speaking stopped being comfortable, intensity was consistently above the ventilatory threshold.

Your easy run pace is the one where you can say a few full sentences in a row without stopping for breath. If you have to chop sentences into pieces, it is no longer easy, whatever the watch says. Uphill, in the heat or 30 minutes in, that pace will be slower than at the start of a cool, flat run. That is expected. How this ties to heart rate is covered in zone 2 running.

How to find your own pace

1. Run for 20–30 minutes at a pace that passes the talk test. Note the time and distance from your watch or phone.
2. Turn them into pace by dividing time by distance. That is your easy pace for today.
3. For race pace, run a 5K all out, in a race or on your own, and work out the pace the same way. That is the number to compare with the tables above.
4. Repeat every few weeks in similar conditions. A hot-day pace and a cool-day pace are not comparable.

If you already have a 5K or 10K result, the race time predictor turns it into a time and pace for the half and full marathon.

These tables describe people who enter races, and RunRepeat’s data covers 96% of US results and 91% of results from the EU, Canada and Australia, with other regions less complete. People who only run for themselves are not in them, and their average pace may differ.