"Races"

[Saralexis]

What sort of pace do most people at a 5/10k charity race have? My friend wants us to enter something together and I would like to know that I'm not going to be trailing the final runners by a couple of kilometres! I'd just like to be somewhere in the respectable zone rather than the notably slow zone - but I have little idea how fast that might be

[beatricerose]

If its a big entry charity race, for a 5k its likely people will be finishing from 20 mins (the fast runners) up to 40/45 mins for the slower runners/walkers. The 10k will probably range from 40 mins for the fast ones to an hour and twenty minutes or so I would imagine. In a joint 5& 10k race there are often quite fast 10kers that make it round twice, so if I wanted to do a slow 10k, I'd probably want to do it in a race where most people were doing 10k rather than a mixed one, but that's just me.

Depends on the race though. Something like race for life might have lots of slow walkers etc and be super busy so it will be on the slower side, but smaller races might get more competitive?

Those are just my estimates! But just aim for a good time for you, and I'm a certain you won't be last.

[beatricerose in reply to beatricerose]

Re: pace, a 5min/km pace=25 min 5k, 6min/km=30 min, 7min/km=35 min, 8 min/km=40 min as a guide

[Saralexis in reply to beatricerose]

That's comforting, I'm being very cautious with my knees so upping distance very slowly but I'm reasonably sure I could keep my current pace over 7k up if I kept going to 10k, which would bring me in at about 1hr20, and the one she's proposing isn't till the end of May so I should be able to speed up a bit.

[runswithdogs Graduate10]

Often you can find the results for the specific race you're interested in from the previous year posted online. I find this gives the best idea of the range of completion times.

[IannodaTruffe Graduate10]

You should not get hung up with your pace. The time you take to finish a race is the time you take to cover the distance. You may well run a faster time than usual, simply because of the excitement of the event and you should be proud of that time as a representation of where you are in your running career.

Parkrun would give you a very good guide as to where you fit amongst other runners. It is supportive and the times are published every week.

Keep running, keep smiling.

[davelinks Graduate10]

Parkrun average run time is 27.32min

Parkrun Male record holder is 13.48min

Parkrun Female record holder is 15.55min

[IannodaTruffe Graduate10 in reply to davelinks]

Those times might seem daunting to a parkrun novice. The slowest times may well be three times longer, or even more

[davelinks Graduate10 in reply to IannodaTruffe]

Just an example!

[AdamB Graduate10 in reply to davelinks]

The thing to remember about the park run average time is that half the runners will be slower than that (ok - I know that this isn't strictly correct unless you use the median time instead of the average, but you get the gist). From my limited experience, charity runs get a much longer tail than non-charity events. You get a lot more people who wouldn't normally run, but are doing it because "it's for charity". If you can manage in one hour 20, you'll be fine.