Racing with a Speed and Distance Device

By Matt Fitzgerald

Run speed and distance devices such as the Timex Ironman Bodylink are useful tools for monitoring, analyzing, and planning your training. But they can also help you race better. Specifically, you can use your speed and distance device to select an appropriate race pace goal and then stick to it. In this short article I will explain how to use your speed and distance device most effectively in races.

Determine Your Goal Pace

You should start every race with a sensible target pace that you hope to sustain more or less from start to finish. The idea is to select the very fastest pace you are capable of sustaining on race day given your current fitness level (or your anticipated fitness level on race day). There are several methods you can use to determine this pace.

If you are an experienced runner, you can compare your times in workouts leading up to races to your times in workouts leading up to one or more past races of the same distance. Your race time goal should be greater or lesser than your past finishing times by an amount that is commensurate to the difference in workout times. For example, suppose your pace for 1K intervals prior to a past 5K was 3:48, and your finish time in that 5K was 19:09. Your pace in your most recent 1K interval workout was 3:41, so perhaps your goal for the next 5K should be 18:45 or therabouts, which translates to a pace of 6:02 per mile.

If you’re training for a shorter race, you can use a tool called a relaxed time trial to determine an appropriate race goal. If you’re training for a 5K, run 5K on the track at 95 percent effort, determine your pace, and set a race pace goal that’s roughly 5-percent faster. If you’re training for a 10K, do a 10K relaxed time trial. In addition to helping you set a pace goal, relaxed time trials are excellent race-specific workouts.

Obviously, relaxed time trials at the half-marathon and marathon distances would take too much out of you. A better way to select a target pace for these longer races is to run a 10K tune-up race and then use a race time equivalence calculator such as this one to determine an equivalent finish time for the longer race, which will then yield your target pace. For example, according to the McMillan calculator, a 10K tune-up race time of 31:40 converts to a marathon finish time of 2:28:37.

For more tips on racing with a speed and distance device, including figuring out your pacing strategy, accounting for your device's degree of accuracy, and ignoring your heart rate (yes, ignoring it!) until after the race is over, click here to read the full article.