How should I calculate my pace for the popular distances?

Question

Two weeks ago I finished a 10k race in 52:31. Now I want to try Half Marathon under 2 hours. For that I plan to follow this training plan:

https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/training/half-marathon/a760102/rws-12-week-sub-200-half-marathon-schedules/

Unfortunately, I am completely unexperienced and I don't understand some parts of the timetable. So let me ask two simple questions:

1. The first training day (week one, Tuesday) says "Speedwork, distance 4M (inc 4 x 600m, 200m jog), pace 10K". What does it exactly mean? I quess it means the following: warm up with an easy pace; then repeat four times 600m in my 10k pace followed by 200m jog recovery (so this is 4 x (600+200) = 3200m in total); then cool down with an easy pace. The total should be 4 miles = 6.4km, so both the warm up and cool down phases should be 1800m long. Is that correct? So the "10k pace" is related only to the 4 segments (each 600m long)?

2. The pace for some training sessions (including the first one mentioned above) are stated as "10k", "5k", "1/2M", "Mile". I guess I can use 5:15 (in mins per km) as my 10k pace (as I have recently finished a 10k race in this pace), is that correct? I also think that I can use the pace 5:36 as my 1/2M pace (as this is what I want to achieve), correct? But I have no idea how to compute my 5k and mile pace (as I have never completed any races with these distances).

Answer 1

Look for a race time predictor. Here are some 5K and mile paces (in min/km) based on your 10K time of 52:31:

Site	Mile pace	5K pace
Sport Tracks	4:42	5:02
Running Ahead	4:33	4:59
Luke Humphrey Running	4:32	5:02

Personally, I find race training plans that are so specific and prescriptive to be annoying to follow, and they take the joy out of running. For a beginner or amateur runner, one piece of helpful advice came out of a study of Strava data from thousands of runners training for a marathon. I can't find the article now, but one of the most significant findings was that runners with slower race times ran their easy runs too hard, and their hard runs too easy. This is easy advice to follow -- on your easy runs, focus on slowing down. On your hard runs, focus on pushing yourself hard.