6:26

I’ve been kicking goals around in my head for a while and was inspired to write this after walking into my hotel room and seeing 6:26 on the clock. 6:26, you see, happens to be the pace required for a 20:00 5k, which I finally did in 2008. 40:00 10k is one of my long-term goals – sub-40 by 40 years old – and is, of course also 6:26 per mile or 4:00 per kilometer pace. I’m thinking about shorter distances lately because I finally got my BQ (3:15) and there aren’t a lot of nice round numbers I can hit in the marathon any time soon. 3:05 at 40 would let me side step the lottery for New York. Sub-3 is one I’ll probably never achieve.

So what is the longest distance for which I’ll ever be able to sustain 4 min/k pace? What does that translate to for other distances? Well, with a little time in the St Louis airport and some help from the McMilllan calculator, here’s what I came up with.

5k	8k	10k	10M	HM	Marathon
20:00	32:58	41:33	1:09:37	1:32:27	3:14:58
	32:00	40:19	1:07:33	1:29:42	3:09:10
		40:00	1:07:01	1:29:00	3:07:43
			1:04:20	1:25:26	3:00:11

The diagonals represent 4 min/k. Where am I now and what row can I make it to? Well, my 1:29:48 gets me pretty close to 8k, which will be a nice goal for the St Patty’s 8k (in addition to the rematch with Fenty). I’ll have to stretch it to 10 miles before I can even think about trying to run a sub-3 marathon though. Funny enough, a 3:00 marathon is only worth about a 3:06 1000m, a pace that elites sustain for an entire marathon.