You’ve probably heard the old guidance that long runs should be run at one to two minutes per mile slower than your marathon pace. This guidance came from coaches and elite runners in the 1960s and 1970s—the first running boom in the U.S. And it worked at the time because the average marathon finish time was three and a half hours (over an hour faster than today).

But then the second boom in running occurred in the 1990s and 2000s, with the bulk of marathon finish times between 4:30:00 and 5:30:00. Marathon pace for a five-and-a-half-hour marathoner is 12:36 minutes per mile. Using the old 1-2 minutes slower per mile rule for long runs, the runner would never do any running (only walking), or if they did, it was uncomfortably slow.

The concept of endurance training related to marathon pace continues to cause great confusion. So how is an athlete to determine running pace if the 1-2 minutes slower than your marathon time rule no longer stands? It’s all based on training zones and your relative race pace at various times.

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