Hey
I've been thinking about perhaps entering a half marathon but was a little unsure whether to as I had never done more than about 15km before.
I ran 21km (13 miles) this morning, albeit on the treadmill in order to see how far such a distance was, and managed it in just under 2 hours.
Basically now I am aware that I can do it, I want to work on my speed.
What would be a good time (but I'm not interested in winning it or anything just a good time) for a female 5'2? All I seem to find is times for men and I definately cannot run as fast as a 6 foot tall man lol!
Well, I don't know how old you are, because your age will affect your placement. But for comparison, my first half marathon in 2006 was just under two hours. This got me 699 out of 1903 people overall, and 71 out of 230 in my age group (F25-29 at the time). For females, I was 267 out of 1130... so in the top third of my age group and the top 25% of all female runners. So even if you ran it in two hours you'd probably end up well above average... although of course, it always depends on who shows up to the race.
And I'll keep typing it until my fingers fall off, but YOUR HEIGHT IS NOT RELATED TO YOUR RUN SPEED. I outrun 6 foot tall men all the freaking time, and the fastest female runner I know is 4'10". Short chicks rock!
Besides gender, most races break the results down by age, not by height. Almost all races post previous years results by gender and age. So if you look up a half-marathon you are interested in running, that will give you an idea of how you match up.
For the sake of comparison, I looked up the women's results from last year's Dallas half-marathon. The winner finished in 1:11:32. The last woman to finish did so in 4:51:24.
You can use the McMillan calculator to plug in your "best" time at a known distance, and it will tell you what you should run any comparable distance in.
http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/mcmillanrunnin gcalculator.htm
Running on the treadmill is very different than on the road. You should up your road time estimation a bit or go for a decent road run first. I am about run a 5:45 km on the treadmill and about 6:05 on the road. I attribute it to the dif muscles used and the varying terrain.
Under 2 hours is pretty good in my books..I don't have the discipline to run for more than an hour at a time.
yeh i know its pretty different but i usually find im faster running outside than on the treadmill, esp in a race environment. like i usually run 5km on the treadmill in about 26-27 minutes but outside its more like 23 mins.
just been upping my distances now and then trying to get the time down.
On a treadmill remember to incline 1.5 to 2 %. This will be more of what it will be like running on the road with wind resistance.
Any completion of the run is a success. I am 6'4" and I did my first in just over 2 hours. Keep it up...once you get running with all of the other folks you will be surprised how much faster your time will be!
Regards
