Pacing yourself is always an important part of running a successful race. You don’t want to go off too fast and suffer through the second half, or feel so fresh at the end that you wish you’d pushed harder in the early stages.
To pace yourself correctly, you need a target time, which should ideally be based on your performance in training rather than a neat number plucked out of thin air. The best sports watches all now provide race predictions for the most common running events — 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon — and Strava will also do the same, with the watches and app basing these predictions on your training history.
