Marathon Pace Chart

Divide the goal time by the race distance. A marathon is exactly 42.195 km, 26.219 miles, so a 4-hour marathon is 240 minutes split across 26.219 miles:

The hard part of a marathon is not the arithmetic, it is holding that pace for 26.2 miles when your easy pace wants to be 90–120 seconds per mile slower. Every row in the table above is a contract: miss the pace by just 5 seconds a mile and you finish in 4:02:11, not 4:00:00.

Even splits are the default because they are the fastest honest strategy for most runners: the world record pace is, to within a few seconds, an even pace. The −1% and −2% options build in a controlled negative split, the second half runs slightly faster than the first, which is how the great majority of marathon PRs are actually run.

At −1% for a 4:00 goal, your first mile eases to 9:12 and your last full mile comes home at 9:07, putting you through halfway in 2:00:18 rather than a dead-even 2:00:00, a deliberate eighteen seconds held back on the front half and spent on the back. Toggle it in the chart above and watch every split and checkpoint recompute; the splits always sum exactly to your goal time.

A pace band is a strip of paper wrapped around your wrist with the cumulative time you should hit at every mile or kilometre. It turns the chart into something you can race with: no mental maths at mile 18, no dependence on a watch screen that shows instant pace bouncing around. You look at the band, you look at your watch, you know exactly where the race stands.

Ours prints at wrist width with cut lines, in miles or kilometres, and it is free with no email address required, other publishers gate their printables behind signup forms. Print at 100% scale, and if race day might be wet, print on waterproof paper or run a strip of packing tape over the top.

Each goal page states the exact pace, the full split band, the training paces the goal implies, and the prerequisite race times that suggest it is realistic.