Short sprint – Ordinary speed

In True Speed I wrote about the high speeds at which elite runners run their races; speeds which ordinary runners can barely hit in a sprint. Today we’re going to look at what ordinary speed looks like. Outside of an elite race, most runners are running somewhere between six and ten miles per hour. Even the guys and gals up the front winning the prizes in your local race aren’t running much faster than this. Sometimes it’s even true for elites too, when Gwen Jorgensen was winning her Olympic Gold for triathlon, her 10K was ‘only’ around 11mph, so there’s no shame in not being super fast; only an attempt to better understand what’s going on.

Let’s begin with parkrun. In the table below I’ve listed the times between sixteen and thirty minutes as all but a few parkruns are run in that range. Of course quicker times are available, Andrew Baddeley holds the world record time of 13:48 while Lauren Reid ran 15:45 earlier this year to set a new women’s record.

Parkrun time		Mph	Km/h		Min/mile	Min/km
16		11.7	18.8		5min09	3min12
17		11.0	17.6		5min28	3min24
18		10.4	16.7		5min47	3min36
19		9.8	15.8		6min07	3min48
20		9.3	15.0		6min26	4min00
21		8.9	14.3		6min45	4min12
22		8.5	13.6		7min04	4min24
23		8.1	13.0		7min23	4min36
24		7.8	12.5		7min43	4min48
25		7.5	12.0		8min02	5min00
26		7.2	11.5		8min22	5min12
27		6.9	11.1		8min41	5min24
28		6.7	10.7		9min00	5min36
29		6.4	10.3		9min19	5min48
30		6.2	10.0		9min39	6min00

If you want to train to get faster, it’s a useful table for understanding what speeds and paces you’ll need to be running. Once any initial burst of training sees your times levelling off, you have to start training smart.

You do intervals at paces a little quicker than you’re currently running while keeping the majority of your running at paces for a parkrun that’s 2½ – 3½ minutes slower. That’s 2½ minutes for the runners near sixteen and 3½ for those at thirty  If you’re currently running 22-mins at 7min/mile, you’ll want to be training no faster than the pace of a 25-min parkrun (three minutes slower). Even more of your training should be at the pace of a parkrun that’s five minutes slower than you’re currently running.

---

But we’re not only parkrunners so let’s have a look at what speeds we’re running for different race distances. The vast majority of runners are barely hitting 8mph in any of their races; most are even slower. The top end are the elite values to give you an idea of where there’s capacity for improvement.

	4 mph	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
parkrun	46min39	37min19	31min06	26min40	23min20	20min45	18min40	16min58	15min33	14min21
10K	1hr33	1hr15	1hr02	53min19	46min39	41min29	37min19	33min56	31min06	28min42
1/2M	3hr16	2hr27	2hr11	1hr52	1hr38	1hr27	1hr19	1hr12	1hr06	1hr00
Marathon	6hr33	5hr15	4hr22	3hr45	3hr16	2hr55	2hr37	2hr23	2hr11	2hr01

Of course reaching the highest speeds takes lots of dedicated training but certainly isn’t impossible if you understand what you need to do. Most people can run at 10mph (or 6min/mile pace) if only for twenty or thirty metres. If you can do this, then it’s probable with good endurance training you can improve to run times you wouldn’t have considered possible.

Most runners I see are good at unlocking their natural talent but then spend their training time reinforcing it without notable improvement. They seem happy if they’re knocking a minute or two off their marathon after months of hard training. My 10K went from 48 minutes to sub-40 when I got my training right. My early half marathons all came in at 1hr50 but when I took up running seriously I got them closer to 1hr30. I still believe there is significant room for improvement in all my races when I’m done with 800m training. I won’t settle for less, will you?